Major League Baseball Is Going Through an Accessory Crisis

Don’t get me wrong: self-expression is cool and good. Fighting back against deeply-rooted—and oftentimes stuffy and outdated—qualities of 100-year old institutions is admirable and necessary. But the methods of doing so still matter. In the case of Major League Baseball players incorporating every color of the rainbow into their on-field wardrobe, reversing course on decades upon decades of boring and unimaginative looks, some are doing so in a way that might be doing more harm than good, at least on the eyes.

In his very own division, Bogaerts has a contemporary who is also peacocking, and big time.

Norm Hall/Getty Images

Here, Ketel Marte—a very, very good player who’s also the poster child of the accessory crisis—is wearing purple on his sleeve and batting gloves. To be clear, the sleeve, the gloves, and the cleats he was wearing that day are all sick. But the problem is that, even though his accessories pay tribute to the Diamondbacks’ old school purple-and-teal color scheme…the Diamondbacks don’t wear purple and teal anymore! (This is part of the problem, the fact that the Diamondbacks’ constant reinvention has left them without a true aesthetic identity.) They wear red and black now—with, to be fair, a tiny bit of teal. Even more puzzlingly, Marte’s teammate Geraldo Perdomo is predominantly going with yellow around the edges. Diamondbacks’ slugger Joc Pederson is also a fan of sprucing things up with yellow, and it’s not totally working either. With Pederson’s sartorial choices, we’ve got a little ketchup and mustard situation going on.

Norm Hall/Getty Images