The Diamondbacks were all over the news this week– but not for anything baseball related.
No. Their road uniforms were debuted on Monday. And they were universally lambasted. Pretty much everyone was in agreement that these aren’t the flyest threads on the block.
It looks like the Diamondbacks’ grandiose operation to be the Oregon Ducks of baseball is falling flat. The modern look isn’t working.
This begs a question: Why don’t the Diamondbacks go back to their original jerseys? They were a classic 90’s cartoony look that thrived throughout the NBA around that time. Baseball largely avoided this trend (save for these Pirates jerseys that look like fast food uniforms) but these cartoony jerseys have aged well with time.
Mitchell and Ness’ 2015 map of best-selling jerseys in each state indicate this. The best-seller in Oklahoma is Vince Carter’s Raptors jersey. Two states have Shaq O’Neal and Penny Hardaway’s Magic jerseys. Almost all of these states have jerseys that would be considered “very 90’s” to any 90’s kid. Your dad might hate them, but there’s a good chance you grew up loving them.
So what does this have to do with baseball? It means that 90’s are cool again. And the Diamondbacks would be well-suited in following this trend. The Diamondbacks have some of the most 90’s looking jerseys used in that era. Even if you’re not the biggest fan of them, it’s hard to argue they’re much worse than those grey jerseys they wore on Monday.
These jerseys are also emblematic of the glory days of the franchise. Curt Schilling. Randy Johnson. Luis Gonzalez. They won their only World Series in these jerseys. The red jerseys of the past– and the grey of today– have not produced the same memories that the old school ones have.
90’s vintage is in right now. The Oregon Ducks look is a hard one to mimic. Changing back to the old jerseys would be much trendier.