Woah, woah, woah… what?! nikeyousonsabitches… you came out with more of these shirts without telling me? And one of them is Tony Gwynn? How dare you come play in my backyard without giving me a heads up on it. Humbly, I wrote an amazing piece on this Nike Cooperstown Heritage Collection of facial hair tshirts called “Some Sweet Silhouettes” here. Now? Nike has come out with a few more, some good, some hideous, and they’ve renamed it the super duper punny Nike Cooperstown Hair-itage Collection. Get it? Zing! A few weeks ago, this blog got on an online search hit for somebody searching “nike hairitage keith hernandez”… I made fun of it on Twitter, it was so stupid. So well done, Nike… killer pun. Well, as far as I can find…searching both the MLB and Nike websites… here are the new shirts.
Willie Stargell. I gotta admit, I like this one. Pittsburgh doesn’t have much going for them in general, and the Pirates specifically have been abysmal since Brian Giles got traded to the Padres, so I’m glad they have a cool t-shirt to get excited about. Yeah, yeah, I know, they were abysmal back then too, but at least Giles was roided up enough to hit bombs.
Willie McGee. Really? Hundreds of thousands of Major
League Baseball players since the inception of the game, and Nike, you came up with Willie McGee? Shoot, there’s probably dozens of St. Louis Cardinals that are more deserving. As you can see from this picture on the side, this is a pretty decent depiction, but just horrible player choice. Quick…find a player in MLB history uglier than Willie McGee. I’ll save you some time, there isn’t one. I guess that’s one thing Nike got right. How do we pay tribute to Willie without actually showing his ugly mug? Boom, a silhouette tshirt…
Jay Buhner. Hell, the Willie McGee shirt is a grand slam of a pick compared to Jay effin Buhner. Who? I had to look to clown up because I barely even remembered him. You know who I do remember… Ken Griffey, Jr. you jerks. Shoot, if not Junior, you couldn’t have thrown the Seattle Mariners an Ichiro bone? He’s always had that scraggly lil goatee… just make a tshirt with a bunch of really spaced out black hairs. Sucker would sell like hotcakes. Jay Buhner…pfft.
Robin Yount. It’s perfect. Well done on this one. I love Yount. Good depiction.
Dennis Eckersley. This one is great. Always loved Eckersley. Great shirt. Kinda feel bad for the dude though… great career, but when I see him… this is all I think about. Sorry man.
“In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!” – Vin Scully
Andre Dawson. This t-shirt just keeps getting stupider. Not new, just a new name. Last time, Nike confirmed this was Fergie Jenkins, and now, on the MLB website, they are saying it’s The Hawk. Dumb.
**updated** Our friends over at Chitwood & Hobbs pointed out that we forgot one. Eddie Murray. There’s a lot going on with this one… very Sasquatch-esque.
Reggie Jackson. They already had a Mr. October Yankees t-shirt… now they’ve got one for the Oakland A’s. I like it. Next, I want an Angels t-shirt with a revolver at the bottom of it. God save the Queen.
Tony Gwynn. I love that they gave the San Diego Padres a shoutout, but dang… this? I mean, Tony Gwynn rarely rocked facial hair, or a fro. I mean, clearly this is the era they are capturing with this tshirt…
Even Padres fans don’t think of this when they think of Gwynn… and certainly the rest of baseball doesn’t either. Padres fans, if you like it enough to rock it… get it here.
So, Padres repping? Yea! Gwynn depiction? Fail. (Btw, thanks to @matthewverygood on Twitter for bringing the Tony Gwynn shirt to my attention.) Like I said the first time around on these t-shirts… I love the idea, and these are generally cool shirts, but it’s certainly not an idea original to Nike. In addition, they are too crisp and clean… they should be much more distressed and vintage looking. Lastly, that Nike swoosh on the front is awful, make it smaller and put it on the back. All in all though, keep em coming.
-bp