Are The Red Sox Green City Connect Jerseys Just A Money Grab — Or A Secret Weapon?
Boston got their fifth walk-off win in these threads last night against Miami.
The Boston Red Sox’s Fenway-themed City Connect uniforms have both given and taken away this year.
Let’s start with the bad. OutKick reporter and fellow Red Sox enthusiast Zach Dean wrote about how the cheap, money-grabbing Boston ownership group used them to screw 100k fans out of a lot of money.
How do we know this? The Red Sox hosted the Yankees for a weekend series in mid-June, and those City Connect uniforms were on sale. At the time, Rafael Devers was the most popular player on the team, so fans were all too eager to drop over $200 on a trendy new jersey of his.
However, hours after the series ended, Boston traded Devers to San Francisco. Many fans probably wanted to return their jerseys of the slugging DH, but they couldn’t due to team policy.
Coincidence? Perhaps. They didn’t invent that rule just for the weekend. But given the extent the Fenway Sports Group goes to be cheap and fill their pockets while disregarding the team, I wouldn’t put it past them.
After all, they let stars like Mookie Betts, Kyle Schwarber, and Nate Eovaldi walk for little or nothing in return, and sent them to teams that have been to or won a World Series in the past five years. Furthermore, they have made zero to no big-time moves at the trade deadline over the past four seasons in an attempt to bolster the roster. Ticket prices have stayed the same, but the team’s payroll has gone down - drastically.
(Am I a little bitter? Admittedly, yes.)
But since that fateful weekend in June, the Sox have done some pretty darn awesome things in those uniforms.
Take Friday night as an example. Despite only notching three hits all game, Boston earned a 2-1 walk-off win against Miami in those uniforms thanks to a single from Trevor Story. That makes the team 5-3 overall when wearing them, and all five of them have been walk-offs (three of which came after the Devers trade).
Like most things in life, the perception of those uniforms is complicated. Fans who bought the Devers jerseys back in June have every right to be peeved at the timing of everything.
But I’d be willing to bet those fans - and everyone else in Red Sox nation - would be happy that they are also seemingly helping the Sox win dramatic games.
Boston will need more of that magic as the season enters the home stretch, regardless of what uniform they are wearing.