How the Mets got black in their uniforms

I really hate the black Mets uniforms. It screams “we want to sell these so, so bad!” And it’s not like there was anything wrong with the classic Mets unis. Indeed, they are among the best in baseball, being both handsome and -- with their stylistic nods to the Yankees (pinstripes) Giants (orange) and Dodgers (blue) -- highly symbolic of New York baseball history.

Yet they went with black. And today Paul Lukas -- ESPN’s uniform expert, die-hard Mets fan and supreme hater of the black Mets jersey -- tells the story of how the Mets got their black on.

He does it via an interview with the man who created the look, Bob Halfacre. There is a lot of talk in there about how the idea came to fruition -- the disgraced Charlie Samuels played a big role -- but Halfacre’s own inspiration is at least somewhat less craven than I imagined the decision to be:

My thought was this: I’ve only been to New York three or four times in my life, but what I remember is shadows. You have all these skyscrapers, so everything has shadows. You live there, so you probably take it for granted, but to me it was unique. City of shadows. One side of the street is sunny and warm, the other side is in shadow and cold. Everywhere you go in New York, there’s shadows. So I thought it was the perfect logo for a drop shadow, just to add a bit of depth.

Nice, but the black jerseys still suck. Go to the classic look all the time. Please.