The Yankees' alternate jersey dilemma is a fork in the road for a storied franchise

For a franchise that takes itself and its own mythos more seriously than just about anyone else in sports, the New York Yankees sure have been leaning into change in recent years — from the move to a new ballpark in 2009 to finally, at long last easing the rules against facial hair last season. But even by those standards, news that several Yankees players are lobbying for alternate road uniforms feels like a paradigm shift.

According to a report from The Athletic, players have recently suggested the team wear its navy batting practice jerseys for certain road games, a radical departure for the only franchise in baseball with only two uniforms: white with pinstripes at home, gray with blue lettering on the road. Heck, the Yankees are the only team that still doesn't put names on the backs of its uniforms.

Whether you think the Yankees are a musty organization long overdue for some fresh air or that merely floating this idea is akin to heresy, I'm not here to tell you how to feel. Really, as a fan of the team myself — one who spent years begging them to take themselves just a bit less seriously, and who thought the facial-hair change was long overdue — I can see both sides. And that's sort of the thing: Once you open the door to modernization, it's hard to close it again; eventually, you're going to need to decide exactly where you want to draw the line, and that's much easier said than done.

Even amid an era of change, Yankees uniforms feel like sacred ground

This is a bit different than the discussion around hair length and facial hair. It was always patently ridiculous for a Major League team to try and tell a group of grown adults how they had to present themselves, and it's not like that policy was handed down from Babe Ruth himself — it was the brainchild of George Steinbrenner in the 1970s. Letting players grow beards again felt more like simply seeing reason and embracing the times.

But while it's true that the Yankees have tweaked their uniforms a bit over the years, this one feels like it touches something much closer to home. No, the players aren't trying to ditch the pinstripes or anything, but at the risk of indulging in the sort of self-mythologizing that typically makes me question why I root for this team at all, I can't help but feel like there is something special about the fact that, by and large, New York has looked more or less the same way on the field for over a century now.

Which is why I instinctively twinged a little bit when I first heard the news that players wanted a change. I've been watching the Yankees play in these uniforms for all of my 35 years on Earth, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have something invested in it at this point, as silly as that may be. Again, there is nothing innately unique about this baseball team among all others, but it is special to me, and part of that is tied up in the fact that they stand alone in the way they present themselves.

And yet, I also know that my own feelings — or the feelings of any fan, really — aren't the end of the conversation here. After all, we're not the ones who have to actually wear these things on the field, and generally I think it's good policy to orient yourself toward what makes players (or any employee) feel comfortable and confident. If a majority of the clubhouse is telling you that this feels stale, who am I to disagree?

That's what it feels like we're really talking about here. Who, in fact, owns the Yankees: Is it the fans, or the Steinbrenner family, or the players themselves? Is there any truth to the idea that this isn't just any other franchise, that it should stand alone in some way? It was easy enough to score some wins when we were simply allowing adults to groom themselves, but the conversation around alternate uniforms is thornier, because it requires everyone to figure out just how much sway a given group of players should have. And that conversation is made a lot harder by the fact that this organization and its leadership have forfeited the high ground in this regard for over a decade now.

Yankees can't appeal to tradition after years of corporatizing the franchise

One quote in the aftermath of Wednesday's news felt very telling, and it came from the most important Yankee of all.

"I'm all about tradition, but we've got a [sponsorship] patch on our sleeves," Aaron Judge told Bryan Hoch of MLB.com. "I think we'll always wear the pinstripes at home. I don't think that'll change. We've changed our road jersey other years. So I guess if we wear the blues, we'll wear the blues on the road."

Judge's point here is well-taken: It's hard to wring your hands too much about changes to a sacred uniform when the team itself was just find slapping an advertisement on that same uniform in the name of making a buck. And that's hardly the only way in which the Yankees under Hal Steinbrenner and Randy Levine's guidance have shown they don't actually care all that much about tradition: The new stadium feels downright antiseptic compared to its predecessor, and the Legends seats closest to home plate are consistently half-empty, creating a much more sanitized (and much less fun) home-field environment.

There has been one priority since Hal took control of the team in the wake of his father's death, and that's maximizing revenue. So really, why should Judge or any Yankees player look at that and think that anything really matters all that much? Why shouldn't they be allowed to be as adventurous with their fashion choices as every other team in the league?

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