Shirts?

[Coachhimup]

I have seen so many black shirts. Black with gray, black with white stripes

 

Which black shirt are none softball shirts???

[ATXBlue]

Any black shirt is a non-softball shirt. Softball is predominantly powder blue and navy. 

For which black shirt you should get, I would ask around in your area because that will determine which one is most used. 

For my HS & Youth ball associations, we use the black with two stripes or "High School Black" as the default/must have shirt and then the black with grey panel "MLB Black" most guys have but it is not a required shirt. 

[MadMax]

Now, this wasn't the first umpire shirt, but this sure was the first one that started "the problem"... 

Well, this (wretched) style progressed into this:

The 2-stripe black shirt, AKA Stripes-on-Cuffs-&-Collars black, AKA Traditional black, AKA College black (until 2016)... AKA Classic black. 
This style endured for 10-15 years, until 2010 brought Majestic to MLB in the form of a newly minted official supplier to Major League Baseball. To kick off the new relationship, Majestic created a pair of shirts in a brand-new style in their new CoolBase fabric: 

This became known as the 2010 Vertical Stripe shirt, AKA the Pro Stripe shirt, AKA the Side Stripe shirt. This was, and has been, a great shirt. 

In 2015, Majestic developed a new rendition of their CoolBase fabric. They employed it on the wide variety of uniforms they provided to Major League Baseball, but when it came to employing it on the umpire uniforms, no one could decide on what new style to produce it into, so settled into the 2010 style that MLB umpires were at that time. As such, Majestic had to do something with the batch of fabric they had fabricated, else they would lose it and would have to write it off. So, they produced a run in a simple black model, unadorned with any contrasting colors, and with a few proposed features: 

The 2015 Plain Black was supplied to 3 crews during the MLB season, and feedback was generated regarding it. Its improved features were noted, such as garaged buttons to hinder button discoloration (black buttons turned purple, sky blue buttons turned pink in the frequent sun), but were not adopted; instead, new UV-resistant buttons were formulated. The primary feature that caught on, though, was a flank & tail panel that was stitched in in a different, more ventilated material to promote airflow. Together with MLBUs, it was decided to color this panel grey on the black shirt and black on the sky blue shirt. It was at this time that the color formula on the Sky Blue shirt was darkened in the intention of not revealing dampness as prominently (as my NWL colleagues observed and I experienced at NWL ASG21), but to mixed results. It could no longer be called "powder blue", though.

So, come the 2016 season, Majestic debuted these: 

It came to wear several different names – 2016 Panel style shirt, Pro Panel shirt, New MLB shirt, Shirt with Side Panel shirt. Whatever the color of panel, the panel was a welcome inclusion, as it was not only functional, but really hindered companies replicating cheap imitations. Companies like Smitty and Honig's have answered the challenge, and made some rather decent renditions; others, like (pathetic) Cliff Keen have not been able to answer the challenge, and instead wallow in continuing to produce the old styles (the collar-&-cuff striped things). 

Unfortunately, Majestic's parent company chose not to renew its contract with Major League Baseball, and the contract was to be bestowed upon UnderArmour. Soon after this was announced, UnderArmour inexplicably withdrew its involvement and left the contract vacant. Nike stepped in, and began a vigorous campaign to supply uniforms to all the MLB clubs and staff, save the umpires. Now, it may have been that Nike never addressed it, or that they did, and the MLBU's "council" did not approve of anything Nike proposed, but for the time being, Major League Umpires are continuing to use Majestic uniforms accompanied by a few... "one-off" supplements (jackets, windshirts, etc.). What's next, we don't know. 

But there you have it – those are the four "main" styles of black umpire shirts. As @ATXBlue mentioned, softball fervently and adamantly rejected black as a shirt color, instead preferring navy and powder blue. Only recently has new styles been introduced to softball, in a "curvy panel" style. 

[KenBAZ]

Thanks Max, love the 2015 all black but rarely get to wear it as not many partners have it.

At this point the MLB black with grey panels is the #1 shirt. Some guys prefer the MLB blue with black panels.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

[SH0102]

6 hours ago, KenBAZ said:

Thanks Max, love the 2015 all black but rarely get to wear it as not many partners have it.

At this point the MLB black with grey panels is the #1 shirt. Some guys prefer the MLB blue with black panels.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk
 

I love the MLB Blue shirt, but everyone seems to want to wear black all the time.  Being that black is the most slimming color, that's cool with me , haha, but I love the MLB blue and wish I could wear it more often.

Have you seen the "MLB Gray"?  Basically just flip the black and gray from the MLB Black shirt.  That looks pretty sharp.

One time my son's game, the umpire didn't show up, I had come from work in black dress pants and didn't have my umpire pants, only a couple shirts hanging in my car, so I did the MLB Gray shirt with black pants and I got a lot of comments about how nice I/it looked.

My black dress pants were dirtier than heck by the end of the game, but it was cool to do something different.

 

In my perfect world, I actually wear black when it is hot, and blue when it is not, because black doesn't show the sweat

[Thunderheads]

On 2/21/2022 at 2:11 AM, Coachhimup said:

I have seen so many black shirts. Black with gray, black with white stripes

 

Which black shirt are none softball shirts???

See the above question here guys .....  this wasn't a "what is the history of umpire shirts" question 🤪😆 (although I can see where @MadMax well documented post does help here!)  So much fun to read also!  

23 hours ago, ATXBlue said:

Any black shirt is a non-softball shirt. Softball is predominantly powder blue and navy. 

For which black shirt you should get, I would ask around in your area because that will determine which one is most used. 

For my HS & Youth ball associations, we use the black with two stripes or "High School Black" as the default/must have shirt and then the black with grey panel "MLB Black" most guys have but it is not a required shirt. 

This here ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ .... this is a great post/answer to this!

[MadMax]

On 2/21/2022 at 9:27 AM, ATXBlue said:

Any black shirt is a non-softball shirt. Softball is predominantly powder blue and navy.

So @Thunderheads (Jeff)... does this mean that Michigan is predominantly a softball state???   

[Thunderheads]

4 minutes ago, MadMax said:

So @Thunderheads (Jeff)... does this mean that Michigan is predominantly a softball state???   

🤣 ....... No ... for Michigan, softball is powder, w/ navy and white strips, and navy with powder and white stripes....

Navy w/ red and white is strictly baseball