The most popular jerseys at the 2021 MLB All-Star Game: An investigation
By Jordan Shusterman & Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writers
DENVER — If you’re anything like us, you have a go-to baseball jersey or shirsey that you love to wear and flaunt in public.
Maybe it’s just your favorite player on your current favorite team. Maybe it’s your favorite player from when you were a kid. Maybe it’s someone so purposefully obscure so as to ensure that you are the only one at the ballpark wearing it. There’s no wrong approach.
At the MLB All-Star Game, everyone is breaking out their best stuff. There’s no better day on the baseball calendar to showcase what — and who — you’re all about as a baseball fan. Some might argue that if you’re attending a game between two teams, it only makes sense to wear attire of one of those two teams. (We generally push back on that guideline and encourage any jersey, any time, any place, but we at least understand it.).
With every team represented at the Midsummer Classic and the event being a pure celebration of the league, rather than a competitive environment, no such unwritten rule exists. Everyone is bringing their A-game, eager to show off their best jerseys and shirseys to all the other baseball fanatics in attendance.
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With all this in mind, we decided to spend Tuesday night on a mission: Figure out which player’s jersey or shirsey was most popular at the 2021 All-Star Game. We’ll warn you now and readily admit that this was hardly the most scientific mission, but our process was simple. We wrote down the names of the first 1,000 jerseys we saw while wandering the Coors Field concourses. With spectacular threads flying past us nearly every second, it was frantic, to say the least. But we thought 1,000 was a reasonable enough sample to paint a picture of which players were getting the most love at the All-Star Game.
We knew going into this that the Rockies would be the most represented. We’d expect that of any host city. But how often is the most represented player no longer on the team?
Denver still absolutely loves its former superstar third basemen. In something of a landslide, Nolan Arenado was the most common jersey/shirsey we saw, with a whopping 122, roughly 100 of which were of the Rockies variety.
Current Rockie and easy fan favorite Charlie Blackmon came in second, with a respectable 39. And as if there were any doubt that this week was the Ohtani Sho(w), the Angels' phenom actually tied Blackmon with 39, the most among non-Rockies.
Shohei Ohtani's incredible first half in the words of MLB All-Stars ' Flippin' Bats
Here’s who else "qualified" with at least 1% of the count:
Rockies:
122 Arenados (we’d guess roughly 100 were Colorado)
39 Blackmon
28 Trevor Story
25 Todd Helton
24 Troy Tulowitzki
17 Larry Walker
17 Carlos Gonzalez
16 Germán Márquez
Non-Rockies:
39 Ohtani
27 Mookie Betts
25 Ronald Acuña Jr.
23 Aaron Judge
21 Kris Bryant
21 Fernando Tatis Jr.
14 Yadier Molina
14 Buster Posey
13 Ken Griffey Jr.
13 Derek Jeter
13 Freddie Freeman
13 Xander Bogaerts
11 Christian Yelich
11 David Ortiz
And here are some of our favorite one-offs that we saw on our journey:
Rockies:
Sam Hilliard
Ian Stewart
Justin Lawrence
LaTroy Hawkins
Brad Hawpe
Chad Bettis
David Dahl
Non-Rockies:
Tigers Don Kelly
Phillies Bake McBride
Mariners Wade LeBlanc
Braves BJ Upton
Twins Bert Blyleven
Diamondbacks Carson Kelly
Braves David Justice
Mariners Dee Gordon
Marlins Dontrelle Willis
Indians Grady Sizemore
Nationals Howie Kendrick
Cubs Mark Prior
Cardinals Michael Wacha
Royals Wade Davis
Athletics Walt Weiss
Mariners Mike Zunino (who is good)
Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman, creators of the Twitter account Céspedes Family BBQ, write about all things baseball for FOX Sports.
