All posts with the 'Shox Fuse' tag appear below.
First-Half Recap: Chicago Cubs
There was a lot to cover when it came to the Cubs’ cleats, it took me a little while to put this one together…
The cleats above belong to Derrek Lee, Mark DeRosa, Ryan Theriot, Ronny Cedeno, Daryle Ward, Aramis Ramirez, Carlos Zambrano, and Alfonso Soriano. As you can see, there’s a growing trend of bold red accents in the Cubbies’ footwear, and that’s something that I really like — the blue and red together mesh really well with Chicago’s classic uniforms. More details on these cleats (as well as a few mysterious cases of cleat-sharing) after the jump, and as always, larger views of all of these are available in the Player Exclusive Gallery.
Randy Moss Pony-less Again; Other NFL PE’s
After starting training camp in Nike cleats, Randy Moss wore his new Pony signature model for several weeks. But when the Patriots kicked off their preseason schedule last night, here’s what we saw:
(AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)
Those aren’t Pony’s. That’s a spatted-up Jordan VI PE on a Super Bad II TD midsole/outsole. Moss flip-flopped between Nike and Reebok throughout last season, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens this year now that he actually has a signature shoe… keep an eye on this for sure. More NFL kicks after the jump.
Schneider Max MVP, Other Recent MLB PE’s
It’s time to check in with some new stuff from around baseball…
(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
Brian Schneider recently started wearing a new Max MVP PE. It looks like these have white patent accents on the upper (and grey patent on the away PE at upper right), orange MCS outsoles, and blue Air units. I’ll work on finding some views of these without all of the catchers gear in the way, but these look impressive so far.
First-Half Recap: Boston Red Sox
Up until this point, these recaps have been dominated by Nike… I’m happy to bring some attention to the other brands, and the Sox are one of the most diverse teams in the league in terms of footwear branding. The cleats below are the models that have been worn by Manny Ramirez, Jason Varitek, Julio Lugo, Dustin Pedroia, and Jonathan Papelbon:
As always, larger versions of the above renderings can be seen in the PE Gallery… more info on all of these models (and a couple others) after the jump.
First-Half Recap: Baltimore Orioles
The Baltimore Orioles have always been one of my favorite baseball teams (in terms of footwear, not talent). They are one of two teams in the league (the other being the A’s) that has traditionally worn a team accent color in their cleats, which not only makes them really look like a team, but it makes it seem like everyone is wearing a PE.
Of course, most of the models you see them wearing aren’t player exclusives… Ramon Hernandez and Nick Markakis have both worn the black / orange Under Armour Raptor, Kevin Millar and Melvin Mora have both worn what will likely be a GR black / orange colorway of the upcoming Under Armour Ignite, and a bunch of guys have worn GR 2K4’s, 2K5’s, Clippers, Reebok Wheels, adidas Diamond Kings, and so on. Even this early Adam Jones model is an MCS version of Nike’s standard black / orange 5-Tool (it isn’t offered at retail, but here’s the catalog pic). So, to the best of my knowledge, here are the only 2008 Baltimore Orioles PE’s:
All of these renderings can also be seen in the PE Gallery. The bottom two Fuse models are Adam Jones’ home and away pairs… since you can make those on NikeID, I won’t waste any time writing about them. However, the other six pairs are definitely worth talking about, and they all belong to Brian Roberts. That’s right… six.
First-Half Recap: Atlanta Braves
Some technical issues on the site pushed my player exclusive recap schedule back a day, but here are the PE cleats worn by the Atlanta Braves (all of which are can be seen in the PE Gallery):
Unless I missed any (and please let me know if I did), it seems that the only PE’s being worn this year in Atlanta are Nike models. With a couple prominent Mizuno players (Chipper Jones, Brian McCann) and a few Under Armour guys (Jeff Francoeur, Tim Hudson, Rafael Soriano) on the roster, it’s surprising that the other brands aren’t hooking their guys up. The PE renderings above are the models worn by Mark Teixeira (now in Anaheim but still included), Yunel Escobar, Mark Kotsay, and Casey Kotchman.
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.
2008 MLB All-Star Game: Player Exclusives
One of my favorite things about the MLB All-Star cleats is the fact that it’s the only day that players wear colorways that they couldn’t wear otherwise. They’re able to disregard the “dominant cleat color” uniform rule and wear whatever they want, which means that we’ve seen a lot of white, grey, silver, and non-team colored cleats over the past few years. Even though I’ve always gravitated towards more conservative designs in baseball, I always look forward to seeing the bizarre colorways from the Midsummer Classic.
This year, there were so many All-Star PE’s that I actually had to split the ASG footwear into two posts (new releases post is here). The top PE’s appear below.
It’s not much of a surprise that Alex Rodriguez wore a white PE of his signature cleat — he’s worn white Shox cleats at the All-Star Game for the past few years. This PE featured embroidery on each cleat (the date on the shoe above, and “NEW YORK” on his other cleat), and additional views are available here and here.
(Photo by Nick Laham / Getty Images)
Albert Pujols wore the most attractive white PE in the game — they’re pretty simple, but they’re my favorite model from last night. These featured a Nike Air Max MVP upper, a 5-Tool Zoom Air midsole, and a white MCS outsole. Unfortunately, not too many photos of these were out there tonight… this is the only other decent view I could find. If anyone has any better shots of these, please get in touch.
(Photo by Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)
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