San Diego Padres’ “Vibrant” new city connect uniforms revealed

July 2, 2022

Two cities, two cultures, two countries, and one Major League Baseball team.

The San Diego Padres are celebrating the friendship between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico, with their brand new, colourful, vibrant City Connect uniforms revealed this morning by the Southern California ballclub.

The pink, green, and yellow uniforms are “inspired by the vibrant landscapes in the San Diego and Baja California communities,” reads the press release from the Padres, “from the scenic views up and down the coastline to the ocean’s white foam and the stunning pink and yellow sunsets.”

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Across the white chest is “SAN DIEGO” in a split pink and green lettering with white trim and gold drop shadowing. The lettering style is inspired by weathered beach signs found in Southern California.

The player’s number is below in pink, the right sleeve is pink with gold trim, and the left is a seafoamy green with a re-coloured Padres “Swinging Friar” logo patch. On the back of the jersey, the player’s name appears in gold in a standard jersey font arched above the number in a large pink typeface matching the same style as what’s found on the front.

Despite the multi-colour design of the jerseys, the caps are entirely that seafoam-style green – crown, button, and visor, the Padres’ familiar interlocked “SD” logo is on the front of the crown in pink, as is the New Era logo on the left side. Batting helmets match the cap, minus the New Era logo.

“The uniform’s bold colours and decorative details depict the radiant artwork that is prominent within our shared culture,” says the Padres. “The Padres are proud of our binational fan base and the region we all call home … Every day, thousands journey between San Diego and Tijuana to live and work—and the result is a city like no other, with some of the most passionate baseball fans on either side of the border.”

Moving down to the lower half of the uniform, the pants are white with a single pink stripe down the right pant leg, and a single green stripe down the left. Around the waist, the belt is pink. The socks from Stance are green with a gold and pink horizontal stripe at the top, below that is a pink silhouette of palm trees, the Padres “SD” logo and the new “San Diego” script from the front of the jerseys in white.

The San Diego-Tijuana region is currently home to over five million people, the second-most in an urban area shared between the United States and another country. More than 75 million people entered the United States through the region’s San Ysidro/El Chaparral border crossing in 2019, the busiest border crossing in the world.

The Padres, the seventh and last team, scheduled to unveil their Nike MLB City Connect uniform in 2022, will debut their new look on the ball diamond just one week from today, Friday, July 8, at home against the San Francisco Giants. Following that contest, the Padres will wear their new pink, green, gold, and whites for each Friday home game for the rest of the season.

The Nike MLB City Connect Series is “a celebration of the unique personality, traditions, and values that unite the fans of every club.”

First introduced in April 2021, the program’s goal is to “energize longtime fans and bring new ones to the game.” Each team’s uniform design has been developed with a focus placed on honouring “the storied history of its club” while also “pushing the boundaries of what a baseball uniform can be.”

With the unveiling of the Padres uniform, the City Connect release calendar for 2022 has come to an end. San Diego follows the Washington Nationals, Houston Astros, Kansas City Royals, Colorado Rockies, Los Angeles Angels, and Milwaukee Brewers to release their new look this season. Last year, in the first year of the program, it was the Boston Red Sox, Miami Marlins, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs, Arizona Diamondbacks, San Francisco Giants, and Los Angeles Dodgers.

When the program kicked off the plan was to have the series run across three seasons, in subsequent conversations I’ve had with clubs in the time since I get the impression that it will now be a four-year program with all thirty MLB teams unveiling sometime between the 2021 and 2024 seasons. At the end of 2022, halfway into that four-year span, we’ve seen fourteen teams unveil with sixteen remaining, this suggests we may start seeing eight teams join the program per year during the 2023 and 2024 seasons.