Colorado Rockies want aspects of Players Weekend all season

Throughout the baseball season, big leaguers have asked for one specific change to Major League Baseball’s uniform code: Cleats. Well, not to get rid of cleats, but rather to modify the rule that governs what color they are.

Officially the rule about cleat colors that must currently be followed by the Colorado Rockies and all other 29 Major League teams is as follows…

"“At least 51% of the exterior of each Player’s shoes must be the Club’s designated primary shoe color and the portion of the Club’s designated primary shoe color must be evenly distributed throughout the exterior of each shoe.”"

Of course, that’s completely arbitrary and practically most teams’ players are held to just wearing one of two colors with stripes or shading that works within the color scheme. For the Rockies, their players must wear black or purple cleats.

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It doesn’t take long to realize that the Rockies primarily wear either white or gray tops and bottoms so their cleats wouldn’t really match.

One, this is dumb. Two, it’s irking players.

Earlier this season, Chicago Cubs’ super utility man Ben Zobrist was fined for wearing black shoes. While you may be thinking that the Cubs don’t feature black in their scheme so that doesn’t fit even if you are arguing for more relaxed rules, black has historically been the main cleat color in baseball. In fact, Zobrist was wearing them to honor Hall of Famer Ernie Banks. Many players and MLBPA members stood behind Zobrist and more relaxed rules may be coming that follow closer to the NBA’s shoes rules.

But, for now, when asking around the Rockies clubhouse on Players Weekend what’s the top aspect of everything that happens this weekend that players would like to see carried over into the full 162-game slate, it’s the relaxed cleat rule.

Now each and every player I talked to was not advocating for the Rockies to be able to wear blue, pink or even tie-dye footwear as some of the players are this weekend. Chris Iannetta even joked to me that he would find it ridiculous if he could wear his University of North Carolina cleats all the time.

They do look good … and he even smiled when pointing at them.

But at his locker, he showed me a pair of all gray with minimal white and black piping cleats for his road gray uniform that he was told he could not wear. Ryan McMahon offered the solution of being able to wear the five or so colors a team has with its cleats. For the Rockies at home, that would be white, black, purple and silver.

While cleats was the main thought while relaxed and custom sleeves “but within reason” was something that was thought to be a cool idea. Earlier this season, Major League Baseball banned Willson Contreras‘ Venezuela-themed armband because it broke the guidelines.

Players Weekend celebrates the personality of the players and it’s a great first step for Major League Baseball. However, there are some clear and easy fixes that should help show the players’ personalities all year without infringing on the storied history and deep traditions of the game.