Mother’s Day has become one of the biggest events on the baseball calendar. There is a large charitable component in Major League Baseball’s support of Breast Cancer research and the other objective is to bring awareness. We all know the symbolism of the pink wristbands and the pink ribbons on the jerseys that players used to wear when MLB first began to recognize Mother’s Day as an event day. The big change came when MLB approved the use of pink bats for Mother’s Day only, and then we started to see pink cleats and batting gloves used by players. This year for the first time we will see pink trimmed jerseys and caps. Most of the pink items used in the game are auctioned for charity or sold at the stadiums and they will include bases, baseballs, bats, cleats, gloves, jerseys, caps, and line-up cards.
The challenge this year for the apparel and equipment makers is that Mother’s Day is the earliest it can be which is May 8th (2nd Sunday in May). We got an invitation to the Chandler Bat factory in Norristown, Pennsylvania which we have visited before to watch them make some Mother’s Day pink bats. The pink paint was at the ready, and there were stacks of wood numbered in the hundreds as well as hundreds of completed bats already packed for shipping. The lathes were humming as the craftsmen were doing their thing.
Chandler Bats had orders for pink bats for Bryce Harper, Wilson Ramos, Michael Taylor, and Max Scherzer and Under Armour hooked up Bryce, Ramos, Zim, and other Nats!
On a lathe they are finishing a Bryce Harper baseball bat in this video:
New Era Caps has created a new look pink trimmed cap as shown here by our staff photographer Sol Tucker:
Here is the Bryce Harper Mother’s Day jersey:
