Mets Black Unis

[BallWonk]

Watching the Mets play their second straight game in the beautiful uniforms of their past -- you know, when they actually won pennants and World Series titles -- I got to wondering. The Mets certainly have a historical justification for incorporating black into their uniforms. And although the blue and orange is a great color combination that is much more New York appropriate than anything the Yankees have, sometimes a seemingly nonsensical color really makes a uniform. The Cardinals in blue road caps, for example, or the prevalence of blue in the Red Sox uniforms. (Though the fact that the White Sox now wear black socks is a counterexample.) So, wondered I, could black be incorporated into the Mets uniforms in a way that doesn't make me want to vomit? I'm still not sure of the answer, but I think that if it can be done, it would have to be done along these lines:

First, home uniforms pared back to blue and orange. One color from each previous NL club in New York. No black. And although I like the home whites better than the pinstripes, I want to establish that while the uniform may be borrowing colors from the Giants and Dodgers, the Mets have their own look. Since the Giants and Dodgers wore relatively plain gray jerseys on the road, the Mets stick with pinstripes at home.

And so I follow the same aesthetic rules for a new road uniform. One color from each previous NL club in New York. This time, it's Giants black instead of Giants orange. Blue tuscan lettering arched, but with blue piping, again to establish a distinct look from either the Dodgers or Giants home uniforms. The blue is always offset from the black with a white outline. This would give the Mets organization lots of "authentic" black merchandise to sell -- any home alternate would have to be blue and a road alternate would have to be black -- without making a complete hash of an otherwise classic, classy home uniform.

Now, this kind of thing would only work if Toronto switched color schemes; there is probably only room for one bright-blue-and-black uniform set in the Eastern time zone. And even though I happen to like bright blue and black as team colors, I'm still not sold on this idea.

What do you think? Could something like this concept allow the Mets to use black and still look good?

[whitedawg22]

If you were creating a uniform for the Mets in 1962, this logic would work. But to 99% of the baseball-watching populace, now the Mets wear blue and orange because that's what they have worn for 45 seasons, not because two teams that left New York half a century ago had these colors in their uniforms. Blue and orange are distinctly Mets, as they're the only MLB team to wear these colors. Plus, since the Knicks use the same colors, it has created a New York feel to blue and orange. It may be possible for black to look good on the Mets, but the orange needs to stay. Plus, it seems like every sports team nowadays is going to some version of blue and black.

[PaperAirplane31]

Reminds me of the Blue Jays.

[huskeraddict]

Darken up the blue and orange. I really don't like the black.

[I Am A Flaming Douche Bag]

These are no where near as good as the jerseys they have now.

[LMU]

The current blacks are terrible because they're black to begin with. The Mets are a blue/orange team... period. The home here is good, except that the Dodger blue is WAY too light of a shade (it should be a dark shade of royal), and the orange looks faded. The road needs to be scraped and adapted to the blue/orange color scheme.

[Guest]

Sorry, I'm not digging the greys. Blue and orange is such a good color combination that to omit it from half their uniform set just doesn't work for me. Blue and black don't complement each other as well as blue and orange do. I'll give you credit, though: you did eliminate drop-shadows, which only seem to work for the 49ers, Lakers, and NY Rangers.

Random Met thought: does anyone else think it's weird that the Mets use Tuscan lettering for their greys, just like the Red Sox? Now granted, it's not the same as if the Yankees were to use that, but still, it's kind of an odd overlap, it doesn't match anything else, and it's neither a Dodger nor Giants element.