Pirates Wore Blue Uniforms When Facing Cubs, But The Two Teams Were Not Celebrating Father’s Day Early

If you watch baseball regularly, it’s probable that you caught or will catch one game this weekend. Perhaps you may notice something a bit different about your favorite team’s uniforms. This is especially true if you caught the Chicago Cubs taking on the Pittsburgh Pirates, both of whom wore throwback uniforms, on Friday night.

Each team in Major League Baseball wore blue uniforms on Saturday and will wear blue again Sunday in honor of Father’s Day and to raise awareness and garner support for prostate cancer.

This is just the second year that MLB has used the blue uniforms, however, they’ve been wearing pink uniforms and using pink equipment to celebrate Mother’s Day and raise money to support breast cancer awareness since 2006.

It’s fun, it’s different and both are for good causes. However, if you watched the Cubs and the Pirates play on Friday they were definitely wearing uniforms that differed from the norm, and they were not celebrating Father’s Day earlier than the rest of the league.

The Cubs and the Pirates who met Friday night at PNC Park wore throwback uniforms to honor Negro League era players.

The Pirates wore the uniforms of the Homestead Grays who were formed in 1912, according to Chris Creamer of sportslogos.com. After eventually moving to Pittsburgh in 1929, they shared Forbes Field with the Pittsburgh Pirates and would occasionally play stints at the then-Washington Senator’s Griffith Stadium.

The Grays uniforms have been worn more in the present day than any other Negro League team. Both the Pirates and the Washington Nationals have worn them in tribute to those players for a total of 16 times.

Friday night, the Cubs were transformed into the Leyland Giants, a team formed and named after their owner-manager Frank Leyland, when two Chicago clubs combined forces back in 1901.

The two clubs later decided to go their separate ways, with one calling themselves the Chicago Giants and the other remaining the Leyland Giants even though their owner-manager remained with the former team.

The Pirates and the Cubs wearing these throwback Negro League uniforms are definitely different from what you will see all MLB clubs wearing this Father’s Day weekend, but it’s a great idea to honor those players by wearing the throwback uniforms, and it gives baseball fans everywhere a new history lesson about their favorite sport.

[Featured Image by Justin Berl/Getty Images]