Power ranking all 30 MLB uniforms
Major League Baseball’s 30 different uniforms all have their strengths and weaknesses, but we’ll do our best to rank them all.
Grown men wearing pajamas — that’s how MLB players in their uniforms has been described with derision by some more skeptical sports fans around the country. To an extent, there’s some truth to that description of baseball players, especially in the early days of the sport when the players wore much baggier pants and jerseys. However, baseball is the oldest professional sport in the United States, with many of the original franchises still playing today. There is a lot of history wrapped up in the uniforms worn today.
Original teams like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs have made very few changes to their uniforms dating back to the early 1900s. Expansion teams like the Seattle Mariners, Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins, on the other hand, have played around with their uniform designs much more often over the course of their short histories.
Uniform design is big business for MLB teams, especially the hats, which are the most easily accessible professional sports fashion accessory for most fans. MLB teams often ride a fine line between trying to be too fashion forward and sticking a little too much to the past. The teams that strike the right balance will rank near the top of this list, while the “who-the-heck-came-up-with-that-design” teams reside near the bottom. Read on for our ranking of all 30 MLB team uniforms.
30. Arizona Diamondbacks
The Diamondbacks have always been…shall we say, aggressive (?) when it comes to their uniform design. As a team making its debut in the late 1990s, Arizona went all in on the popular color palettes of the day — the purples, teals, golds — and haven’t looked back. They won a World Series wearing their original threads, which also included the mostly abandoned vest concept with purple and teal as their primary numbers.
The Diamondbacks ditched those original uniforms in favor of a more subdued red and black color scheme in recent years and are still out there in a uniform that isn’t exactly easy on the eyes. Their primary home jersey is red and white with shoulder patterns meant to look like what I imagine were snake scales. Their road jerseys are grey and red with black shoulder scales. The Diamondbacks have tried to remain true to their roots with alternate jerseys that are heavy on the teal.
As hard as I’m sure the Diamondbacks tried to come up with a fresh, modern uniform, the end result looks something what they would have wound up with if they had asked a middle school fan to remix an Oregon Ducks jersey. There’s just too much going on with these jerseys for my liking. The originals were much better.