The red alternates are coming back!
The Phillies will be wearing red jerseys for their series finale in Los Angeles Wednesday night, and then again for Sunday afternoon's finale of their three-game set with the Giants in San Francisco, according to MLB.com – and you can thank Bryce Harper for that, and the fact that the Phillies will wear the reds for "sporadic road games" for the remainder of 2021.
"I think wearing gray all the time is just boring," Harper told Todd Zolecki. "I mean, really. Being able to kind of put something else out there that's a little bit different. We've been talking about it as a team. We kind of took it up the ladder and talked to people about it and they said, 'Hey, let's give it a try.'"
The Phillies, who are 11-19 on the road this year, are hoping the return of the reds – their usual spring jerseys, but unis that haven't been worn with any regular season regularity since 2018 – can help them maybe switch things up.
"A lot of teams do it," Harper said. "They go on the road, they wear their blues or they were their black or whatever they have. I know as a team we thought we wanted to do something different. The red jersey is definitely a fit."
The team had different jerseys on their mind on the flight to L.A., according to Zolecki, donning basketball jerseys at the behest of Archie Bradley. Manager Joe Girardi wore a full Sixers warm-up suit, while Bryce Harper wore the WNBA Chicago Sky jersey of Diamond DeShields, the younger sister of Rangers outfielder Delino DeShields Jr. and a long-time friend of Harper's.
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