What Not to Wear: MLB strikes out with its latest offering for women

I just want a cool shirt with my favorite baseball team’s logo on it. I don’t want it to be bedazzled, glittery, distressed or so tissue thin I might as well be wearing an actual tissue. I don’t want it to have a neckline that plunges down to my bellybutton. I don’t want it to read something incredibly condescending like “Future Mrs. Jeter.” And I absolutely, unequivocally, do not want it to be pink. I would rather wear a shirt with a Red Sox logo on it than one in pink. (Okay, maybe not, but it’s a close call).

Every year, I buy a new Yankees T-shirt of some sort. While I have quite a collection, they tend to get some use, warranting an annual purchase (or so I justify): I wear them on the two actual hot Seattle summer days, to games, to work out or to annoy my Yankees-hating friends. And every year, I am amazed that out of the 100 or so shirts featured on the MLB site, there are maybe two or three I’d actually spend my hard-earned cash on.

This year’s biggest atrocity comes to us ladies via Victoria’s Secret Pink brand. If it’s truly mind-numbingly hideous, it’s usually this brand. It’s a Henley style baseball undershirt with your favorite team’s logo gussied up in sequins that would make Elizabeth Hurley’s Showgirls character drop her jaw in envy. But that’s not the best part. On the back, in billboard-sized lettering, it reads: THREE STRIKES YOU’RE OUT. (The caps are theirs, not mine.)

Seriously MLB, this is what you’ve got for me? Who did you test-market this one on, middle schoolers? (My apologies to seventh graders everywhere.) It’s not even clever. If you’re going to emblazon random baseball phrases on shirts (yeah, I get it’s supposed to have something to do with boys, giggle, giggle) why not go really random like Can of Corn, Frozen Rope or The Hot Corner? I might actually wear one of those.

In fairness, the landscape over the last decade has gotten better for women who love sports and want to show their allegiance with what they wear. In my archive is a 1999 Yankees back-to-back World Series Champions T-shirt. I rarely wear it except to bed because women’s sizing wasn’t offered so it’s huge. Fast-forward 10 years to 2009 and I was able to buy the exact same “Official Locker Room” World Series championship tee the Yankee players wore, but fitted to look good on a woman’s body.

In the fashion realm, I tend to like what Alyssa Milano does with her Touch line, as she usually gives a well-thought-out nod to current clothing trends. However, my favorite now are these short gold prom dresses. They do a great job with both fit and cool-looking retro styling. But for every well-designed clothing there is something with spangles and sparkles and moronic sayings that would make even Snooki puke.

To put it in words the MLB licensing dudes can understand: YOU’RE OUT.

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