Memorial Day: MLB Players Will All Wear Camo-Themed Uniforms [Rumor]
Memorial Day means that the 30 MLB teams will be wearing special camo caps to honor fallen United States service members. If you haven’t seen the baseball caps in question, which include a complete camouflage pattern this year, check out the tweet I’ve posted below for a photo.
According to USA Today‘s Nick Schwartz, the new camo hats are widely regarded as ugly. But in case that isn’t bad enough, a new rumor is flying around suggesting that players will be appearing in controversial camouflage-themed uniforms as well.
Paul Lukas of Uni-Watch, a site that obsessively follows sports team fashion, said that a reader tipped him to an interesting fact about the MLB team’s online shops. The stores are listing authentic camo jerseys with this fine print tagline: “As worn on-field Memorial Day May 27th, 2013.”
He’s right. The tags do say that, even though at the time of writing, the plans for MLB players to wear the special uniforms on Memorial Day haven’t been officially announced. By the way, they’re not full camo — but instead have touches like a camo pattern within the outline of the player’s number.
Lukas himself isn’t impressed, and he makes a strong statement about the rumored uniforms:
“Memorial Day is not a day for celebrating the military. It’s a day for honoring the military dead. A more appropriate gesture would be an MLB-wide black armband. An even better gesture would be a pregame moment of silence, without anything on the uniform.”
To Lukas, the new jerseys aren’t really honoring the fallen. They’re just another marketing opportunity for MLB shops.
David Brown for Yahoo Sports agreed:
“[M]y grandfather probably would agree [with Lukas]. He was among the Allied troops to risk life and limb on D-Day. He also knew the difference between Memorial Day and, say, Veterans Day. Grampa…didn’t even like people to applaud the playing of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ because it was not to be viewed as a performance, like some kind of top 40 hit…”
All @mlb teams to wear camo cap on Memorial Day; what do you think of the lids? buff.ly/YhFL0Z #sot #veterans twitter.com/PetsforPatriot…
— Pets for Patriots (@PetsforPatriots) March 29, 2013
Assuming the rumors are true, what’s your take? Are the new camouflage uniforms more crass creeping commercialism for Major League Baseball? Or are they a cool way for the MLB to acknowledge the fallen on Memorial Day?
[camouflage photo by Aaron Amat via Shutterstock]
