What Does The Newly Implemented ‘Players Weekend’ Mean For Baseball?
The recently announced ‘Players Weekend’ features everything from wild-colored cleats to nicknamed jerseys, but what does it actually mean for baseball itself?
According to a report from Jeff Passan at Yahoo! Sports, Major League Baseball will loosen its rules for one weekend in August to allow players to wear personalized jersey patches, loud-colored spikes, and feature nicknames on their jerseys.
This gives off a very XFL-style vibe, just take a look:
However, it is also worth noting there are of course some restrictions. While players will be limited to just a single name on the back of their jerseys, not all color alterations will fly either. For example, both white gloves and cleats are banned during the weekend-long event.
On the other hand, despite the NFL’s strict reputation, Major League Baseball may be taking a small page out of its book nonetheless. Earlier in the year, the NFL announced it would be more lenient regarding touchdown celebrations as using the football as a prop, group celebrations, and several other possibilities are now allowed following a score.
There are still a lot of questions to be answered about this special weekend, including whether or not the New York Yankees — who don’t wear names on the back of their jerseys — will partake in the weekend. Given that both sides — the owners and players — agreed to these terms, it seems unlikely teams will have discretion over if and how they participate in the weekend’s festivities.
But what exactly does this mean for baseball? Well, understandably, Major League Baseball is trying to cope with this new generation of players and audiences. If baseball can get younger people to attend these games and think “hey, that’s cool!”, then the event did it’s job. Also, it comes down to money, money, and money. Merchandise will be huge during this time and fans will go crazy over the nicknamed jerseys.
My thoughts? It will definitely be different, but for a weekend, why not? I mean, just imagine seeing ‘King Felix’ (Felix Hernandez), ‘Thor’ (Noah Syndergaard), and many more nicknames on the back of players’ jerseys. As for an organization’s point of view, the new nickname jerseys will clearly be a hot commodity for fans across the league and, once again, will lead to more sales. I mean, who wouldn’t want a Pablo Sandoval ‘Panda’ jersey?! Just talking about it makes me crave for one.
It’s nice to see this looser form of the game we love, because, well, I don’t recall a time in my life that we have seen something like a ‘Players Weekend’ in baseball. The more that I think about it, I don’t even think adults have seen anything like this. The ‘Players Weekend’ is the beginning of a new chapter for the game of baseball and like it or not, it’s just our job as fans to go along with it.
