It’s well known all of the hate Nike and Fanatics have received in the past year and a half. Well, I’m not done talking about it, and I’d like to highlight some of these issues.
I finally had the chance to get down to the Cardinals Museum and team store at Busch Stadium to take some photographs of uniforms, and hopefully these photos I took will speak louder than my explanation of what is really wrong with Nike’s executions.
On the right is a 2023 jersey with the carryover template from Majestic Athletic (but produced by Nike), and you can really see how the chainstitch embroidery looks, and that it is stitched directly into the fabric of the uniform. What you can’t see is a white felt backing that goes inside the uniform, which is used as a sort of backplate for the embroidery threads to hook on to. If I hadn’t told you that felt backing was there, or unless you opened up a jersey to see it for yourself, you would never know it was there. It is totally invisible from the front, making the Birds on the Bat really stand out and look fantastic. This iteration of stitching technique started in 2013 and ran through 2023, and it is the best the Birds on the Bat has ever looked on a uniform in the team’s history.
On the left is a 2024 jersey with the new Nike template and what I call The Birds on the Patch. You can clearly see the patch outlines and stitches around the logo, and that it is not directly embroidered into the jersey fabric. Instead it’s embroidered onto a patch and then applied onto the jersey fabric. This causes some visible ugliness and creates a lot of outlines and awkward fill-in areas, notably between the ‘L’ and ‘o’ in ‘Louis.’ The other main difference in this logo application is the navy blue outlines stitching technique. The navy blue threads that outline the Birds, the Bat, and the St. Louis lettering are all done in what is called satin-stitch. This is different than chain-stitch embroidery, and while the satin-stitch does allow for more detail in the logo, it still isn’t chain-stitch, and it breaks the tradition. Beginning in 1922, the Birds on the Bat have always been entirely chain-stitched. We’re talking about 102 years in a row, One Hundred and Two, the Cardinals exclusively used chain-stitched embroidery for the Birds on the Bat. And yes, I’m including 1956 in that number, because in ’56 Sluggerbird on the sleeve was entirely chain-stitched! It is a true travesty that Nike wanted to get rid of our tradition, so give some credit to Bill DeWitt III who fought for keeping chain-stitch embroidery to apply the red and yellow portions of the logo.
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Shifting gears, I want to also talk about the uniform’s piping. Piping, traditionally, has been a type of braid that is stitched onto the jersey. In the Cardinals’ case, since our early years we have used braid for piping near the ends of the sleeves and around the headspoon placket down the front of the jersey. It was always real braid that was applied to the jersey, and that lasted through 2023. When Nike changed the uniform template in 2024, for our alternate jerseys that have piping, they kept the braid that outlines the placket area, but for some reason changed the sleeve piping to this fake, printed-on piping. And in doing so, they created a second shirt template for uniforms that had the piping. Instead of using one shirt template in different colors and applying braid onto the sleeve, they created an entirely new shirt. This new shirt template specifically for piping added extra pieces of fabric to the ends of the sleeves that I refer to as sleeve extensions, and the piping is not applied as braid, it’s a change in fabric color.
Comparatively, in 2023 and prior seasons, there was no template difference between any of our shirts. The only differences between the shirts were their produced color (white, gray, cream, or blue), and whether or not braid was applied to the shirt. The shirt construction was the same. But again, in Nike’s new 2024 and 2025 system, there are two different shirt templates. Type 1 is our white and gray shirts, and Type 2 is our cream and blue shirts. And in order for the team to have sleeve piping on our Type 2 cream and blue shirts, we have to have different shirt templates, one with sleeve extensions and one without. Take a look at the photos below to see what I’m talking about.
The photo above of the blue road alternate clearly shows that this is not real braid, and that the ends of the sleeve are in a completely different material than the rest of the garment. This extra piece of fabric we see at the ends of the sleeve is very similar to the sleeves of the polyester pajama jerseys worn in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. And as much as we love those uniforms, it doesn’t fit the style of the modern uniform, and looks tacky, cheap, and ugly.
Thankfully Nike kept real braid piping on the front of the uniform, which you can see above. The photo above does a decent job of showing how that extra braid is stitched onto the jersey, as opposed to being a fake print-on. But you can get a better look at it yourself in person. I highly recommend heading down to the team store between Gates 3 and 4 at Busch Stadium. Head to the jersey section that has the authentic or elite or whatever Nike buzzword they’re using, and get your hands on it, take a close look for yourself. And while you’re down there, head over the Cardinals Museum and see some game-worn jerseys. Even though they’re behind glass, you still get a great look at the differences between 2023 jerseys and 2024 jerseys, and you’ll be able to see the differences in stitching techniques and other uniform appointments.
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Cardinals Uniforms & Logos 