The red & blue mixed color batting helmet got mostly negative reviews at the press conference when the new uniforms were shown off. I’m kind of indifferent towards it, it’s not great, but it’s not totally awful, either.
I was wondering what happened to it during spring training. By all accounts, the players are wearing their names and numbers on the backs of uniforms this spring at the request of Nolan Ryan. That’s a move I really like – I never liked the fact guys didn’t have numbers on their backs in spring. To me, it reinforced the notion of “this isn’t real baseball going on, they’re not worthy enough to wear their real uniforms”. So I’m glad. I was also hoping to see the new helmet, but I haven’t seen that in any video clip or picture coming out of Arizona. Either they’re saving that for the regular season, or it’s been abandoned. Anyone know either way?
Edit: After I posted this, Chuck Morgan emailed me and said the batting helmet won’t be used until the regular season starts.
Edit 2: Since I posted this story originally, it was announced that the Rangers are now no longer going to use the two tone batting helmet. It’s being abandoned for just all blue and all red. I dunno, I kind of liked it in a “this looks weird” sort of way.
In a related note, last night I borrowed the new MLB 09: The Show for my Playstation 3. They have the new 2009 uniforms for the Rangers, although I did not see the red one. They did have the red and blue helmet. I’m including a couple of screen grabs from my PS3 below of Josh Hamilton (who struck out in the game thanks to my skill). Check ’em out:
Looks like you were playing the Phillies . . . you sure your strikeout wasn’t your subconscious at work? ;-)
That’s funny. :) Actually made laugh.
First game or two with any new baseball game, I’m usually ass in hitting the ball until I get the timing down. It’s especially worse when I switch from say the 2K game to the Sony game, or back, since their timings are different.
Red and blue helmets have been abandoned. The were horrendous looking in the pictures I saw. All red helmets for the twice a month you see the red jerseys, and the normal blue the rest of the time.
And yeah, switching from 2k8 to The Show, hitting is almost impossible for me too.