Collect the Mets

And here we have the big one. After the uniform debacle that was the 1990s, the Mets standardized on a new style of pinstripe, a narrow version of the printed zigzag. The same style has been used by the Padres and the Brewers, though they have likely discontinued its use, leaving the Mets as the only team with a printed zigzag stripe (the Yankees still use a sewn-in version and all other teams have switched to straight printed stripes). The introduction of this stripe coincided with the game-used boom, so it’s not surprising to see more than two dozen players represented here (well, except for Eddie Murray, what’s up with that?). It should be noted that the Heilman piece is from a jersey worn during a photo shoot, not an actual game; Heilman does not seem to have any MLB-used items, only this and a minor league jersey.

The Mets discontinued this uniform sometime at the end of the decade, when they switched to a more classic look with the same type of stripe on a polyester pique material.

Great, Topps released jersey pieces from Gary Carter with this style of pinstripe in 2012 Topps Museum Collection.  I give up, this stripe transcends time.

I have included the more recent ivory/cream pinstripe jersey (well, pants actually) here because the difference between white and cream is negligible up close. And because it would cause problems for my classification system…

Edgardo Alfonzo	Roberto Alomar	Carlos Beltran	Jeromy Burnitz
Gary Carter	Carlos Delgado	Tom Glavine	Aaron Heilman
Rickey Henderson	Richard Hidalgo	Satoru Komiyama	Dae-Sung Koo
Al Leiter	John Maine	Pedro Martinez	Kaz Matsui
Lastings Milledge	Eddie Murray	Rey Ordonez	Mike Piazza
Jose Reyes	Johan Santana	Tsuyoshi Shinjo	Mo Vaughn
Robin Ventura	Billy Wagner	David Wright	R.A. Dickey