Dan is out to upset me. He sent me this 1998 article from the NY Times. Meet the new public enemy #1
‘We want to be relevant,” said Mark Bingham, the team’s vice president for marketing and broadcasting. ”We want people to walk down the street with a Mets cap on, and felt that the black-based hat was a great look. We hear that it’s moving, that people are asking about it.”
Mr. Bingham is current an SVP at Completely Unnecessary Stadium in case you are wondering.
The article discusses how the Yankees were outselling the Mets 12-1 for reasons including tourists, these kids today, but curiously not the whole 1996 World Series thing.
Wear your blue Mets cap with pride Mets fans.
Perhaps some day in the future someone will figure out how to sell and market variant off-field merchandise- I will call them Fashion Caps….what do you guys think?
Been around for 1/3 of the franchise history now. Black is now tradition.
Also, whatever the excuse the Front Office of the Mets spouts forth, the addition of black to the Mets color scheme was altogether fitting (if not belated) in that it finally fully incorporates Giants & Dodgers (okay, without Dodgers red uni numbers)colors. Should have been done in ’62, but better late than never.
Who cares about taking colors from both teams. We shouldn’t be a shrine to both NL teams of the past, we are the NY METS. We already have a replica of Ebbets Field thanks to Fred ‘Dodger Lover’ Wilpon. Blue, Orange and White are the official Mets colors, one color from each former NY team, but guess what those colors also are that I don’t think people ever realize…THE COLORS OF THE NEW YORK CITY FLAG. What better way to represent NY with the colors of the city!
So is missing the playoffs, and everybody’s long past ready for that to change.
Just because some people hang on to a fad longer than others doesn’t make it any less a fad, retroactive rationalizations aside.
I personally think the black Mets outfits are like Spiderman’s black costume, and that they’re trying to eat the team alive. Kill them now while we still can.
It’s shocking that at the beginning of 98 that the Yankees caps were outselling the Mets 12 -1. Definitely must have been the color. The Yankees chose a winner in the 20’s when they moved to that cap. Oh wait, maybe it was the winning that did it. People buy into a winner.
Moving to black was a cheap parlor trick.
Yet, wearing those same black caps (and adding black jerseys), the Mets went to the 1999 NLCS and the 2000 World Series. Bet sales were up then!
The most pertinent quote in that article is, “Black is hot now.” Well, that was 13 years ago. The vast majority of MLB got over it. It’s time the Mets did, too.
Unless it’s butt-ugly, ANYTHING new is going to be hot. How many teams have gone to retro looks or retro alternate looks and had merchandise fly off the shelves?
There so many other ways to deal with the supposed “royal blue and orange don’t go with anything” problem than screwing up your whole uniform set. The easiest, of course, is to sell it without actually putting your team in it. Another would be to tone down the blue to what it was in the 60s. Another would be to introduce a more muted road cap (I’m told there’s more about that coming to MP soon). Yet another option–one that even lets you keep black around–would be to just have a black alternate uniform set and leave everything else the hell alone.
Alternatively, how about keeping black but only for road uniforms and caps. Perhaps ditch the blue-billed black cap with an all black, but change the NY Logo to orange NY surrounded by Dodger blue. Blue caps, sleeves & stirrups at home (black dropshadow stays though); black cap, sleeves & stirrups on the road.
Nah, the sleeves, belts, and socks were when the whole thing jumped the shark. It was at that point black went from a alternate 3rd color to “let’s wear more of it than of our actual primary color.”
The original black Sunday jersey paired with the two-tone cap was a nice change of pace, and I never had a problem with it. But rolling out the black sleeves & socks, ANOTHER black cap, and the dropshadows was off the deep end. Honestly, if the team would just put things back to where they were at the *start* of 1998, I’d be OK with that.
Understand, the only reason they slapped the dropshadows on there is so they could half-arsedly tie the black caps to the snow whites and pins (if you recall, the pins actually remained dropshadowless a season longer than the snow whites). The thing is, 1) they shouldn’t be wearing the hybrid cap at home–EVER–in the first place, and 2) that cap works just as well with blue sleeves anyhow.
Look at the Cardinals. They have a dark-colored road cap, but they still wear their same red sleeves and socks with it, and it looks great.
This should be the road cap:
http://www.ecapcity.com/new-york-mets-blu-blk-orng-new-era-hats.html
Too difficult to see the NY logo with the blue-on-blue.
I really hate any black on the uniforms. A third of it’s history doesn’t mean anything to me. The black looks awful and nothing says Mets like stunning blue, orange, and white (or grey) …. Drop all black .. Including the black shadow.
Well, this is just a grim reminder of how the ownership of this franchise has now and forever missed the point. Clearly they were being outsold due to success and not color. Someone should ask this clueless boob if they were having trouble selling Mets gear in the 80’s. I would find it hard to believe they were. So instead I have been forced to watch my team wear this abomination for over a decade of which I die a little inside everytime they do.