A change is going to come—again—to MLB uniforms, and this time it was all but inevitable. 

The MLB Players Association has informed its membership that a series of modifications will be made to the uniforms, no later than the start of the 2025 season, according to a memo originally obtained by ESPN. Changes will include a return to a larger letter on the backs of jerseys, fixing mismatched jerseys and pants on teams’ gray uniforms, and returning to the prior tailoring options for pants. 

“This has been entirely a Nike issue,” the union’s memo read in part. “At its core, what has happened here is that Nike was innovating something that didn’t need to be innovated.”

The abrupt about-face follows more than two months of turmoil that had dogged the league since the much-debated introduction of Nike’s Vapor Premier jerseys in spring training, as well as pants with fewer customization options for players. Since that initial rollout, problems have included the see-through nature of the pants, a pooling of sweat on some players’ uniforms during games, names that are more difficult to read, and pants that have more easily ripped after sliding on the base paths. 

“We cautioned Nike against various changes when they previewed them in 2022, particularly regarding pants. MLB had been, and has been, aware of our concerns as well. Unfortunately, until recently, Nike’s position has essentially boiled down to: ‘Nothing to see here. Players will need to adjust,’” the MLBPA wrote.

Over the past 10 weeks, MLB and Nike have repeatedly appealed for patience from both players and the public. But ultimately, the status quo was almost certainly not sustainable, in part as social media outcry continued both on the look and composition of the uniforms. 

“We recognize that, for players, this has taken too long, and was entirely avoidable,” the memo said. 

League sources tell Front Office Sports there is not yet a more precise timetable on the implementation of the uniform fixes, as the adjustments must be finalized and then produced at scale. While those steps are taken, several MLB teams are continuing a rollout of long-planned City Connect alternate uniforms, with the Rays becoming the latest to do so Monday. 

Bigger Issues

The placement of blame squarely on Nike for these problems is not surprising, as the company was the one that designed the new uniforms, with Fanatics essentially acting as a subcontractor in the production of the jerseys of pants. But the MLBPA also has a far larger business relationship with Fanatics. 

The union has a minority equity stake in Fanatics, as does the league, and the company was the MLBPA’s second-largest licensee in 2023, paying $44 million. 

The MLB uniform issue is just the latest hit for Nike, with the sports footwear and apparel giant also grappling with a $2 billion cost-cutting program that includes multiple rounds of layoffs, criticism about a separate set of uniforms of the U.S. Olympic team, and a broader malaise across the entire category. 

The Royals and Chiefs have been neighbors in Kansas City’s Truman Sports Complex for 51 years, and particularly close allies over those decades on a wide range of operational and scheduling fronts. But after a stinging political defeat earlier this month, the franchises are now pursuing separate paths for their respective facility futures. 

The two teams received a decisive rejection from Jackson County, Mo., voters in a collective bid to create a new ⅜-cent sales tax mechanism over 40 years to generate as much as $2 billion for a new Royals ballpark and renovations to the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium. After that vote nearly four weeks ago, a growing realization has emerged that both teams will probably now best be served by working on new stadium deals alone. 

“The Chiefs and Royals will be working on separate plans for funding their new stadiums,” said Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt in a weekend press conference. “I really think at this point it makes sense for both of us to work independently.”

In addition to the local kinship, the prior alliance between the Chiefs and Royals was predicated on drawing from the same public funding source. But with that financial option now off the table, both teams will now look at all alternatives, and likely across the entire Kansas City area. Even before Hunt’s most recent comments, Marny Sherman, the wife of Royals owner John Sherman, suggested both teams will be looking to leave Jackson County following the early 2031 completion of their current stadium leases.

Along similar lines, Hunt said he will be looking at a variety of facility possibilities, and, after the prior plan was based on renovating Arrowhead Stadium, he gave increased voice to pursuing a new facility.

“Arrowhead is a special place for our family and our fan base,” Hunt said. “Going forward, it may make more sense for us to be in a new stadium,” adding that the facility could either be open-air or domed. 

Despite this separation between the Royals and Chiefs in stadium development efforts, Hunt added “there’s nothing to preclude us from coming back and doing something together.” It is also essentially a given that neither team would want to compete with the other for the same pot of public money. But the likelihood of the two teams ending up in different counties—and perhaps even in different states if Kansas ultimately gets involved in this matter—is now much higher.  

“I do feel very much a sense of urgency, and we will approach it from a broader perspective going forward, because time is short at this point, and so we need to see what other options are out there for us,” Hunt said.