The Boston Red Sox unveiled a new line of uniforms Tuesday to be worn during Patriots’ Day Weekend — a bright yellow and blue design that departs from the team’s traditional white and red garb.
The “City Connect Series” uniforms were designed in collaboration with Nike to celebrate the city’s unique culture, according to a Tuesday press release.
“The departure from our traditional style pays homage to that iconic weekend, and recognizes Boston’s boldness, culture and creativity,” Adam Grossman, Red Sox executive vice president and chief marketing officer, stated in the release.
The team will don the uniforms for Fenway Park games against the Chicago White Sox Saturday and Sunday. On Patriots’ Day, April 19, the team will wear their usual “B Strong” jerseys, which have been worn annually since 2013 as a tribute to the Boston Marathon bombings.
The new blue and yellow suits feature an arm patch with Boston’s area code, 617, and a jersey front that reads “Boston” in blue stencil — in homage to the finish line of the Boston Marathon at Boylston Street, according to the release.
The Red Sox kick off a national campaign to be joined by six other teams in 2021: the Arizona Diamondbacks, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, Miami Marlins and the San Francisco Giants.
The Red Sox worked with several local artists, whose stories will be featured on the team’s social media in the days leading up to launch.
Christopher Salako, a freelance creative director from Hyde Park, said Red Sox marketing first reached out to him through a direct message on social media.
“Honestly, I thought it wasn’t real,” Salako said. “I went to my DM, and I’d seen that I got a DM from the Red Sox and I was like ‘Oh wow, this is crazy.’”
Salako said the initiative was “amazing” because it reflects Boston’s diversity.
“I feel like … they wanted to highlight the actual faces of Boston,” he said. “Not the ones that are portrayed through commercials or via ads.”
Muyi Okundaye of Roxbury — who performs alongside his brother Noma Okundaye as the DJ duo SuperSmashBroz, who won DJ of the Year at the 2020 Boston Music Awards — agreed.
“We were very excited and also happy that I feel like that they kept the right people,” he said, “Usually with campaigns of this magnitude, the real Boston isn’t really highlighted.”
The brothers modeled the new uniforms on their Instagram page in a post that has received more than 3,000 views.
Joel Wolfe, a professor in modern Latin American history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who teaches a course on baseball history, said he did not understand what elements of the jerseys’ design resonate with locals, aside from the word “Boston.”
“It can be simultaneously a really good thing to tie up and to connect Boston sports, Boston baseball, Nike and lots of diverse groups in and around the city,” Wolfe said. “But Nike is a business that’s in the business of making money.”
Wolfe added that baseball’s prominence in U.S. life has declined.
“It used to be the single most important sport and it used to really drive a lot of issues,” he said. “It’s still important but it’s faded, certainly behind American football and to some extent even basketball.”
He noted that baseball has a complicated historical relationship with race.
“Baseball has for the last five or 10 years kind of spent a lot of time thinking about how it’s going to market itself more both in terms of the development of players but also fans in African American communities,” Wolfe said.
Salako said the campaign has been well-received from people all over Massachusetts — not just baseball fans.
“I’ve never seen this type of reaction over something like this,” Salako said. “I feel like the reaction that was garnered and the attention that was brought to the Red Sox because of it was something huge.”
