The San Francisco Giants on Monday unveiled the latest alternate jersey from the City Connect series, one that features an orange and white design, a silhouette of the Golden Gate Bridge and a unique fog gradient across the front, sleeves and numbering of the jerseys.
"We took main focuses for us that really stood out about San Francisco," Giants executive vice president of business operations Mario Alioto said. "One of them was the Golden Gate Bridge. It's internationally known everywhere in the world. It's a sign of welcoming to San Francisco. And as Mark Twain made famous, the coldest winter ever spent is the summer in San Francisco. The fog is what makes our city different."
The team will wear the uniforms for the first time during its series Friday through Sunday against the Washington Nationals, as well as for every Tuesday home game the rest of the season.
In this city, you're in the presence of Giants. #SFGiants | @nikediamond pic.twitter.com/eXPrO0UJj2
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) July 5, 2021
This jersey represents what we've always known about San Francisco, that there's more to us than meets the eye.#SFGiants | @nikediamond pic.twitter.com/yeFl1Fqsi2
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) July 5, 2021
The Giants join the Boston Red Sox, Miami Marlins, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks as teams with City Connect uniforms. In August, the Los Angeles Dodgers will be the last team to unveil a City Connect uniform this season.
While the Giants said they took an open-minded approach to various looks during the design process, they ultimately landed on one they felt toed the balance between classic and modern, a design that paid homage to the uniforms the team has worn from the playing days of Willie Mays to today.
"When you close your eyes and think about San Francisco, you think about the Giant orange, like the color that visually identified our team," Giants director of retail and authentication Gavin Werner said. "As we saw through the design process, the one that stood out the strongest leaned into that orange and allowed that orange to be represented on the headwear, on the sock, on some of the undershirt."
The team decided to lean into the "G" on the Giants' logo due to its instantly identifiable status among locals and baseball fans. But using the themes of the Golden Gate Bridge, the team decided to elongate the lettering to more resemble the towers of the iconic structure and add the bridge's silhouette to the side of the hat.
"This is something that you at first sight might not capture, but if you look at the journey around the entire horizontal plane, there's one line of fog where it starts," Alioto said. "It's all on that same level because that's the way that fog interacts with the build and interacts with the bridge in our city, and we wanted it to translate onto the jersey."
While the team already wears orange jerseys for Friday night home games, Werner hopes that wearing the new City Connect ones for Tuesday home games will appeal to a new generation of Giants fans.
"We wanted to strike the right balance between being a little uncomfortable and trying something new," Werner said. "Still having a traditional, foundational look to what we're doing. We think the orange does that. I think it does strike the balance between kind of a classic look along with a direction we've never gone before."