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.