Reading what's going on in San Diego loud and clear
Finally, baseball is making a change that irritates its fans
It’s a cliché to say that things aren’t built like they used to be. You might walk through one of the capitals of Europe, gaze at the facades of buildings that are hundreds of years old, and tell your friend, “Boy, they used to know how to make things last,” but that’s mostly survivorship bias. Yes, you are seeing some buildings from the 17th century, but that’s because those are the only ones you are able to see 400 years later. There were shitty buildings back in 1620 too. They just already collapsed long before you came along.
But it seems so obvious that there’s something to the cliché, right? We’re tearing down baseball stadiums after 20 years. Yesterday’s stock dip aside, Netflix has built a very successful business model out of continually releasing decent movies and shows that vanish out of the cultural consciousness almost as soon as you’re done watching them. Everything on the internet is the biggest deal ever and then 10 minutes later there’s a new biggest deal ever. The things we value in this country today absolutely do not last.
We allow this because someone makes money off of said things that don’t last, and therefore they must be a social good. That’s a fundamental idea in our society: anything you do that doesn’t break the rules (and a lot of things that do) is good, as long as it makes money. The money is a judgment. If you have more money today than you did yesterday, then your actions over the past 24 hours have been judged as worthy ones.
Well, the San Diego Padres found a way to make more money, starting next year:
Now, this isn’t the first branding on an MLB uniform, As you can see in any game, and also in the picture above, every uniform has a Nike swoosh on it near the right shoulder. If you wanted to, and I certainly did, you could tell yourself that was different. Nike is making the uniform, you might have said. It’s normal for the manufacturer to let people know it’s their work.
(I have no idea if Nike actually made the uniforms, because looking that up might well have meant I had to not accept it)
Motorola is not making the uniforms. Motorola is paying money to the San Diego Padres to turn baseball players into walking billboards. Any plausible deniability that existed with Nike is gone. It’s a pure money grab, and other teams will jump on that bandwagon as soon as corporately possible.
This particular ad won’t last forever, of course. No ad does. In 2023 it’s Motorola, and by 2025 it might be Sony, and then by 2028 the Padres will be proudly sporting Jack in the Box’s logo on their sleeve. It represents nothing, then, besides a desire to put more money in the pocket of Padres majority owner Peter Seidler.
Taking away the ads for a moment, the uniform Manny Machado is wearing up above symbolizes the Padres bringing the tradition of their past into the present. It has the old color scheme and pinstripes, but modern lettering and shading and piping. Someone there is trying to say something. Sometimes they go with the full yellow-and-brown throwbacks:
That means something too. Maybe that something is as simple as “these uniforms are rad as hell,” but that still counts to the fans, because the fans enjoy seeing uniforms that are rad as hell. A Motorola patch is just one small part of the uniform, yes, but it’s a part that doesn’t belong. It’s a part that isn’t…rad as hell.
It’s possible I’m making too much of this. NASCAR crams ads into every square inch of car space it can find, and it’s doing fine. Premier League soccer is still wildly popular, and it’s not like they eschew ads either. A sport can survive, and even thrive, while still putting crass commercialism front and center.
But that doesn’t mean it’s right for baseball. A huge part of the appeal of baseball is its long, storied tradition, and putting those ad patches on a sleeve means that the uniforms quite literally aren’t built like they used to be. I don’t know the history of how soccer players and racecars started wearing their ads. But I do know that it’s harder to change an old tradition than to create a new one, and that’s what the Padres, and soon most of the rest of baseball (one assumes) are doing on purpose.
Objectively, it probably doesn’t mean a lot. Things have started going in a certain direction, and now they will continue to go in that direction. But that doesn’t mean the direction is good, or worthwhile. It’s just the way things are going. At least I can tell myself that it won’t last forever, because nothing does.