This is shaping up to be a landmark season for baseball uniforms, for reasons both good and bad.



On the negative side of the ledger, this is the first year of Nike’s 10-year contract to provide the uniforms of all 30 major-league teams. That deal will require every team to wear the Nike swoosh on the right breast of all jerseys and the left rear pocket of all pants, not because Nike insisted on that placement, but because Major League Baseball offered it at an additional fee (that placement was also a part of the deal with Under Armour that fell through before Nike stepped in). That increased prominence of the maker’s mark is rumored to be the first step toward adding advertising patches to MLB uniforms, following the lead of the NBA, which added advertising to its uniforms for the 2017-18 season, the first year of its current contract with Nike. Because such ads would have to be negotiated into the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, we won’t see...