Now that Series 2 has been out for awhile now, I can do something that struck me as funny. In 2021, the Red Sox became the first MLB team to debut the polarizing "City Connect" uniforms for their city. These new uniforms were yellow and blue, honoring the traditional finishing line colors of the Boston Marathon. (Personally, I hated these.)
Last year, the Red Sox debuted a new City Connect uniform, the much more popular "Fenway Greens" that matched the color of Fenway park and the in particular the famous "Green Monster" left field wall. (Personally, I liked these.)
Along the course of last season, the Red Sox wore green, yellow, and red. This reminded me of a traffic light, and I thought it would be amusing to see how often these colors show up on the Red Sox cards in this year's set. Of course, the standard home whites and road greys were also employed, but would any one color dominate? Let's find out! Here's the official tally from largest quantity to lowest:
White - 11 cards*
No surprise the whites would be the most popular uniform, despite all the alternate jerseys used during home games. I'll explain the asterisk a little later.
Green - 6 cards
The Fenway Greens made are well represented after their positive reception among the Red Sox fandom. (FYI, if you've never heard Tolle give an interview, you're missing out on some great stuff. He's quickly becoming a fan favorite not only in Boston but throughout baseball!)
Yellow - 5 cards
This color scheme never grew on me. To be fair, I'm not from Boston and these jerseys were designed to connect to the city, so the reception of native Bostonians matter more here than the opinion of some random fan in another state.
Red - 3 cards
With all these new alternate jerseys to show off and sell, the always popular red alternates took a back seat. I've always thought that a team with "Red" in the name should have uniforms incorporating that color. I've always liked these jerseys.
Miscellaneous - 2*
Two cards in the set don't feature any of the 5 uniforms. One is a candid pre-game photo:
While the other, although technically white, is not the same as the normal white uniforms they wore:
This particular jersey is a "one game only" from Boston's annual Patriot Day game, where they switched out the team name on the front for the city name and wore "Boston Strong" patches.
Grey - 1 card
Just a single card depicting the Red Sox in their traditional road greys, which is ironic since that was the jersey they wore for half of the season.
Blue - 0 cards
MLB allows a team 5 different uniforms at most, which means that when the newest City Connect uniforms were introduced, the Red Sox officially retired their blue alternate jerseys. I hope some day this will be brought back. For now, Uwasawa is the last Red Sox player to sport the blue in a Topps base or update set.
Just curious, any other teams out there with this much color variety?
A happy and safe Independence Day to everyone this weekend!
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