To set the stage, imagine MLB’s Commissioner Rob Manfred dancing like Bill Gates at Windows launch or Elaine at her company party ala Seinfeld.  Yeah Rob, you aren’t cool. Your All-Star uniforms suck. Major League Baseball’s latest attempt at “hip threads” is the All-Star uniform design. It’s awful.  I don’t mean a hesitant, “Yeah, I don’t know”; it’s more like “Oh that’s hideous” look.

I know where this came from. The NBA has had success marketing team jerseys that adopt abbreviated titles like “ATL” aka Atlanta Hawks, or “The City” for the San Francisco Warriors. The MLB design is a three letter abbreviation of the city with the team logo above it. Literally topping that off – on every All-Star hat is the team logo embedded in a star. Every All-Star is an Astro for a day? At the pitch meeting, no one thought that turning the MLB into the cheating Houston Astros was a bad look?

Manfred didn’t design this pestilence but he approved it. He’s full of great ideas. He moved the All-Star game out of Atlanta because he got blowback from about a dozen players and some sportswriters. And he’s responsible for the spider tack strip searches and body cavity exams every half-inning. He’s not known for media smarts, but whoever designed this is likely the same dope who designed the “black and white” weekend two years ago. It was 2019 when the MLB caused snow-blindness with all-white home uniforms with outlines around the numbers and team names. It was a design disaster only to be topped by this year’s All-Star clunker.

The MLB All-Star weekend is the sole All-Star event worth watching. The NBA’s only watchable event is the dunk contest. The game itself is absurd. My grandmother would play better defense and she’s dead. The NFL’s Pro Bowl is a scrimmage. Anyone who claims they’ve watched a Pro Bowl game start to finish is either lying or a professional gambler.

But now Manfred has ruined this too. It’s in Denver because of politics, and the uniforms are terrible.  Fitting. Yo, Manfred, Commish. Fellow cool kid – you’re ridiculous.