In the latest edition of “what in the hell is MLB thinking?”, we present to you the MLB x Off-White x New Era meteor holes line of merchandise.
The new collaboration line has everything. Hats, T-shirts, hoodies, and jerseys, all of which feature massive holes, are now on sale for you to buy. Each product also comes at an outrageous price. As Joon Lee of ESPN noted, the cost of one of owning a jersey with some holes in it comes in at $1,030.
Now, maybe I just don’t understand “fashion” in a modern sense. Maybe, just maybe I’m getting older, and this new trend of wearing things that look like swiss cheese is all the rage. Who knows?
With that said, it is quite incredible that MLB wants you to pay higher prices for quite literally less material. Oh wait, this has been in their playbook all along. You only have to look at blackout restrictions, extra-innings games with runners starting on second base, and pitch clocks to see the writing on the wall. Selling fans merchandise at an upscale cost while having literal holes in the product has been here the entire time.
It may very well be that the Venn diagram of fans of Major League Baseball—which is, frankly, a sport that has only recently begun to dip a toe into out-there fashion—and people who are willing to shell out four figures for a garment intentionally riddled with holes is just…two distinct circles. (Or, if you’re a fan of Louis Sachar’s seminal young adult novel Holes, maybe you’ll be keen on the “Air Yelnats.”) But whether you’re new to the Off-White universe or deeply familiar with it, here’s a bit of context.
Round cut-outs are a running motif for Abloh, a design element he termed “meteor” holes when he introduced them in his spring 2020 womenswear collection, featuring tees and opera gloves bore through with holes—like the craters a meteor shower might imprint on whatever patch of earth was unfortunate to fall beneath one. The holes appeared again in his menswear collection that fall; in 2019, Off-White introduced a handbag full of meteor holes, which the brand explicitly deemed “unfunctional.”
Now we can wear it too.