NEW YORK — For more than six decades, the Mets have been defined by two colors: blue from the Dodgers, orange from the Giants. Nearly every uniform they’ve worn since their inception has featured some combination of those hues.
They’re about to add two more colors into the regular rotation: gray for the concrete jungle of New York City, purple for the 7 Line that runs to Citi Field. Those are the colors featured on the Mets’ City Connect uniforms, which the club unveiled Friday. Beginning on April 27, the Mets will wear their City Connect uniforms on Saturdays at Citi.
“It’s all about connecting to New York,” said Andy Goldberg, the Mets’ chief marketing officer and part of the team that worked with Nike on the City Connect threads. “A lot of detail, a lot of focus on this idea that yeah, it’s not orange and blue by design. It’s meant to connect to New York. It’s meant to not just be an alternate Mets uniform. It’s our City Connect. It is how Met fans can represent across the world.”
In addition to the color scheme, every detail in the uniforms is significant, such as:
- The pinstripes on both the shirts and pants are made up of circles and diamonds, representing New York City’s local and express subway lines.
- The letters “NYC” across the front are meant to pay tribute to the entire city, not just Queens.
- The sleeve patch is designed to evoke a New York City subway token.
- The front of the hat features a cross-section of the steelwork on the Queensboro Bridge.
- Inside the cap is an artistic interpretation of the New York City subway map.
- Player names on the back are written in the font that the Mets have historically only used on the fronts of their away jerseys.
- Near the bottom of the uniform top is a purple inscription reading “The World’s City.”
The design is the result of more than two years of planning from Goldberg, Mets’ executive director of consumer products James Benesh and a team at Nike. The group considered around 25-30 variations before deciding on the final version, which received stamps of approval from Mets players Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimmo.
“It looks like something you’d wear on the street,” Goldberg said.
Introduced in 2021, the City Connect program offered a way for teams to express creativity in linking a set of alternate uniforms to the urban areas around them. Examples include the Red Sox, who use a blue-and-yellow color scheme in homage to the Boston Marathon finish line, and the Giants, who use theirs to pay tribute to the Golden Gate Bridge.
The Mets are among eight teams that will debut City Connect uniforms this year. Only two clubs, the Yankees and A’s, do not have a City Connect uniform.
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