This should really come as no surprise. It seems like routinely now that every few years, that every Major League team goes through a change of Batting Practice Jersey, starting back in the mid 2000's (or at least that is when I started to notice that all teams change the uniforms at the same time). It's not just the Jerseys, but the hats as well now change at the same time too. It was speculated after last season that there would be a Jersey change, since the hats changed last season, and the BP Jerseys seemed to be unchanged for an extended period of time.
Anyway some background on BP Jerseys. They started as warm-up uni's in the early 80's. The common theme for the Mets early BP uniforms were blue. In fact, I have only been able to find one BP that was not blue, but I didn't search for too long. Anyway, let's take a look at a few early BP uniforms. Here's one, another one, and finally this one.
Anyway one of the first BP uniforms that had a standard model across the league would be this one, which is orange. Then after that the Mets then switched back to Blue BP's. The main complaint about the latter Jersey would be the orange underarms. The second complaint is almost always about the amount of black in the uniform, as if it was our third color.
Well here is our new uniform this upcoming season. First off, it is an upgrade from last year's uniform. However it still could use some work. It would look better without the armpit black, which is probably to highlight the cool base technology. Also, the “Mets” shouldn't be black. But this will be a debate we will continue to have for a long time.
