Nike made a presentation to Major League Baseball owners prior to officially taking over as the league’s uniform provider in 2020 about trying to create a spinoff of their successful NBA “City Edition” and NFL “Color Rush” programs. The pitch was that the new alternate uniforms would help MLB to attract a younger audience, something the league has been hell-bent on trying to do over the last half decade.
Managing partner John Middleton was on board with the program immediately, Howard Smith — vice president of business affairs for the Philadelphia Phillies — recalled.
“They made a big presentation to ownership, totally approved, it was great,” Smith told Phillies Nation. “John Middleton comes back to us after an owners meeting that just was presented and he said ‘We’re gonna do this. It’s about getting younger and bringing in new fans to baseball.’ And we were all in at the time.”
Developing and launching the uniforms was hardly an overnight process. Four years after the original presentation to MLB and three seasons after clubs began releasing their respective alternate looks, the Phillies became the 21st MLB team to unveil City Connect uniforms Friday morning at Citizens Bank Park.
The gradient uniforms are based off of the yellow and blue flag that represents the city of Philadelphia.
“The inspiration ultimately came down to connecting to the city through the lens of the city flag,” Smith said. “It’s the oldest city flag in the United States. It’s the only one that’s never changed. So, we are a city rich in history. We thought that was a great place to focus.
“Obviously, Nike did a really cool job of putting together, with the gradation, little sort of creative license on the colors to make it even more cool.”
Three of the other four Phillies jerseys — the home pinstripes, road grays and alternate creams — have “Phillies” written across the chest. The powder blue alternates have the old-school “P” on the left side of the chest. By now, those four uniforms are all classic in their own way, threads that have been worn for some of the most iconic moments in franchise history.
That makes the gothic “Philly” written across the chest of the City Connect uniforms something new. The goal in the script was was to take the history of both the city of Philadelphia and a franchise that began play in 1883 and give it some modern flair.
“So the process, it was very structured,” Smith recalled. “This whole process was three years. We would meet with Nike once a month. There would be an hour meeting. We’d have objectives in that meeting, then we’d get home work. And when we’d meet next, we’d have to give in our home work, and through that process, they came up with a lot of different things.
“But the font in particular, it’s a cross between something very historical, like constitutional, to very edgy,” Smith continued. “And they custom designed it for us. You look inside the font, you’ll see Liberty Bell cracks just repeating. There’s a lot of little easter eggs like that, so they did a phenomenal job.”
Finally, the cap features the Liberty Bell outline with the skyline inside it, sandwiched in between the two stars that normally serve as the dots on top of the i’s on the front of the three jerseys that read “Phillies”.
“They had a lot of different designs. We wanted to bring out the bell and the skyline, that’s one of the hero images of the program,” Smith said. “I think they did a great job doing that. And we wanted to keep the stars from the uniform. And it was a natural.”
The Phillies will debut their City Connect uniforms on Friday, April 12 against the Pittsburgh Pirates. They will wear the City Connects for all 12 Friday home games this season.
Other City Connect Items Of Note
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