Ask Me Anything

The latest (and final!) installment in an occasional Uni Watch series.

Reminder: Uni Watch’s time on Substack is coming to a close in late May. After that, I’ll be taking a break for at least a month, and then my Substack will relaunch at some point this summer with a new name and a new subject focus. To learn more about all of this, including what it will mean for those of you with paid subscriptions, look here. — Paul

Hello! It’s time for the latest edition of “Ask Me Anything,” where Uni Watch readers submit questions and I do my best to respond to them.

Since I’ll be leaving Uni Watch in a few weeks, this will be my final AMA, at least under the Uni Watch umbrella. When my Substack relaunches this summer with a non-uni focus, it’s possible that I’ll keep doing AMA segments, but we’ll see.

If you want to catch up on previous AMA installments, look here. There are 11 additional editions, dating back several years (when I was calling it “Question Time” instead of AMA), here.

Without further ado, here we go:

2024 has been absolutely bonkers with uni news (MLB fiasco, several new NFL sets, the interviews with Tom Andrich, etc.). With your time at Uni Watch about to end, do you find this late deluge reinvigorating (“This is exactly why I do this!”) or exhausting (“Boy, I won't miss this!”)?

It’s both, in nearly equal measure. Let’s put it this way: I’m really happy to be going out with a bang, but these last few months have reminded me of why I need to get off the hamster wheel of covering a daily beat. Frankly, it seems almost like a storybook ending, with all the big stories and breaking news. Couldn’t have drawn it up any better!

How would you assess the overall current state of the Big Four pro sports leagues and their uniforms?

• NFL: They get lots of points for being the only Big Four league without uni ads. Most of the primary designs aren’t terrible, but I fear that raising the limit on helmet shell colors to three is going to result in a slew of bad alternate designs. Also: The sock situation is a mess, and I doubt they’ll ever be able to put that toothpaste back in the tube. It really affects the beauty of the game.

• MLB: Currently at a low ebb, for obvious reasons. Assuming they’re able to fix at least some of the 2024 issues by next year, things will look a little better going forward. But the sleeve ads are a travesty, the City Connect costumes are a disaster, and the pajamists have won. Still my favorite sport and my favorite uniforms, but things appear to be on the downswing.

• NBA: Too many designs, too much churn, it’s all a blur. On the plus side, shorts are currently at an agreeable length.

• NHL: If you ignore the ads (on the jerseys and helmets, ugh), this is clearly the best-looking league of the four. And also the only one not outfitted by Nike. Hmmmm. But what will they do now that Fanatics is taking over? We’ll find out soon enough.

What are your thoughts on the current state of non-Uni Watch coverage of uniforms? It feels like there's more coverage than before, but potentially at the loss of the nuance and details surrounding uniforms (like how some outlets use “jerseys” as a catchall term for “uniforms,” for example).

Like most things, I think it’s a mixed bag. There’s definitely more coverage than ever before, but most of it, as you said, isn’t very nuanced. At the same time, however, I don’t think there’s that much demand for nuanced coverage. Most fans just want the basics, including where they can buy the latest jersey or cap, so that’s what most media outlets give them. It’s easy to forget that the typical fan — even the typical uniform fan — doesn’t care as much about the granular uni details as the people who read this Substack.

To be fair, many of the writers who end up writing about uniforms these days are team beat reporters who know a lot about baseball (or football, or whatever) but not a lot about uniforms. But if you’re covering Team X and they release a new jersey, that’s now part of your beat. Ditto for the guys in the broadcast booth. In general, everyone’s doing the best they can, but they often don’t have the background for covering such a specific niche. As a result, a lot of details are either overlooked or mischaracterized. I’m sure the same thing happens in other specialized subject areas covered by non-specialist journalists.

My only real gripe is when uni coverage just parrots team talking points without any critical scrutiny, whether about “storytelling” or “jersey patch partners” or other marketingspeak that’s clearly obfuscatory nonsense. In short, I wish more uni writers would deploy their bullshit detectors. That’s part of any journalist’s job, regardless of the subject area.

When referring to uniform-design “storytelling,” you always put that term in quotes. Why?

Because it’s a bogus, ersatz use of the term. Novelists are storytellers, and personal essayists, and screenwriters, songwriters, certain radio/podcast people, certain journalists, certain visual artists, and so on. But marketers overloading a piece of lifestyle apparel with bells and whistles in order to get people to buy an overpriced polyester shirt are not storytellers. They’re just marketers.

Are you all in on the manner in which MLB pays tribute to Jackie Robinson, uni-wise?

The A’s wearing Brooklyn Dodgers-style 42s on Jackie Robinson Day 2024.

For many years, I have loved the annual spectacle of players wearing No. 42 on April 15. I think it’s one of the best things Bud Selig ever did. (Okay, so that’s a pretty low bar, but still.)

Lately, though, I’ve begun thinking that it’s, you know, enough. If the Robinson family is okay with it, I think it may be time to scale things back and have just one player on each team wear No. 42 on April 15.

If they stick with the current system, however, I’d like to see them go back to letting teams wear No. 42 in their own distinctive number fonts, instead of going with the old Brooklyn Dodgers font. As Uni Watch reader/commenter Dan Wohl recently observed, “All the 42s being rendered in Dodgers blue is brutal from an aesthetic perspective and illogical from a symbolism perspective. The day is about honoring the man, not the team he played for, no?” Indeed.

Looking back on the daily blog’s history, do you prefer the current format of multiple posts in one day to the old format of one large morning post?

I think each approach has its pros and cons. One big advantage of the current format is that we’re much better at covering breaking news as it happens, and we can offer a bit more depth on medium-sized stories that would previously have been consigned to a sentence or two in the Ticker. Basically, Uni Watch is a much more effective news site now than it was under the old system.

Also, the old system often led to reaaaally long posts, consisting of the lede, a bunch of sub-ledes, the Ticker, Culinary Corner, and so on. I think that got to be a bit much, and I think small news items function better now as stand-alone posts instead of as sub-ledes.

The trade-off is that the site is a bit less quirky and voice-driven than it once was. Also, I know some people miss the predictable rhythm of having one post show up every morning and getting their daily Uni Watch diet in that one meal, so to speak, as opposed to the scattershot way it works now. Sometimes I miss that too!

Overall, the old way worked better when the blog was one component of my larger workload. But over the past few years, the blog has been almost all of my work, and I think that situation has been well-suited to the new format.

What's one lesson regarding uniform design you hope teams can take from the past 25 years of Uni Watch?

That fans definitely care about this stuff, and that teams should therefore be careful about tinkering with their visual brands. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And if you feel compelled to fix it anyway, try to do so with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

What is the one uniform set that you changed your opinion on most over time?

Probably the Diamondbacks’ first set. I initially hated the use of purple and teal, which were the trendy uniform colors at the time. But that set now feels like a modern classic to me. I wish they’d go back to it.

If you were able to make one permanent league-specific uniform rule for any of the Big Four pro leagues or the NCAA, what would it be?

I’d mandate that all MLB players go high-cuffed. I’m tempted to say that I’d also mandate the use of stirrups instead of socks, but I don’t want to push my luck.

Will you regularly, or even occasionally, read Uni Watch after you leave, and even occasionally comment on the site? Or will this be a clean break?

I will continue to own the daily blog, so I’ll occasionally check in on things. And of course I’ll also be available to help out Phil if he has questions or needs assistance with something. But I don’t plan to be a daily reader, at least not right away. Maybe I’ll build back up to that at some point, but I don’t want Phil to feel like I’m looking over his shoulder, plus I’m actually looking forward to being somewhat out of the loop, uni-wise. It’ll be fun to discover the latest uni development simply by turning on the TV, watching a game, and being surprised by some new design whose unveiling took place without my even realizing it. Other people get to experience that all the time, and now I’ll finally get my turn.

Do you really think you can go cold turkey on Uni Watch, or will you not be able to resist the temptation to weigh in on something wonderful or egregious?

There are many things about the next phase of my life that I’m unsure of. But I am absolutely 100% certain that I’ll be able to walk away from uniform writing. I’ve had my say and left it all out on the field. I know it’s time, so walking away won’t be a “cold turkey” struggle. It just feels like the natural next phase of my life as a creative professional.

I may occasionally pinch-hit for Phil over on the blog, but only if he’s unavailable for some reason (illness, family obligation, etc.). I have zero interest in coming back to cover big stories, nor would I want to deprive Phil of the opportunity to cover them. It’s gonna be his show, not mine.

I know that this has probably come up before, but one last time: What is your all- time favorite uniform in each of the Big Four pro leagues?

Let’s start with MLB, where I’ve always loved the mid- to late-1960s Cardinals.

Perfection.

For the NFL, I’ll take the Bart Starr-era Packers.

Those saturated colors are soooooo tasty.

In the NHL, give me the Rangers in white, anytime in the pre-Reebok era.

The vertically arched NOB is the cherry on top.

And for the NBA, gimme The City, baby, all day long.

The original City Edition.

I’m a Brazilian Uni Watch reader. How do you feel about the increasing American sports trend of holding games abroad?

Aside from the time-zone implications (I don’t want to have to wake up at 3am to watch my favorite team), I’m fine with it.

A lot of the news surrounding uniforms has been negative over the past couple of years, at least from your perspective. Now that you’re moving on from Uni Watch, what are some more positive interests that you look forward to investing your time in?

From a work/writing perspective, I’ll be using this Substack as a platform for expressing curiosity, enthusiasm, and delight regarding small details of the world around me. This will include a regular feature about people’s favorite objects, plus some personal storytelling, minutiae obsession, and so on. I expect it to be a very positive exercise.

Aside from work, I also plan to learn how to play the ukulele, to start volunteering for an organization that’s important to me, and to spend more time with my 100-year-old mom. Again, these should all be positive developments.

If you you could choose to live anywhere in the whole world other than NYC, where would you choose, and why?

New Zealand, for sure. I’ve been there twice and have some friends there, and I’m pretty sure I’d be comfortable there. In fact, I actually considered moving there about 10 years ago but ultimately decided not to. Now it’s too late, because they don’t give permanent residency visas to people over 55. So I missed my chance, but that’s okay — I still love NYC.

Do you ever interview someone and then end up not using or publishing the interview?

For big, wide-ranging interviews like the ones I publish here on Substack, I don’t think I’ve ever done one and then not published it. But in the course of basic reporting, I often do interviews that turn out to be busts. Just this week, in fact, I spoke to a former Fanatics employee who I thought might provide some insight regarding the current MLB fiasco, but that interview didn’t turn up anything useful. It happens.

I like mono-colored football uniforms. Why do you dislike them?

For me, football uniforms are all about contrast. I like to see contrast between the jersey and the pants, and also between the pants and the socks. Otherwise, the uniform looks too much like a bodysuit or a superhero costume, especially because the shoulder pads and helmets already make the players seem a bit super-human.

Do you have any intel on why NHL teams stopped wearing their white jerseys at home in 2003? I think just about every team looks better in white, and I don't know why teams are choosing to wear their inferior dark jerseys.

First, I completely agree with you that the white uniform looks better than the colored uniform for almost every NHL team.

My understanding is that the league switched to wearing color at home because fans purchase more colored jerseys than white jerseys, so they wanted to wear the more popular look at home.

Update: Twitter-er @AnthraxJones has a more nuanced and complete answer: Most alternate jerseys were colored (again, because they sold better), so switching to color at home on a full-time, league-wide basis allowed road teams to pack only one set of uniforms when embarking on a multi-city road trip.

The Falcons, Rams, and Patriots are all entering year five of their miserable uni sets. Any chance that they have seen the light and will jettison them after the 2024 season?

It’s certainly possible, but I haven’t heard anything about any of those teams having a new uni set in the works.

What is the NFL’s reason for insisting that chinstraps must be white?

I’ve never heard a specific rationale for that one, but I assume it’s a general preference for consistency and orderliness, much like their old rule that limited shoe colors to either black or white. That rule was eventually scrapped, and I suspect the chinstrap rule will eventually be reevaluated as well. I’m a bit surprised that it hasn’t already happened.

Be careful what you wish for, though. Once they allow different strap colors, you know players will start pushing the limits with neon/DayGlo straps, plaid straps, striped straps, polka dot straps, and more. Might be better off sticking with white.

I know you don’t like “black for black’s sake,” especially for the Mets. But I’ve always loved their BFBS jerseys, just because of how badass they look. How do you deal with people who love BFBS jerseys if you don't like them?

Obviously, I don’t expect everyone to agree with all of my opinions or share all of my viewpoints. So if you like the Mets’ BFBS look, I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you that’s fine. We can agree to disagree!

I know you hate purple, so this might be a tricky question for you, but what is your favorite LSU men’s basketball jersey of all time? Mine is the design from the Pete Maravich era, particularly the purple road uni.

I’m not knowledgeable enough about the full range of LSU hoops history to answer this question. But the Maravich mention gives me an excuse to showcase this photo:

Holy moly, look at those Tulane uniforms — the vertically striped socks, the white-on-white typography, the belted shorts! (And yes, the LSU uni is nice as well.)

What is your take on the increasing use of same-color-on-same-color uni elements, like the Marlins’ black jersey script, the Rays’ City Connect uniform, and the Angels’ red jersey?

Not a fan. This isn’t a matter of taste; it’s a matter of legibility and, thus, basic design functionality. (The NBA learned a hard lesson about this with its “Big Color” Christmas uniforms in 2012.)

But hey, this problem has always been with us. Just look at that Tulane uniform in the last photo! It seems that the lesson has to be re-learned again and again.

What’s your all-time favorite memorial patch on a uniform?

I hate the Dallas Cowboys with a passion, but they totally nailed it with with their Tom Landry memorial patch. No name, no initials, just the fedora. Perfect.

The Cowboys wore their Tom Landry memorial patch in 2000.

It’s kind of sad that we’ll never see this type of patch again, now that coaches just wear licensed merch on the sidelines.

I feel like you once wrote something about the difference between being broke and being poor, but I can’t remember the details. Can you print that again?

Did I really write about that on Uni Watch? I have no memory of doing so. But it’s true that I draw a distinction between those two terms, so I guess I must have written about it at some point. Anyway, here’s how I see it: If you’re broke, that means you don’t have any money; if you’re poor, that means you don’t have any money and you also don’t know anyone who has any money.

Or to put it another way: Barring a natural catastrophe or a nuclear war or something along those lines, I will never be poor. Because even if I’m broke, I know plenty of people who’ll be there for me, who’ll have my back, who’ll make sure I’m okay.

That’s a serious privilege. Poor people aren’t so fortunate.

As a writer, you work with words every single day. With that in mind, what is your favorite word?

Oh man, there are so many good words! Here is a very incomplete list of words and word-related tropes that I enjoy:

• I like the word autumnal, in part because autumn is my favorite season but also because I like how the silent n suddenly gains a voice.

• There are only two English words that end in “cuit”: circuit and biscuit. For circuit, we have the adjective circuitous (as in “She took the circuitous route”), but there’s no corresponding adjective for biscuit. Such a word really needs to exist, so I’ve taken the liberty of inventing it. When I make biscuits, I say that I’m “taking the biscuitous route.” More recently, this word has come into greater use at Uni Watch HQ, for obvious reasons.

• I like singular nouns that end in “ium” and whose plurals end in “ia”: stadium/stadia, terrarium/terraria, atrium/atria, aquarium/aquaria, and so on.

• I also like singular nouns that end in “is” and whose plurals end in “es”: basis/bases, genesis/geneses, oasis/oases, thesis/theses, hypothesis/hypotheses, antithesis/antitheses (okay, so those last three were essentially the same thing).

You are the only person I’ve seen who spells Lukas with a k instead of a c. I’m guessing it is the anglicized version of another name, but do you have any insight as to why your family spelled it that way?

Our family name is Lewkowitz, but my parents changed it to Lukas long before I was born. Your basic Jewish assimilationist move. They went with the k as a nod to the original surname.

My surname spelling is atypical but not unheard of. More about that here.

Will all of the uni-related Substack content still be available after you rebrand the Substack this summer?

Yes. Paid subscribers will still have access to my full Substack archive, including the uni-related content.

What is your everyday work setup? Laptop, keyboard, monitors, mouse, etc? How has that changed over time?

For many years, I had a room that I used as a dedicated office. It had a desk with a nice chair, a computer with a big monitor, and so on. I’d occasionally work in other rooms with my laptop, but I figured that the big monitor was essential to my Uni Watch work, since I was writing about visual stuff, so I spent most of my time in the office.

Then, I think around 2013-ish, I got a bird feeder, which I hung from a tree outside one of my living room windows. (The office didn’t have a window that looked out on a tree.) I wanted to see the activity at the feeder, so I began spending more and more time on the living room sofa with my laptop. The more I did that, the more I came to realize that I didn’t really need the big monitor after all. So I sold the desktop computer and the monitor and began doing all my work by laptopping on the sofa. I still do that today.

Your position on ads on sports uniforms is well-known. I’m curious to know what you think about ads in more appropriate settings, like on the side of a truck or in a magazine. Do you find any to be attractive? Do you have favorites?

I love commercial truck designs and often admire them (but rarely photograph them or remember them, sorry). As for magazine ads, I have several vintage ones displayed in my home, along with other kinds of advertising displays. Here’s a small sampling:

What was the biggest “big time” moment for Uni Watch?

I’d say Uni Watch appearing as a regular column on ESPN.com was pretty big. But being mentioned on a Mets game broadcast was also cool.

Out of all of the uni-verse’s current norms in 2024, what would’ve been the craziest to imagine in 1999, when Uni Watch started?

Probably that the NBA would no longer have designated home or road uniforms.

If you could have a beer with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and what would you talk about? (Assume language would be no barrier.)

Martin Luther King. And we’d talk about capitalism, America, and the arc of the moral universe.

Here’s what your impending departure from Uni Watch feels like for me: You have a favorite restaurant, a place you've been going for years. You love the food, the drinks, the vibe. You get to know the people who own the place. It feels like home. Then, one day, it closes. Paul, when’s a time this happened to you? A favorite place closed down, leaving a little hole in your heart? You got over it, but still wish you could go back?

Oh man, this has happened so many times! Having lived for 37 years in New York — a city that is constantly reinventing itself at a breakneck pace — I carry around a mental graveyard of favorite bars, restaurants, more bars, rock clubs, specialty shops, and a few more bars that shut down. Like you said, I got over it each time, and there are always new places to explore and discover, but those losses take their toll, like a buildup of scar tissue. Dang.

When referring to your uniform tastes, you often describe yourself as a classicist. Have your tastes evolved over time? In other words, did you enjoy a certain uniform style when you were younger and then “grow out of it,” or have you always liked certain looks throughout the years?

Generally speaking, I’d say my aesthetic tastes have remained pretty constant. Or maybe it would be better to say that my aesthetic values have remained constant, by which I mean that I tend to appreciate clean lines and crisp composition, and am generally suspicious of superfluous visual gewgaws. Does this long-term consistency reflect an admirable devotion to principle or a tiresome inability to change? I’ll let you decide.

Are there any opening sequences or broadcast theme songs, past or present, that you consider your favorites?

The old Monday Night Football theme music still gets to me!

Have you ever interviewed any equipment managers?

Yes! Here’s one I did a few years ago with Oakland A’s equipment manager Steve Vucinich, and here’s one with L.A. Kings assistant equipment manager Bob Halfacre.

Have you ever dealt with copyright/trademark complaints regarding the membership card program or any of your other products?

There’s never been a complaint about the membership cards. I did have to shut down the theoretical T-shirts after a certain attorney from a certain office told me, “These designs are really clever, really good. And now you need to stop doing them.” I also had to stop doing the Uni Watch ransom note T-shirt, although I forget the specifics surrounding that one.

Back in MLB’s Majestic era, it seemed like one-off throwback uniforms were fairly common, with a few games even featuring both teams wearing throwbacks. What happened to these games, and will they ever make a comeback?

One-off throwback games have happened under Nike. For example, quite a few teams wore Negro League throwbacks last year. (As always, the participation of the visiting team is determined by the home team, because the home team pays for all of the throwback uniforms.)

One-off designs — or, as MLB calls them, “limited-use uniforms” — are restricted this year, however, due to the rollout of Nike’s new template. The plan was for one-offs to return next season, although it’s not clear how that might be affected by the fiasco-driven revisions.

I didn't expect to get invested in a writer’s life when I started reading your ESPN columns work 20 years ago. It happened gradually, but I'm glad it did, and it leads me to this question: When you disappear from public life, what do you want people to remember? I realize you're not disappearing or dying now, but a major life change is often when you think about something like that.

Honestly, I haven’t thought about that. But something along the lines of “He got people to think a bit harder about the things they previously took for granted” would be nice.

What has been your favorite story — uni-related or otherwise — that you’ve covered over the last 25 years?

Probably the original Permanent Record series, where I tracked down the stories behind a bunch of very old report cards that I found in a discarded file cabinet.

The New Jersey beefsteak story was also very special.

I’m sure you’d cite uniform ads as the worst uni development of the past 25 years. What do you think is the uni-verse’s most positive development during that time?

Hmmm. The increased use of accents and other diacritical marks on NOBs is a plus, as it honors players’ real identities and teaches us things about other cultures. And in a uni-adjacent development, there are fewer MLB stadiums with artificial turf than there were in 1999.

I feel like there must be other positive developments, but I confess that I’m drawing a blank. Little help..?

When you started Uni Watch, very little was written about sports uniforms. Today, uniform talk is everywhere. How much do you think Uni Watch itself is responsible for that?

Uni Watch has probably helped to validate or legitimize uniform coverage to a certain extent. But I think the bigger factors for the growth of uni chatter are (a) the explosion in jersey and cap merchandising, (b) the corresponding explosion in the number of alternate uniforms that teams roll out, and (c) the advent of social media, which is tailor-made for uni commentary.

Do you have any regrets in your time running the Uni Watch site?

If I went back and catalogued everything that’s happened, I’m sure there would be many, many things I’d do differently if I had the chance to start over. But one thing sticks out: There were a couple of times that I ridiculed the WNBA, saying, “Nobody cares.” That was ignorant, lazy, and wrong. A few readers chided me for it, and they were right. I deeply regret that.

What are your proudest achievements with Uni Watch?

I’m proudest of bringing together our comm-uni-ty of like-minded obsessives who Get It™. Countless people over the years have told me, “Thank god I discovered your work — I thought I was the only one!” It’s been a privilege to watch Uni Watch serve as the hub for our shared passion for athletics aesthetics.

You are clearly the world’s foremost expert in uniform aesthetics. To what extent do you take pride in that?

Here’s the thing: When I started Uni Watch in 1999, I wasn’t nearly as uni-knowledgeable as I am now. I learned a lot on the job, and the reason I was able to do that was that Uni Watch turned out to be such a durable, long-running project. So that’s what I feel good about: Creating and legitimizing the uniform beat as a new form of sportswriting, and as an enduring field of study. The knowledge I accumulated along the way is just a nice side benefit.

———

That’ll do it for this final round of Ask Me Anything on Uni Watch!

Whether you’re a questioner, a reader, or both, I want to thank all of you so much for engaging with me in this Q&A format. These sessions always make me think harder, which is a good thing. I hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as I have!

Paul Lukas has been writing about uniforms for over 20 years. If you like his Premium articles, you’ll probably like his daily Uni Watch Blog, plus you can follow him on Twitter and Facebook and check out his Uni Watch merchandise. Have a question for Paul? Contact him here.