March 13, 2024
Nathan Ray Seebeck/USA TODAY Sports
Bryce Harper already has cleat designs for the Phillies'incoming City Connect uniforms.
It's been an eventful – to put it lightly – spring for MLB uniforms, and it won't be much longer now until one of its worst-kept secrets finally gets its official unveiling.
The Phillies' long-rumored and anticipated City Connect uniforms are set to make their debut in April, per MLB.com's Todd Zolecki (with a hat tip to Phillies Nation for also confirming), which the longtime scribe's newsletter revealed while detailing star first baseman Bryce Harper's cleat design plans for the upcoming season.
Harper already designed his cleats for the Phillies’ new City Connect uniforms, which will debut in April. He has special cleats for the London Series in June. He has Wawa-inspired cleats and he has Phanatic cleats for Opening Day, which has become a tradition. [MLB.com]Surely, those Wawa cleats will go over tremendously well across the Delaware Valley, but back to the City Connects...
Word that the Phillies were set to get their version of those special edition uniforms went back to last season, and they cleared the deck for it ahead of this upcoming one when they retired the red "Getaway Day" jersey to comply with the "4+1" rule mandated by MLB's uniform provider in Nike.
So for 2024, the Phillies will carry their pinstriped white homes, their gray roads, their daytime cream alternates, their throwback powder blues, and the yet to be revealed City Connects as their uniform rotation – which is also why the Phils are wearing their home whites and road grays down at Spring Training right now.
As for what the City Connects are supposedly going to look like, photos of them surfaced from an eBay listing posted in late January that matched the description Uni Watch's Paul Lukas had of them. They're going to be yellow and blue to match the color scheme of the Philadelphia city flag.
The jersey in the leaked photos also contained the signature features of the new Nike-designed and Fanatics-manufactured MLB uniform template, which adds to its legitimacy.
That template, however, hasn't gone over well among fans and players alike since its full rollout with pitchers and catchers reporting last month.
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