Cheese Louise, I need some Unnamed Donuts Chain (by the way I think they want to be friends). I’m still hung up on the great fantastic super awesome Uni Watch on ESPN about how the black Mets uniforms came to be (and here was my initial reaction.)
Today let’s look at this..
Marketing wanted black. Remember, this was when the black trend was just starting to gain momentum. Lots of hockey teams were wearing it, all sorts of teams. And one thing the Mets were convinced about was that the Yankees were killing them at retail, especially with the hats, because people didn’t like royal blue. So they wanted a darker color, a black element. I know they paid a couple of designers to mess around with it, but nothing worked out.
Holy cow that’s stupid.
Here’s what happened in case the Mets weren’t paying attention. The 1996 Mets went 71-91. The Yankees, let me look this up…oh yeah they won the World Series. Some of the players on the 1996 Yankees were named Strawberry, Gooden and Cone. Who would have thought that people would buy Yankees gear?
In 1997 the Yankees went to the playoffs and the Mets finished 3rd.
In 1998 the Mets nearly made the playoffs. Surprisingly Mets stuff sold. Oh and it happened to be black.
Grrrrrrrr.
Winning solves everything. Win the World Series and you can wear pink and you will sell merch and draw 3.5 million in this town. You’ll have the backpage, your regional cable network will do well, Mike Francesca will suddenly like your team, and nobody will make fun of you.
Win.
Win and dress nicely.
You’re 110% right about winning being the catalyst for merchandise sales, ticket sales and any other way for a club to make money. Somehow this gets lost on the Mets. Its funny how the marketing guys said “people don’t like royal blue.” the beloved dodgers wear royal blue hats and it’s one of the top selling hats in baseball. Sometimes I think the Mets try to infuriate us.
ok great … even if this nonsense they’re claiming is true (and it’s not!), that was 1996. People don’t dress like they do in a Seinfeld episode anymore, so let’s move past what supposedly “in” then.
I remember the Jets added some black in the 90’s and they were smart enough to ditch it by the end of the century.
My tolerance for all this black I’m seeing running low. I really don’t care if Terry Collins likes it. He’s only been here a short time.
Maybe in the 50th Anniversary year they go back to classic Mets uniforms with NO black anywhere? Or maybe they can show the world that they have moved on from the dark days of Charlie “the problem” Samuels and throw all black out the window?
It’s time.
Yeah that ranks high on the I don’t have a frekin clue list. I wonder if they researched back to see if royal blue was so disliked in the mid 80’s? F&*%in idiots!