MLB Jerseys: Ranking the Best Baseball Uniforms
The New York Yankees' home uniform is one of the most simplistic in any professional sport, but they have won so many World Series in those pinstripes over the past century that it has become the most iconic look in Major League Baseball.
The number of rings that a franchise wins doesn't have anything to do with the threads that it wears, but it stands to reason that the jerseys we equate with baseball greatness are the ones worn by champions. The top five teams on this list are also top six in World Series titles, and that wasn't intentional.
This is a subjective ranking, of course, but many different factors were considered in an effort to make it more objective. Most notable among these were nostalgia, uniqueness in color scheme, uniqueness in design and how crisp and clean the outfit looks as a whole.
Only uniforms worn during the 2018 season were considered for this exercise.
10. Toronto Blue Jays (Alternate)
1 of 10
Several teams have blue as the primary color in at least one of their frequently worn jerseys. But the New York Mets, Kansas City Royals, Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners don't make blue look quite as beautiful as the Toronto Blue Jays do.
Maybe there's a subconscious bias toward the team with "blue" in its name and with "blue" written on the right breast of the jersey, but there's also more than that.
Working in Toronto's favor is one of the best logos in baseball. Having the blue jay with the red maple leaf on both the hat and the jersey is a great touch.
So is the font type used for both the "BLUE JAYS" on the front and the player's number on the back. That pseudo-bubble letter approach might get overlooked on the front, but it sure does make the "2" in Yangervis Solarte's jersey pop in the above picture.
Add in the double white ring around the cuffs of the sleeves and the fact that the white buttons occasionally stand out against the solid blue background, and it's just a solid overall look.
9. Pittsburgh Pirates (Alternate)
2 of 10
For the most part, we're only interested in the shirt portion of the uniform. After all, the word "jerseys" is in the headline, and the vast majority of uniforms come with standard (boring) white or gray pants. But for this particular Pittsburgh Pirates paraphernalia, the hat and the pants are what make the whole uniform work so well.
The jersey itself is just OK. Pittsburgh's home whites aren't anything special, and the only noteworthy adjustment needed from that shirt to create this one is making the normally white parts gold and the normally gold parts white.
Black pants, though?
Who the heck has done that since the 1970s?
Aside from these Pirates alternates, every other team wears white, gray or pinstripe pants for all of their uniforms. The next-most unique thing to these black pants is the Philadelphia Phillies often wearing white pants with red pinstripes. But this black-and-gold look just makes sense for Pittsburgh—considering the Steelers have gone through many iterations of that color scheme on the gridiron.
And the hat is even more unique than the pants. It might not be readily apparent in the above picture, but the hat is a throwback to the 1970s. Rather than the dome shape that all normal hats have, this one has a flat top that almost makes it look like the players are wearing cake pans on their heads. Moreover, the hat has three gold lines that go all the way around the head, which would be unique even if it had a dome shape.
Having a bold, different look isn't necessarily synonymous with "best," but it is for this Pirates garb. It helps that they only wear it about 10 times per season, too. If this was their daily outfit, it wouldn't feel as special.
8. Detroit Tigers (Road)
3 of 10
Most road uniforms are just plain uninteresting. Typically, they are little more than gray versions of the home whites. Perhaps they'll replace the city/state with the team nickname (or vice versa), but they'll do so with the same script while leaving the overall design the same. And because every team's main road uniform is predominantly gray, it's as if the same team is batting in the top of the first inning in every game around the league.
Detroit bucks that trend, though, with road threads that are more appealing than what it dons in front of home crowds.
Maybe you prefer the simplicity of the home attire and would rather see the navy blue Old English "D" in this spot instead, but the logo just looks better—and more apropos—in the tiger-tinted orange on the road hats. It matches the outline of the cursive "Detroit" and the player numbers on the front of the jerseys, which are filled in with the same dark blue that appears on the home threads.
Plenty of teams have a pair of stripes down the front of their jerseys, but in Detroit's case, it kind of serves as a subliminal reminder that they're the Tigers.
7. Chicago White Sox (Home)
4 of 10
Throughout franchise history, the Chicago White Sox have made some highly questionable decisions with their uniforms. A decade ago, ESPN.com's Paul Lukas (aka the Uni Watch guy) dedicated an entire top-10 list to the unique and bizarre outfits the South Siders have donned. They even wore shorts a couple of times in the 1970s.
Like most inventors, though, the White Sox evidently just needed to fail a few dozen times before finally hitting the nail on the head.
The Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks and Pittsburgh Pirates each have an alternate jersey that is predominantly black, but the White Sox are the only team that primarily rocks this color. Given how hot black shirts get in the summer sun, it's no surprise that hardly any teams are willing to sign up for that discomfort. But it works wonderfully for Chicago.
The white lettering looks great against the black, making the classic diagonal "Sox" logo on the left breast shine. The pinstripe pants (when they wear them instead of solid grays) are also a nice touch. But the simple, subtle thing that makes these uniforms pop is the white cuffs at the end of the short sleeves.
6. Chicago Cubs (Home)
5 of 10
As great as the White Sox's black jerseys may be, it's not the best uniform in Chicago.
Rather, that honor goes to the Cubs, who make top-to-bottom pinstripes look almost as good as the Yankees do.
Almost.
The logo on the chest looks like a big bull's-eye, and in a good way. The large, thick red "C" in "Cubs" circumscribed by a thick blue circle stands out in a major way against a relatively simple background. The same can be said for the oversized numbers on the back of the jerseys, which appear to have been designed so that even the fans on the rooftops across the street can tell who is where.
The best detail, though, is the patch on the left sleeve. Most jerseys have something on at least one of the sleeves, but the blue bear cub inside of the red "C" that also appears on the hat and on the logo is the classic piece that ties everything together.
5. Oakland Athletics (Alternate)
6 of 10
If this were a ranking of teams by the largest number of appealing uniform options, the Oakland Athletics would be the clear-cut No. 1 pick. Just in this year's rotation, they have two different green jerseys, the home whites, the road grays and the gold shirt/green hat combo pictured above. All five were viable candidates for a spot in the top 10.
But these gold threads are a majestic blast from the past, evoking memories of Reggie Jackson home runs, Rollie Fingers mustaches and three consecutive World Series titles in the 1970s.
These are actually considerably different from the alternates introduced at the beginning of that run of dominance in 1972. There's no green stripe down the sides of the pants, and the green stripe around the cuff of the sleeves. Also there's only one green stripe around the cuff of the sleeve instead of the three on the original, and there's no green collar on the current design. But there is green piping down the chest, which wasn't there during the disco era.
The essence is the same, though. From 1973-82, the A's alternates had green hat and numbers/letters, gold shirt and hat brim, white pants and a simple use of "A's" rather than "Oakland" or "Athletics." No one else wears anything like it. That combination of nostalgia and uniqueness gets the A's into the top five.
4. San Francisco Giants (Home)
7 of 10
The San Francisco Giants have trotted out a bunch of alternate jerseys at home over the past several years, most of which are either solid orange with black lettering or solid black with orange lettering.
But why are they messing around with that stuff when this cream-colored jersey with orange and black accents is easily among the best in the league?
In many ways, the beauty is in the simplicity.
While many teams try to put their own spin on the same upward-slanting, underlined, cursive font—the Los Angeles Dodgers, Baltimore Orioles, Minnesota Twins, Washington Nationals, Milwaukee Brewers, Royals, Athletics all have at least one such primary jersey—San Francisco just has a no-frills, all-caps "GIANTS" on the front. The black lettering with orange outlines is punctuated by a collar, sleeve cuffs and two straight pant lines of the same colors.
The peak of the purity on these threads is the lack of names on the back. Only the Giants, Yankees and Boston Red Sox have been able to get away with this numbers-only approach.
3. Los Angeles Dodgers (Home)
8 of 10
As previously mentioned, the Dodgers are just one of many teams with this type of script on the front of their jerseys. But it's only because "Dodgers" (and "Los Angeles" and "Brooklyn") looked so fabulous in cursive with an underline that so many other uniforms were designed in a similar fashion.
This organization has had the good sense not to ruin a good thing with experimentation. With the exception of occasionally switching between the city name and the team nickname, these jerseys—both home and road—haven't changed much since World War II.
There was one massive alteration during that time, though: The addition of the numbers to the front of the shirts in 1952, forever changing baseball jerseys for the better. Making the numbers red instead of matching the blue script of the team name is still a quirk that is unique to the Dodgers, and it's one of the biggest reasons these jerseys are perfection.
And credit to the Dodgers for immediately hitting the jackpot with the hat logo. For the final 20 seasons in Brooklyn, it was a white "B" on a plain blue background. Rather than reinventing the wheel when they moved across the country, they replaced the "B" with the "LA" that we all know and love to this day.
2. St. Louis Cardinals (Home)
9 of 10
The St. Louis Cardinals have tinkered with the font, the angle of the bat, whether to include numbers on the front and how realistic the birds look, but the general idea of the uniform hasn't changed much since the beginning of Stan Musial's career (1941).
That's nearly eight decades of two cardinals sitting on a yellow bat that goes through the top of the capital "C" that precedes the red, cursive "ardinals."
It still looks great after all these years, though.
At this point, the Cards have perfected the look so much that it's almost the same for the entire season. When they go on the road, the white simply becomes gray. And for the alternates, they just replace "Cardinals" with "St. Louis" and add some red piping down the front.
As seems to be the protocol for teams in multiple-word cities, the hat design is little more than an intertwining of the letters that make up the city's abbreviation. But the other teams all just have two letters while the Cardinals sneak in an extra "T" in the middle of the "S," which makes it one of the better logos in baseball.
1. New York Yankees (Home)
10 of 10
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
There have been some minor tweaks over the years, but the New York Yankees have been wearing nameless pinstripes during home games from Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle to Aaron Judge.
The "NY" on both the hat and the left breast is probably the most recognizable sports logo in the world. Combined with the simple black belt and the "no facial hair" policy, it's a classic, clean look from head to toe.
Not everyone who plays for the Yankees prefers the high socks, but that's when this uniform is at its best. This rings especially true for the larger than life guys like 6'3" Alex Rodriguez and 6'7" Judge, who look even more statuesque because of the socks.
But even CC Sabathia—with pant legs sagging at the top of his cleats in a uniform so oversized that it looks like a hand-me-down from an older, bigger brother—looks good in pinstripes. That's the magic of these jerseys.
You can despise the Yankees with every fiber of your being, but you have to admit: They make being the villain look good.
Kerry Miller is a multisport writer for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter, @kerrancejames.
