Bluest of Baseball’s Blue Bloods, the Yankees, Bow Slightly to Fashion (Published 2016) (2024)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Most baseball teams change their uniforms as if they were underwear. An alternate third jersey (and sometimes a fourth and fifth), along with home and away, has become de rigueur. Logos get tweaked. Patches come and go. Color schemes get overhauled.

Throughout the years, though, the Yankees have offered a bulwark against encroaching fads.

Their uniform today is nearly identical to what it has been for generations: pinstripes at home, simple traveling grays and a dark blue cap with the iconic interlocking N and Y. The Yankees are the only team in baseball that does not have last names on the back of its home and road jerseys.

Babe Ruth would have looked little different in his uniform from the way Alex Rodriguez does in his.

So it was somewhat jarring Friday night when the Yankees came to bat here wearing new matte-finish batting helmets, something they plan to do on the road for the rest of the season.

The Yankees are hardly the only team that has departed in some way from the glossy, hard-plastic finish that baseball players wear — at least until they are covered in pine tar, dirt and scratches. The Pittsburgh Pirates began wearing them last year. The entire National League West wears matte-finish helmets this season. And the Yankees’ helmets remain the same conservative shade of blue, so dark it edges up to the border of black.

But still, these are the Yankees, impervious to whims, their uniforms a proxy for their blue bloodlines.