If you’re out to find problems with the Pittsburgh Pirates, you will not have to look far, and you will not have to look long. Their issues are vast, and they are varied.
Those issues also do not extend to the uniform set. That’s our topic of discussion today — and this week — at The Athletic. In short, the Pirates’ current look rules. Throughout their history, that’s been the case more often than not. But when the look stinks, it stinks. It stanks. It … stornks.
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Let’s take a walk through the highs and lows, shall we? These are the five biggest wins and five biggest losses in the franchise’s modern aesthetic history. You may have forgotten some of them; you should not have.
First, the ground rules: We’re only considering changes made post-World War II. It’s tough to formulate opinions from daguerrotypes and newsreel footage. And we aren’t considering one-off jerseys (Fourth of July, Mother’s Day, etc.), only looks that were out there on a regular basis.
Also, this is supposed to be fun. Also, it’s one man’s opinion, and that man might be stupid. We talked about this in the Penguins’ uniform rankings Tuesday; some principles of design are immutable, but you can’t quantify everything. Nostalgia and taste (or lack thereof) are real. No point in denying that.
Away we go. See you in the comments.
The wins
1957: Hello, vests
The Pirates were on the bleeding edge here, and it wouldn’t be the last time. The Cubs were the first team to wear a vest, which they did for three seasons starting in 1940. Then, the concept was mothballed across baseball until the Reds re-adopted it in 1956. A year later, it was the Pirates — who, by the way, were only nine years removed from wearing blue and red.
A handful of other teams followed suit over the next few years, but by 1972 the pendulum had swung all the way back. Everyone had sleeves. In the meantime, just one had won a World Series: the 1960 Pirates. Imagine Bill Mazeroski, windmilling his way home in white sleeves. You can’t. You shouldn’t.
Groundbreaking. Functional. Differentiating. And, thanks to Mazeroski, an iconic look. Got itself onto a statue and everything.
(Photo by Bruce Bennett Studios via Getty Images Studio / Getty Images)1978: Stargell stars
You probably know the story; Willie Stargell — slugger, leader and great Pittsburgher that he was — started passing out iron-on stars to teammates for standout stuff. It started too late to save the 1978 season but was solely responsible for the Pirates’ 1979 World Series win. It turned into a capital-T Thing, crossing over into All-Star Games and other sports. They went away, appropriately, when Stargell retired in 1982, then made a brief comeback during the Pirates’ 2013 postseason run courtesy of bench coach Jeff Banister.
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All of this is a matter of taste. There is no wrong, and there is no right. Objective truths are nigh impossible to find, in sports uniforms and in life … unless we’re talking about Stargell Stars. They are good and pure, and if you dislike them, fill your boots.
Also, it’s a lot of fun to imagine Dave Parker ironing itty-bitty stars onto a pillbox hat in, like, a Cincinnati hotel room.
Kent Tekulve's cap. The thin man earned some serious Stargell Stars, baby. pic.twitter.com/brRFxJpVVv
— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) April 16, 2016
Dave Parker was such a badass that if he told you how he got half those Stargell Stars he'd have to kill you. pic.twitter.com/xLj3LiMcr1
— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) December 28, 2016
1997: Red hats
“Black for black’s sake” is a term coined by the great Paul Lukas at Uni Watch, shorthand for the many instance’s in which a team without black as an official color nonetheless adds it to a uniform set. A bit of that principle was at play here with red; drips had been used in logos since the team went black and gold full time in 1948, and there was more in the redesigned buccaneer, but in the moment, people were a little confused.
We talked about it earlier this week regarding the Penguins, though; that’s why you have alternate jerseys. The red bills combined with predominately black jerseys made for a good change-up and managed not to go overboard. Linking up with the almost-iconic “Freak Show” team in 1997 didn’t hurt, either. When you think of Kevin Polcovich and Francisco Cordova and Warren Morris, this is what they should be wearing.
(And yes, it was possible to have too much red. Hoo boy, was it ever.)
Day 108/365
A modern classic, the 1997-2000 Pittsburgh #Pirates Alternate hat. ⚾💀
Otherwise known as the "Flyin'" Brian Giles hat. pic.twitter.com/x7xkgNT1r7
— HAT CLUB (@HatClub) April 19, 2017
2009: Hello, sleeves
In 2002, as the Pirates moved into PNC Park, MLB was moving into another vest phase. (Lots of people have one. Mine was in 2006. Perfectly normal.) At the time, it made sense to abandon sleeves — and seven years later, it made sense to return to them. The baggier jerseys got, the dumber vests looked. Plus, the team was actively looking to reconnect with different parts of its history. The buccaneer logo was deemphasized, red was virtually ditched and former team president Frank Connelly said: “We return this year to the sleeved jersey worn by four of our five world championship teams, including our 1971 and 1979 clubs.”
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Sure. “It’s a cleaner look and we’re just trying to switch stuff up,” would’ve sufficed, but sure. Four years later, it was the look the team wore in its postseason return, and it’s still the basis for their visual identity. It’s a good look …
2020: Script return
… and hey, it got better. Ditching the “Pittsburgh” script, as the Pirates did back in 2001, always felt a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Whenever baseball is back, though, the look will be too, including on a new road alternate. (No, the “P” jerseys aren’t going anywhere. The players still love them.)
Sometimes, nostalgia and good design overlap. This feels like one of those instances. The Nike swoosh is gonna look stupid, but that’s life.
“People are definitely excited to wear the unis Barry Bonds and (Bobby Bonilla) were wearing,” Josh Bell said back in January, “so I’m excited for the fans as well.”
The @Nike jerseys are straight 🔥
Rewrite the Script. pic.twitter.com/phlhBM75Gb
— Pirates (@Pirates) January 24, 2020
The losses
1977: Gold + pinstripes
The mix-and-match “We Are Family” look was fantastic. Groundbreaking, successful, cool — it had basically everything you could hope for, and it’s rightfully No. 3 in The Athletic’s all-time rankings. They invented new rules. Nothing is cooler than that.
But there were also nine combos (two hats, three jerseys, three pants), and not all were created equal. I say this as a person who has a framed photo of Dave Parker, in head-to-toe yellow, smoking a cigarette in the dugout: the pinstriped top/yellow pants pairing is brutal. It combines the garishness of both elements — the width of the pinstripes, the, uh, yellowness of the yellow — into a dissonant mess. No bueno.
It was also deemed cool enough for a Sports Illustrated cover, though, so what do I know?
Pirates 1970s bumblebee combo #3: Pinstriped jersey with gold pants. pic.twitter.com/9ubmYcECt5
— Paul Lukas (@UniWatch) April 18, 2016
1995: The nameless wonders
From 1985 on, the looks were generally inoffensive. Nothing great, nothing terrible … until 1995. The player’s strike had nuked one season and started eating at another, and the franchise was at the bottom of a trench. This was, indeed, a hopeless team playing in front of empty seats and angry people, made up of largely random players. You can almost see the logic in removing names from the back of the jerseys. Almost. Instead, it seemed like a combo of penny-pinching and sleight of hand, even to a 9-year-old watching from the stands. Throw in the pandering “PIRATE FANS” on the sleeve, and you’ve got something special.
#FYI The only regular @Pirates jerseys NOT to have names on the backs since 1979 were the Home Whites in 1995. #GoodOldWhatsHisName 🤔
151 Days until #OpeningDay2019 & 155 Days 'til #OpeningDayPNC2019.#LetsGoBucs #BuccosBaseballCountdown ⚾️ pic.twitter.com/lSXxqwaSpM
— Scott Chamberlain (@TheBuccosFan) October 28, 2018
#FYI In place of the #Pirate patch that appeared on the left sleeve of the 1994 @Pirates jerseys, the 1995 jerseys had a #Pirate Fans patch. #PostStrikeOliveBranch 🕊 🤝
150 Days until #OpeningDay2019 & 155 Days 'til #OpeningDayPNC2019.#LetsGoBucs#BuccosBaseballCountdown ⚾️ pic.twitter.com/0o2HY0j8ej
— Scott Chamberlain (@TheBuccosFan) October 29, 2018
1997: Groutfit
Here’s how I know putting the red hat on the “wins” list isn’t solely nostalgia-based; the other look the team introduced that year is down here, and it deserves it. The gray road hat was awful — a weird look on its own, paired with a pinstriped jersey. A couple rules of thumb: 1) Try to avoid pinstripes, unless you’re the Yankees 2) If you must, either go all-in on the Yankees rip-off — with a solid, contrasting cap — or go all-in on the pinstripes. Instead, they split the baby. A full “groutfit” — solid gray jersey, solid gray hat — would’ve at least been interesting. Instead, we got this. They ditched it after a couple of seasons, and that’s not a surprise.
Emil Brown 1997-2001 #ForgettablePirates pic.twitter.com/1K8GEzhysn
— Forgettable Pirates (@ForgettableBucs) July 29, 2015
2007: Ketchup bottles
See? You can have too much red. Here’s a fun way to kill time: search Twitter for “red Pirates jerseys” and bask in the contempt and confusion people still hold for the worst set in the history of the franchise, an absolute disgrace that somehow survived for two full seasons. At least part of me blocked these from my brain.
The red alternate jerseys worn by the Pirates in 2007 were not a good idea. pic.twitter.com/jKNeWi3mQZ
— Fitteds and Flannels (@FittedsFlannels) March 16, 2020
2015-2017: Camo overload
At the January unveiling of the script reboot, the team also announced that its camo-style jersey would be unchanged. If they’re committed to the concept, that’s for the best; the look, in place since 2018, is more subtle than the original. Whether military references have a place on a baseball field or not, the first three years of the experience were … a lot. It would be like having a uniform meant to salute doctors that looked like a lab coat with a stethoscope embroidered on the chest. If you’re going to do it, there are better ways.
Tyler Glasnow in 2017 (Charles LeClaire / USA Today)So that’s that. I’ll be in the comments hanging out and defending myself; if it’s anything like the discussion we had under the Penguins rankings, it’ll be a fun afternoon. Let me know what you think.
(Top photo of Willie Stargell: Focus On Sport / Getty Images)
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