Red Sox to retire blue third jerseys and introduce new City Connect in 2025

The Red Sox will make significant changes to their uniform rotation next season: They will introduce a new “City Connect” uniform and retire the club's old blue alternate uniforms, the team confirmed Tuesday.

The club's current yellow and blue City Connect uniforms, inspired by the Boston Marathon, will remain.

“Given the popularity of our yellow uniforms with our players and fans, we have decided to keep them as our core uniform offering for the foreseeable future,” a Red Sox spokesman said. “We will introduce a City Connect 2.0 uniform in 2025 and will no longer wear our blue alternate jerseys.”

MassLive's Chris Cotillo was the first to report on the upcoming uniform changes.

The blue third jerseys, traditionally worn on the road, were first introduced in 2009 and have become one of the club's most commonly worn uniforms in recent years. The Red Sox wore the navy blue tops when they won their last World Series title in 2018, and between 2020 and 2023 they were worn just as frequently, if not more frequently, than the traditional gray away jerseys.

That changed last year when the Red Sox brought more structure to their jersey choice: on Sundays and Thursdays they wore white or gray, on Fridays they alternated between red and blue, and on Saturdays they wore the yellow City Connects at home. This has made the shades of blue far less conspicuous.

The Red Sox are the latest team to unveil a new City Connect, introduced by Nike in 2021, designed to highlight the connection between a team and its hometown. The Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals have both announced they will retire their original City Connects and unveil a new one, but the Red Sox have opted for a different approach.

As for why the Red Sox can't just introduce a new uniform and keep all their old ones, it's worth remembering that MLB and Nike currently operate on a “four plus one” model, where clubs are assigned four core designs plus a City Connect. The yellow designs will now replace the blue ones in the core group.

Not only are the Red Sox popular with fans, but they also always play well in their yellow jerseys. Since their introduction in 2021, the Red Sox have an overall record of 35-13 in these jerseys.

Originally published: September 24, 2024 at 18:56