WELL IT’S ABOUT GODDAMN TIME.
TODAY WE’RE TALKING ABOUT PANTS.
The new MLB uniforms are out, and usually I’d spend a whole paragraph faking like they’re good before getting to the punchline in the end, but let’s cut to the chase: they’re fucking garbage.
Some players had grumbled for a few days before the problems really took off, but it was Cal Raleigh who brought it to the general public’s attention when he made an innocuous video for the Mariners Twitter account in which he told a silly joke. Why, what could be wrong with that? This is standard grist for the content mill, and surely nobody would think anything was wrong.
Except, well, this is what Cal Raleigh was wearing:
You can clearly see the bottom of his uniform through his pants. Like, very clearly see it. Like, you should not be able to see his uniform at all, but instead it’s like the pants are just a veil, and what’s underneath could not be more visible. Like, how is it possible that the person who designed these pants does not know how pants work? You’re not supposed to be able to see what’s underneath! A very important part of using clothes to hide your nakedness is hiding your nakedness, and yet here we are.
This is, naturally, not just a Mariners problem. Here is Lucas Giolito, proudly sporting his Red Sox top and negligee-inspired pants:
Here is somewhat well known baseball player Shohei Ohtani, wearing some disgusting clothes that are also overly transparent:
Here are multiple members of the Cincinnati Reds, and while these are more cropped than the photos above, well, in most cases, they’re not quite cropped enough:
And finally, since this is osentsibly a Giants-themed newsletter, I searched high and low for this one, finally finding Logan Webb in the team’s Instagram stories yesterday:
The villain behind these substandard pantaloons is Fanatics, the company that has been slowly taking over every bit of sports apparel for fans, buying up companies, raising prices, and cutting quality, just so that if you want to buy yourself a Giants jersey, you’ll pretty much have to buy a cheap piece of shit from Fanatics that costs a ton of money and looks and feels like garbage.
This is what MBAs call a Smart Business Model.
Now, in this particular case, it gets a little more complicated. MLB’s contract to manufacture their uniforms is not actually with Fanatics. The contract is with Nike, and Nike did design the uniforms, but then they subcontracted out the manufacture of said uniforms to Fanatics, who make them all exactly to Nike’s specifications. This includes material selection, so every part of this actually falls on Nike. Fanatics might seem like the natural villain, but in this case, it’s not really their fault.
What would be their fault would be making a jersey with kerning and centering so amateurish that a player complains about it on Instagram, and then a Fanatics agent, seeing that complaint but not realizing the guy is an MLB player, apologizes and asks what he can do to make it right, but that would be a little on the nose, wouldn’t it?
But really, that’s one specific case, and we’re more focused on the universality of shittiness. That shittiness comes straight from Nike, per Nike’s standards, and then they ship is straight to the end user, whether it be a member of the Seattle Mariners, or just a fan who wants to look like a member of the Seattle Mariners. They subcontract to Fanatics, yes, but Fanatics has been handling the manufacture of MLB jerseys for several years now, without these particular quality complaints, leading the canny observer to conclude that this whole mess is probably on Nike.
But why? What’s the benefit here? Sure, there’s a little extra money that you get from being cheap as hell, but that has to be outweighed by the lack of prestige. The Nike name really does mean you’re getting something well put together, something that lasts, something of substance. These jerseys are the exact opposite, and for what? A little money? Does that really make sense?
Well, yes.
Nike took the contract with MLB because they saw an opportunity to make easy money. They didn’t care about their name, or reputation, or anything else. They wanted to make marginally more money than they made before, and so they made it happen.
This is all anything is. I like to think that there was a time when things were better, when people cared about the quality of their work because they took pride in it, when objective facts about what you did and how you did it made a difference. Maybe that was true once. But right now, when it comes to the people in charge who are making decisions, it absolutely isn’t.
No one with any power gives a single shit about anything other than the line labeled Profit going up today. That’s it. The finance people will say, “Here is a way to make line go up,” and everyone will say, “Yes, good, line go up,” and then everybody will congratulate themselves on how smart and good at business they are. Perhaps the line going up today will mean that it goes up by much less tomorrow, or even goes down, but that’s tomorrow’s problem. Line go up
Who cares if the numbers on the jersey don’t line up and the kerning on the name is all wrong? Who cares if every new pair of pants is translucent? Who cares if players and fans all hate your product and think it’s dogshit? It literally does not matter as long as the line goes up. This is why a piece of that Boeing fell off the plane midflight. This is why the A’s are desperate to move to Las Vegas, despite it being a terrible idea in literally every way.
We are all complicated people living in a massively complicated world. It can be overwhelming, it’s so complicated. So we try to make the world simpler. Now instead of taking into account outdated concepts like quality, or pride, or not making other people unnecessarily angry, we simplify. Cheaper materials make pants transparent, but cheaper materials also make line go up. It’s a small price to pay, as long as you don’t care about one single other thing.
Maybe London and France are the latest MLB revenue streams?
I agree with your critique wholeheartedly. Most excellent. And somewhere I saw a photo of a current Giants player where one could clearly see his nads. Equal parts hilarious and horrifying. I missed catching the points you made so well here as I was averting my eyes at the time.