The NL and AL All-Stars will go back to wearing their main team's uniforms in the Midsummer Classic next season, MLB announced Monday. Furthermore, the Nike-templated uniforms introduced at the start of this year are getting revised ahead of 2025 after a very unpopular rollout among both players and fans.
In 2021, when the MLB All-Star Game returned from a pandemic-forced hiatus, it did so with specially designed National League and American League uniforms for the players to wear on-field, rather than the original look of filling with the diamond with the home and road jerseys of various clubs.
It was a polarizing change, and the consensus on most of the All-Star designs was that they were hit or miss, all while coming at the cost of sacrificing one of the more unique displays in sports. So the call to go back to having club-specific uniforms next July and onward will certainly be a welcome one – just imagine what the sight would've been had Alec Bohm, Trea Turner, and Bryce Harper all filled the infield for the NL in their Phillies uniforms back in July instead of...whatever these were...
As for the changes to the Nike uniforms: bigger lettering for the names on the back, a return to the old materials last used on the Majestic-templated jerseys and pants in 2023, and customization for the pants are all on the way after talks with Nike, Fanatics (which handles the uniforms' manufacturing at the old Majestic factory in Easton), and the MLB Players Association, MLB said in a press release.
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Nike, MLB's apparel provider, introduced their Vapor Premier jersey template for all 30 teams back in spring training, but almost immediately, players and fans took issue.
Among the problems called out: The letters and numbers were noticeably smaller, chain-stitching on the front crests (a long-time staple of the Phillies' and Cardinals' jerseys) was done away with for directly sewn-on patches, the road gray coloring between the pants and the jerseys mismatched for a lot of teams, and the material itself was thinner, which made the uniforms look transparent and in the middle of the summer, very easy to sweat through.
Fans weren't happy with the changes, especially now that they were being asked to shell out $175 for a replica and $430 for an authentic that was generally viewed as a worse product, and players vocally weren't happy having to wear them.
The Players Association got involved right away, and changes were promised to be on the way soon after.
They are now, but it'll take some time, MLB said.
"Although production timelines will prevent all the uniform changes from being completed in time for the 2025 season," the release read. "The road grey uniforms made from the 2023 fabric will be ready by Spring Training, and starting in 2026, all uniforms will return to using the previous materials from the 2023 season."
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