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First-Half Recap: Arizona Diamondbacks
For the next thirty days, I’ll be doing first-half recaps of the PE cleats (and some footwear oddities) worn by all thirty Major League teams. These recaps will go in alphabetical order by team, so the Arizona Diamondbacks are the team of the day…
The renderings above are the models that have been worn by Orlando Hudson (Nike 5-Tools), Mark Reynolds (Nike Fuse), Justin Upton (adidas Diamond King), and Brandon Webb (Reebok Vero FL II). Larger views can be seen in the brand new Player Exclusive Gallery… I’ll be adding cleats from the other 29 teams throughout the month (and basketball and football galleries will follow). More info on these Diamondbacks models after the jump…
MLB Trade Deadline: PE Aftermath
The MLB trade deadline is always a great time for baseball… teams gear up to make playoff runs, superstars swap uniforms, and new cleats are customized with new colors. Here’s the breakdown of how this year’s deadline affects the a handful of MLB cleats…
(PlayerExclusive.com Photo Illustration; Original Photos by Jim Rogash/Getty Images and Al Behrman/AP Photo)
Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers: This was the most shocking trade of the bunch, and I’m really looking forward to what Nike customizes for Manny. My Photoshopped image above shows him in a Dodger-ized PE of the Fuse cleats he’s recently been wearing in Boston, and while it’d be great to see something like that in LA, here’s my guess about what will happen: he’ll start off by wearing a blue GR of the 5-Tool or Fuse, and he’ll break out a new Fuse PE or maybe even a Max MVP PE in a couple of weeks. I also wouldn’t be surprised if he just went with the white / blue Max MVP… Russell Martin has already worn these for a couple of games this month, so the Dodgers are apparently one of the few teams getting these.
Ken Griffey Jr. to the White Sox: This one is confusing for the White Sox, great for Griffey, and awful for footwear. With white, black, red, and grey, Griffey was able to lace up a ton of different colorways of his Swingman Remix signature cleat in Cincinnati. Now that he’s with the Sox, we’ll probably only be seeing black / black, black / white, and black / grey… hopefully Nike will mix it up and start doing new colorblocking on the different upper elements.
New Lowell PE; Upcoming MLB Team Recaps and Gallery
Mike Lowell appears to be the first player with an Air Zoom Coop V PE…
A lot of new models like this one are starting to hit the field, so in order to get the site caught up on the ‘08 MLB season, I’ll be doing team-by-team recaps of the best PE’s from the first half starting on August 1st.
Hall, Hunter in Swingman Remix; New Catalog Images
Since I wrote about the upcoming Nike Air Swingman Remix last week (click here for that post), two more players have been spotted wearing the Ken Griffey Jr. signature shoe:
(AP Photo / Morry Gash, Gus Ruelas)
Whether these are PE’s or not has yet to be seen, but with both Bill Hall and Torii Hunter lacing them up, my theory that Griffey is hand-picking the players who are wearing them is looking even more accurate.
Red Sox-Yankees Weekend Series Cleats
Sox-Yankees games are great for many reasons, but one of the best things about them is that they’re all photographed like it’s the World Series, making for some great footwear shots. Here’s a couple good views of some recent cleats:
Here’s a better shot of the new David Ortiz signature shoe… he wore these during his recent rehab assignment, but they made their MLB debut this weekend. I’m guessing Reebok hasn’t made him a black version yet; he wore his black ‘08 sigs on Saturday.
(Photo by AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
UPDATE: This model is now available at Eastbay (thanks to rbkguy for pointing this out). It’s called the Big Papi 2M Mid II, and the product image can be seen here.
Nike Blows Up Bronson Arroyo’s Swooshes
Before he had long hair or rock star aspirations, Bronson Arroyo was wearing the Nike Air Zoom 3.5, a 1999 Nike release that he’s worn ever since his days with Pittsburgh and Boston. It was never all that popular in the majors, but much like Mariano Rivera with his early 90’s Air Clippers and Randy Johnson with his old Air Shows, Bronson has stuck with them throughout his career. Until recently, they looked like this:
(AP Photo/Danny Moloshok)
As you can see, they’re one of Nike’s more subtle designs — the swoosh is only about two inches long. However, this is what they look like now:
(AP Photo/Al Behrman)
It’s the same exact shoe, just with a larger swoosh sewn on. Unless Bronson personally requested a bigger swoosh (which is doubtful), I’m guessing that Nike did this so fans could spot their logo on TV or from the stands. This story pales in comparison to Todd Helton’s Mizuno-ized Nike Clippers and other footwear rebrandings, but it’s always interesting when a shoe gets customized solely for increased logo visibility.
Albert Pujols Air Max MVP Player Exclusives
As promised, I finished up my renderings of Albert Pujols’ home and All-Star versions of his Max MVP PE’s. For whatever reason, Albert must prefer the Zoom heel cage to the Max Air unit in the MVP, but they look great regardless. The All-Star version appears above, and the home version appears below.
You’ll be seeing these and many others in the PE Gallery within the next few weeks.
Player Exclusive Gallery; New Matt Holliday PE
If you’ve visited the site over the past few days, you may have noticed the addition of the “PlayerExclusive.com PE Gallery: Coming Soon” graphic at the top of this page. The gallery isn’t up and running quite yet, but here’s the deal: One of my main goals for this site (beyond following the daily beat on PE’s) is to create an extensive visual collection of custom footwear from each sport. Much of this will hopefully be accomplished through PE close-up photos, but since it’s often difficult to obtain close-up shots for many models out there, I’ll be doing quite a bit of Photoshopping.
If you check out the gallery link now, you’ll see a few of my early renderings from the ‘08 baseball season. Even though I’ve only focused on Nike thus far (they’re the easiest to find photos to work from), I will definitely be doing all the major brands in the future. Here’s an example of one of my most recent renderings:
The above graphic is based on Matt Holliday’s latest Air Max MVP PE, as seen below:
(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
I probably won’t be launching the gallery until the beginning of August (I’d like to get at least 20-30 models in there before I open it up), but in the meantime I’ll be sharing more renderings in my daily posts. I’ll be doing Albert Pujols’ latest Max MVP PE’s next, and Holliday’s All-Star PE’s (which, due to the pinstripes, will likely be ridiculously difficult to do) are on deck.
If you have any suggestions of what Nike models you’d like to see in the future, feel free to leave them in the comments section.
Nike Air Swingman Remix PE’s
In the next few weeks, I’ll be mixing it up between new footwear coverage and some recaps of the first-half cleats from the ‘08 MLB season. One of the best stories to develop this year has been the return of the Ken Griffey Jr. signature shoe.
For the past few seasons, Griffey has worn PE’s of his older signature models on newer Nike midsoles as well as a few PE’s of non-signature shoes. They looked great, but as one of baseball’s greatest enduring stars, it was surprising to see Griffey go without a new signature cleat since 2004. This year, Nike decided to change that with the Air Swingman Remix:
While it’s technically not a completely “new” shoe (it combines the iconic designs of the Griffey 1 and Griffey 2), this is clearly one of the most exciting cleats that we’ve seen in years. They feature 20 “dots” on the upper to commemorate Junior’s 20 years in the league, a Swingman logo embossed into the medial side in addition to the logo on the Griffey 2-inspired heel, and a few other design elements that just make these look amazing (pics via NT’s gotta be tha shoes). The cement pattern on the above shoe is part of the PE — it won’t be on the retail version. The pictured model is shown on Junior below:
(AP Photo/Al Behrman)
Griffey has worn a few other colorways of these this year (including black/red, black/white/silver, and all black pairs), but most of these should be available for purchase this fall (see page 3 of the ‘09 catalog updates here). A bizarre thing has happened with this signature shoe, however — other MLB players are getting player exclusives of them. Nike might be doing this to honor Griffey in his 600 HR milestone year (or they might just be pushing these hard for their upcoming release). My guess is that the players wearing them have been hand-selected by Junior himself. Griffey has often spoken out on the lack of African-Americans in baseball, so it would make sense that he’d have Nike send PE’s to Jimmy Rollins, Orlando Hudson, and Carl Crawford…
David Ortiz Debuts New Signature Cleat in AAA
It’s a fair assumption that Reebok was hoping to debut their latest David Ortiz signature shoe at Monday’s All-Star Game, but since Ortiz was sidelined with a wrist injury, they never hit the field. However, he began his rehab assignment today with AAA Pawtucket, and here’s what was on his feet:
At first glance, it looks like these feature an synthetic leather / open weave mesh upper, similar what was used in Reebok’s ATR Vertical III and Sky Court BT basketball shoes. I’m looking forward to seeing a black colorway and a metal version of these as well, but I’m impressed so far. Additional views here, here, and here.
(Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images)
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