Major League Baseball, Nike and Fanatics Have a Problem: An Honest Review of the New 2024 Nike Vapor Limited Baseball Jerseys
Look good. Feel good. Play good. We’ve all heard these words before. Something all big league ballplayers have spoken into existence at some point during their careers. Same thing can be said for fans, well, two thirds of the quote at the least. It’s fun to go to a ballgame and show off a cool new jersey, or a rare, obscure jersey that has not been seen in quite some time. It’s one of my favorite things about going to the ballpark. You never know what you are going to see.
2024 has brought us new uniform templates, thanks to the fine folks over at MLB/Nike/Fanatics, and the reviews up to this point have been very mixed. A lot more negative than positive to say the very least. I was able to visit the Mariners Team Store, located at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, two weeks ago because I was excited for the season to start, and I wanted to check out the new Spring Training hats for this season made by New Era. What ultimately ended up happening was checking out said hats and spotting this year’s new replica jersey offerings up on the racks being displayed for sale. I decided to share my thoughts on the new 2024 Nike Vapor Limited Baseball Jerseys with Twitter. What happened next, was truly something I never expected to happen. My honest and critical thoughts of the new jerseys went viral. Don’t ask why or how it happened because I don’t know the answer to either of those questions. It just happened. I will attempt to share my original thoughts as they were posted initially to Facebook and then to Twitter/X below and share some additional thoughts and things to consider as well.
“You can’t start a fire. You can’t start a fire without a spark.”
- Bruce Springsteen
“Last year vs this year’s replica jersey offerings from the fine folks at MLB, Nike and Fanatics. Last year’s being on the left and this year’s on the right.
I have a lot to say, so bear with me here.
Let’s just rip the band aid off right away with this year’s new jersey offerings. These are absolute trash. Pure garbage. I fully admit to being a jersey snob, but when these things reach the point where we are now, it is completely acceptable to expect more.
I am not particularly fond of the last few years of replica jerseys produced by MLB/Nike/Fanatics. They cut corners and increased prices, citing demand and inflation as causes for the incremental price hikes. The materials for the actual jerseys are not bad, but not great either. Just ok, and that’s fine on a replica jersey. They eliminated the majority of stitching on the jerseys, instead settling for a heat press approach, resulting in a visually, less appealing appearance and shortened life expectancy for the jersey. No longer was the front plackets and names & numbers, multi-layer, raised lettering and numbering. They instead opted for a multi-color, single layer heat pressed on to the jersey.
In what appears to be a race to see how bad things can get and how high can we jump prices, this year simply says, hold my beer. This year, the materials used for the jerseys are made of a lighter material. Authentics (jerseys the players wear) saw the new material used on last year’s All Star Game jerseys, and it’s not the same as the replicas. Simply put on the replicas, it’s cheap, and a completely unnecessary change. You can see the changes when comparing side by side, the MLB logo has been moved to lower down below the neckline piping. Spacing is horrible. Cramming in a lot into a small space, while having tons of room to work isn’t a good look. The multi color lettering and numbering is less defined, and not visually crisp. Heat pressing, has been replaced by almost sublimated fabric. It’s cheap. It’s lazy. Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing. I would feel uncomfortable wearing one out in public, but that’s just me.
The thing I can compare this most to is everyone’s favorite, cheap alternative to a jersey at the team store. The world renowned team shirsey. For those wondering, a shirsey is a tee shirt sold in stores with the screen printed, same team word mark on the front and player name and number on the back. Similar to the jersey, just on a shirt, and at a fraction of the price.
So essentially, this year, Nike/Fanatics/MLB expect you to purchase one of these new jerseys and enjoy it. They have basically sold you a shirsey with buttons for the fantastic price of $175 before tax at the Mariners Team Store. Versatility at its finest. Look like a little leaguer while you pay big league prices.
It’s disgusting. It’s wrong, and simply in my opinion, I am not ok with it.
I hate seeing people get taken advantage of on things such as these, and I fully understand people make their own decisions with how they spend their hard-earned money, and that’s fine. But when you consider what the options are, the lack of choices, and the price points things have reached, they are absolutely taking advantage of people.
Thankfully, there is still time and alternatives to these. Most team stores are trying to liquidate inventory to make more room for these abominations, so you have a pretty good chance of purchasing last years at a 40–50% discount. I would suggest calling team stores and seeing if you can place an order over the phone if you do not live close by a team shop. Another alternative, and this is by far my favorite way to go, wait until the end of the season, or you could even score now, but buy a team issued authentic from the previous year, and get it customized by a professional jersey shop. You can lots of times grab these jerseys for under $200 and get the quality the players have with their jerseys.
Hopefully this was an enjoyable read for some. Enjoy your weekend.”
I posted this to Twitter/X on Saturday evening, and it sat there for almost two days without any sort of interaction with other users outside of views, and then Monday late evening, it started to take off towards what it is now and what has transpired in the last week. It had one million views before the end of Tuesday, February 13th. My tweet was featured on Yahoo! Sports, USA Today, Sporting News, various Mariners fan sites, and endless amounts of YouTube videos. The most recent, and probably coolest to this point happened on the 20th with The Today Show doing a story which featured my tweet as well as a few others who shared thoughts throughout the last week.
New MLB jerseys get mixed reviews ahead of baseball season (today.com)
To further expand on the thoughts from my initial post, these jerseys are supposed to be, in Nike’s words, “inspired by the on-field jersey”. Unfortunately, we have since had the opportunity to view this year’s on-field jersey in photos from Spring Training, and yes there is a resemblance to the on-field jerseys. They both give you the type of knee jerk reaction that makes you wonder what the heck happened?
To clarify some thoughts from above. The new replica jerseys are still heat pressed, but it is a thin single layer that makes it almost feel as though it was part of the fabric used to construct the jersey. The colors are dulled and lack definitive breaks in the colors that would allow for a crisper, more visually pleasant presentation. Previous years, while the name and number on the back were heat pressed, it still presented a faux stitch look to the border, which helped with the presentation, but is no longer present on this year’s new jersey offering. The team logo on the sleeve patch is no longer embroidered, and also a single layer heat pressed logo that contains no detailed stitching. Many people have said these jerseys look like jerseys you would receive as a stadium giveaway when you attend a game in person. This comparison is spot on, and not one that I can deny. Nike also announced an even lower tier jersey, the Vapor Premier Game Jersey, which is an even further take down of the current jerseys we have seen and will be sold in stores at some point during this upcoming season. It will feature screen printed names and numbers on the backs of the jerseys. I, for one, can’t hardly wait. Want to make a trainwreck even better? Fireworks and explosives in the form of a third jersey of even lesser quality. Hard to look away at this point. Ultimately, I fear these replica jerseys will end up in the never ending landfill of shirseys from yesteryear at some point in the foreseeable future, which is where they belong in my opinion.
One of the many opinions shared during this last week was the thought of spending money on jerseys manufactured overseas by a particular website, which shall remain nameless here, and ordering from their endless catalog of inauthentic, fake, replica jerseys. While I will not tell someone else how to be a fan, I certainly will not endorse going this route to obtain jerseys. Most people said they had ordered previously, with some saying they were very satisfied with their purchases, but also known is there are just as many horror stories out there from people who have ordered off these fake jersey websites. If I am going to be purchasing a jersey, I want the real deal. I would not feel comfortable wearing a fake, non-authentic jersey. That’s just me though, and I try to stay as true to the most authentic version of myself as possible.
This was never supposed to be about me. I wanted to bring light to this issue to hold those responsible, accountable. People deserve better. Fans deserve better. To MLB/Nike/Fanatics, you are responsible for providing quality products to millions of people. These jerseys have severely missed the mark. They don’t pass the eye test, and to have these jerseys be the quality they are currently presented as at a $175 price point is simply not ok.
One person’s reality is not going to be the same as another person’s reality. Not everyone can afford a $175 jersey. With the continuous rising costs involved with attending games, it is already difficult enough for people, and or families to attend games in person and get affordable, nice seats that do not exist in the upper levels of the ballpark. There is no need to add to the stress of attempting to go to games and stay within a budget. It is a lot to ask people to fork over another $175 for a jersey after likely spending a couple hundred just to get inside the entry gates to be at the game in person. Growing up in Oklahoma, we had to plan vacations around MLB games in order to attend them in person. Often, going to the games was all my family could afford, and this was before jerseys became what they are now. I can’t imagine being put in that position now, and thankfully I don’t have to, but so many more people are likely having to deal with this predicament now. Again, my reality isn’t going to be the same reality as someone else’s, and I understand that completely.
In this day and age where marketing your product is so vital and important to not just the product on the field now, but for also growing the game, your fans are your biggest marketing tool. The fans have always been free additional marketing for sports leagues, if you are successful in putting the product into the right hands of people who care enough to purchase the product in the first place. Why would you not want them to enjoy a quality product? As fans, we simply want you to do better. Better quality products at a price point where everyone can enjoy. It’s not too much to ask.
If you have made it this far or took the time to read any of what I have written, simply thank you. I appreciate all the support and hope to continue to provide great content for all to read. I can be found on other platforms as well if you wish to follow along for more content. Follow me on Twitter/X at TheBobbyMullins and on Instagram using thebobbymullins. Thank you so much for reading!
