Cardinals bringing the Big Names (on) Back

Of the countless issues with Nike’s new uniforms from the 2024 season, it seems that the 100 billion dollar corporation is only going to be fixing one of the issues, and that is the lettering of the player names on the back of the uniform.

Up through 2023, the Cardinals used tall letters on the back of the jersey that displayed the player’s names very prominently in a subtle arc across the back. In 2024, one of Nike’s unnecessary changes was making those letters much smaller and rendering them in a more radical arch shape. Fans were not happy, players were not happy, was Nike even happy? See below an article we posted on the difference between the 2023 and 2024 letters.

2023 v 2024 letter comparison

As of now, (January, 2025), it would seem, based on articles I’ve seen as well as evidence seen in MLB’s style guide artwork, that the lettering is now going to revert back to the original pre-2024 style. I made a quick mockup of the changes, see photo below.

One other thing we might see, not confirmed yet, is the return of the squatty front numbers. For whatever reason, dating back to the early 1960s when numbers were first added to the front of the jersey, they never quite matched the numbers on the back of the jersey. This is especially noticeable in the era from 1999 through 2023. In those 25 years, the numbers on back of the uniform were much taller and proportional, while the numbers on the front of the uniform were squatty and thicker.

In 2024 the squatty numbers on the front of the uniform were replaced with numbers that matched the numbers on the back of the uniform. This change may have gone slightly unnoticed, probably because of the rest of Nike’s blunders. But the 2025 uniforms might revert back to pre-2024 squatty numbers. See example rendering below.

And we also wrote an article on the many differences of the Cardinals front numbers in their history, see below.

Cardinals Front Numbers

So far these changes are unconfirmed, but if they are true, I like this direction. I enjoy the bigger letters on the back of the jersey, and for some reason I also enjoy the squatty numbers on the front. The next step is to get our chainstitch technique back, no more Birds on the Patch.