“General concern”
It’s a problem: professional baseball players have strange problems
February 28, 2024, 5:11 p.m
The stars of Major League Baseball, the most important baseball league in the world, are preparing for the new season. And they are confronted with a strange problem: their work clothes are causing “general concern”.
It pinches and tweaks, it doesn’t look good either. Usually, the “Spring Training” of the 30 teams of Major League Baseball (MLB), which is held in the warm states of Arizona and Florida because it is still winter, deals with sporting questions such as: When does the 700th strike? -Million-man Shohei Ohtani hits his first home run? Is my team getting stronger? Who will get a mega contract at the last minute?
But because nothing stays the same, players and fans are increasingly concerned with a fashion component before the start of the season at the end of March. The league’s exclusive supplier has produced new “uniforms”, i.e. game clothing consisting of different tops and trousers – and is now being heavily criticized: the jerseys look more like inferior fan items, the trousers often don’t fit and are too thin .
“General concern”
For the sporting goods giant Nike, which has been providing the 30 clubs exclusively and with a cooperation partner since 2020 at a price of one billion US dollars for ten years, the matter is very unpleasant. There was already trouble with tradition-conscious fans in 2020 because the manufacturer’s company emblem was suddenly visible for the first time on the player jerseys and fan merchandise. And now the jerseys look more like quickly manufactured mass-produced goods.
What is particularly popular with all major media outlets is the players’ and supervisors’ criticism of the mostly long trousers: they can only choose from three standard models, each with five different waist sizes, obviously far too few. Some clubs have not yet received any delivery. The powerful players’ union MLBPA has also gotten involved. “The pants,” said her boss, Tony Clark, caused “general concern.”
In the past, the clubs received the equipment on time at the start of spring training, after which the players were able to have the pants individually adjusted. And now? The league management and the supplier rushed to announce that they had worked carefully and that any problems could be resolved quickly. For the time being, however, their plan has fallen through.