The 2013 MLB All-Star Game Batting Practice Jerseys Can be Yours for the Low, Low Price of $99.99

One of the traditions of MLB’s All-Star week festivities are the players from the American and National Leagues wearing (usually) ugly batting practice jerseys prior to the game. Somehow these garish treads — in the primary colors of the host team — tend to blend perfectly with Chris Berman’s tired shtick during the Home Run Derby on Monday night.

This year’s All-Star Game takes place at Citi Field, home of the Mets. Accordingly MLB released their official BP jerseys today. The orange and blue tops aren’t horrendous eyesores, nor are they exactly the height of haute couture, either. Fortunately the Mets opted for blue and orange, avoiding any flashbacks to their ill-conceived black alternate jerseys of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

And, for a cool $99.99 (plus shipping and handling), you can own one of badboys these yourself!

Every league nowadays does this. They create specific merchandise around their All-Star game and then hock it for a couple days. Presumably the unsold merch — sadly all that remains on the NFL website from the 2013 Pro Bowl are AFC and NFC-branded visors — get shipped to an impoverished country like the losing team championship gear after it sits around in a warehouse for a couple months.

Why anyone would want to plop down a $100 for a league-specific batting practice jersey is beyond me. Do you really need proof, say in polo form, to tell people you attended an All-Star Game? Outside of parents roped into buy it for their kid pulling a Veruca Salt impression demanding an orange jersey (now!) or German tourists who happen to be in Manhattan during the week of the All-Star Fanfest at the Javits Center who don’t know any better, what’s the market for this type of gear?

Hopefully whatever money MLB does pull in from the sale of all its All-Star merchandise go toward R&D on a more effective replay system for the 2014 season.