FanPost Friday: Mariners City Connect uniform exit interview

Hello and welcome back to FanPost Friday! Today in prime offseason content, we are going to look back on the first season of the Seattle Mariners City Connect uniform.

We discussed the uniform at great length here when they were first revealed and much to the chagrin of Mariners Sr. VP of Marketing Kevin Martinez, I did not love the City Connect threads overall (Kevin is a good sport and I applaud his years of willingness to converse with Mariners fans directly on Twitter). Like I said at the time, I think the jersey by itself is very good and it did, in fact, grow on me even more throughout the season. I loved seeing tons of fans wearing it around town, especially seeing kids rocking Julio and JP City Connects often around my oldest kid’s elementary school. The jersey is clearly a huge hit and I’m never upset to see the classic royal blue and yellow color combo of my childhood.

Working in the color black is still where it all stumbles for me. It’s meant as a nod to the black and white uniforms of the Seattle Steelheads, the short-lived West Coast Negro League team from 1946. The Steelheads throwback uniforms the Mariners wear now on Juneteenth are incredible and perfect in their classic simplicity (the black and white hat is probably my most-worn Mariners hat of the last three years or so because I wear black more often than colors that go with navy blue). The pants of said throwbacks (and the original uniforms) are notably not black, so wearing black pants with the City Connects still makes no sense to me on both an aesthetic level and as a homage, as well-meaning as it is. Same goes for the black brim on the hat. I get it, though. I also enjoy being inclusive whenever possible, so I’m certainly not against attempting to pay homage to as many past Pacific Northwest baseball teams as possible, but I feel like they had to sacrifice a cleaner aesthetic look in order to do so.

Ah well, nevertheless, we had some fun moments in 2023 while wearing the City Connect jerseys. The one that stands out the most to me feels like it will be forgotten by many due to the departures of both Paul Sewald and Teoscar Hernández, but Teo gave us our first walk-off victory on a City Connect Friday home game (versus his former team!) and he and Paul were FIRED UP about it. The moment resulted in some of my favorite photos of the whole season.

Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images

Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images

So for today’s prompt, let’s do a quick lil’ corporate EXIT INTERVIEW on the City Connect uniforms. Copy and paste these questions and put your answers in the comments, if you please.

1. What do you think went well about the Seattle Mariners City Connect uniforms?
2. What do you think could be improved about the Seattle Mariners City Connect uniforms?
3. If applicable, what prevented you from peak City Connect uniform enjoyment?

Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images

Have a great weekend everyone! Keep that stove hot and let’s go Kraken.