This unhinged new baseball uniform from Japan is fashion at its . . . best

Baseball star Tsuyoshi Shinjo is many things, but a man of subtlety he is not. 

As a professional player, he was once lowered onto the field from the rafters of Japan’s Sapporo Dome. Later, as manager of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters team, he flew an actual hovercraft around the stadium to the backdrop of lasers and a thunderous soundtrack. At his first press conference as manager in 2021, he instructed reporters to call him “BIGBOSS”—a name he said he picked up living in Bali, and which he formally registered with the league and affixed to his uniforms.

And speaking of uniforms: BIGBOSS was a tad disappointed by the first redesign that happened under his tenure in early 2022. The team had jettisoned their longtime gold-accented palette for a more soccer-adjacent vibe, featuring inline type and angular cuts not entirely dissimilar from the Toronto Blue Jays’ branding. (“To be honest, it wasn’t the uniform I envisioned,” Shinjo said, per the Japan Times.)

What was he envisioning? Something more like this, his personal design for the team’s alternate uniforms. Behold:

“OMG,” Todd Radom—sports branding expert and author of Winning Ugly: A Visual History of Baseball’s Most Unique Uniforms—wrote to me in an email. “I’m not even sure where to begin, but whatever we think about them, these uniforms were clearly designed to get our attention, and boy, do they succeed.”

And that’s exactly it. Shinjo is a natural showman (as anyone with a proclivity for hovercrafts would tend to be), and so, after a career playing in Japan and the United States, where he did stints at the New York Mets and the San Francisco Giants, the Fighters brought him on to shake things up and put fans back in the seats following the initial wave of COVID-19.

Now, his um, unusual, uniforms have the world talking. While Radom says the collars remind him of the 1976–1981 White Sox jerseys, “Beyond that, they defy comparison to anything ever before worn on the field of play, as far as I can tell.”

With a Harley Quinn color scheme, the plunging neckline of a Harlequin Romance novel cover, the energy of a mid-’90s fighting video game, and a collar so big players may not need a batting helmet on a windy night, these uniforms are a *chef’s kiss* to everything that is profoundly strange and profoundly delightful all at the same time.

Per a press release, the uniforms were created for a series of “NEW AGE GAMES produced by SHINJO” to reflect the team’s new era. They were designed with a theme of “baseball as heroes” and “cool play”—which the release notes BIGBOSS has embodied for some time. They were also intentionally crafted to draw the attention of kids.

As for the color palette, the red is intended to convey a fighting spirit, while the “V” references “victory.” Moreover, the release points out, elements of the design are unprecedented for the sport—and, well, indeed.

For a time, fans could pick one up in the team’s online shop, where they could also get a keychain or mug with the design, or even a life-size cushion of Shinjo wearing the uniform for around $322. 

One wonders: Will we ever see uniforms this wild in the U.S.?

“Never say never, but I seriously doubt it,” Radom says. “Japanese pro baseball differs from MLB in many ways. Individual clubs are essentially advertising vehicles for their parent companies, and licensing revenue there is far smaller than here—which means that the varied stakeholders, gatekeepers, and decision-makers who help shape the look of MLB would likely stop something like this dead in its tracks before it ever made it onto the diamond.”

Which, admittedly, is a bummer. Because even with this season’s new pitch clock, fewer infield defensive shifts, and bigger bases, if there’s one thing I now find myself longing for, it’s the chaotic energy of BIGBOSS. A hovercraft just makes everything better.