Categories: Phillies News And Rumors

MLB apparently called the Phillies over Bryce Harper’s Opening Day cleats in 2019

Bryce Harper’s Phanatic cleats in his first game as a Phillie initially drew ire from MLB. (Photo by Andy Lewis/Icon Sportswire)

It seems like whenever a big-league player decides to get creative with his uniform accessories, MLB is there to step in and kill the fun.

That happened — almost — to Bryce Harper with the ink barely dry on his 13-year Phillies contract. You probably remember the image, six seasons later: Harper on Opening Day in 2019, on his feet a pair of neon green beauties decorated like the Phillie Phanatic.

Phillies Director of Clubhouse Services Phil Sheridan shared on Wednesday’s edition of Phillies Backstage with [Phanatic’s “best friend” Tom] Burgoyne and [Director of Fun and Games John] Brazer that the league didn’t like them quite as much as Phillies fans did.

Harper had sent Sheridan to receive the cleats from a representative at Under Armour, who predicted that the league wouldn’t be happy with them. Sheridan, though, said he knew that the Phanatic green was actually one of the Phillies’ official team colors, so he didn’t anticipate any blowback.

“Third inning, I’m in my office doing something, I get a call from MLB, the league office: ‘You gotta go out and get those shoes off Harper,’” Sheridan remembered. “I’m like, ‘There’s no way.’”

Sheridan said he told the league he was confident the shoes were permitted. MLB called him back in the seventh inning, backtracking and agreeing.

“At the end of the day,” Sheridan said of his train of thought, “I’m not gonna get ‘em either way.”

It’s amusing to imagine such a scene: Harper heads into the dugout after a 1-2-3 third inning by Aaron Nola, and by the time he’s jogging back out to right field for the fourth, the bodacious neon green, eyeballed footwear that had already gone viral on social media has been replaced by milquetoast red and white gear. Or, even more amusing, that third inning is delayed by Sheridan jogging out from the first base dugout, carrying alternative shoes for a sold out Citizens Bank Park to watch their new slugger swap his shoes in the right field grass.

Only in MLB could such a scene exist (and not because innings and right fields only exist in baseball). Credit to the league for realizing its fault and retracting its demand four innings later, but the fact that it levied it in the first place is quintessential Major League Baseball.

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