Launched back in 2021, MLB’s City Connect uniform series is intended to give each team in the league a unique alternate that reflects the place it occupies in its city’s culture and community. The idea was at least in part inspired by the NBA’s City Edition jerseys, which have become hugely popular since making their debut during the 2017-18 season.

Of course, just because the broader idea came from the NBA doesn’t mean that any specific jersey should. Someone should remind the Chicago White Sox of that, because their 2025 City Connects, unveiled on Monday, are … well, just take a look for yourself.

First thing’s first: These are pretty ugly, save for the flying sock logo on the cap, and you’d be more than justified objecting on purely aesthetic grounds. But aesthetics are really just the tip of the iceberg here. Even more galling? That a team would have such little respect for itself that it would toss its own century-plus history out the window and slavishly copy its city’s basketball team just to try and get people to notice it.

Seriously, what are we doing here? Incorporating some little nod to the Chicago Bulls within a broader White Sox theme would be one thing; straight-up xeroxing the Bulls uniforms is some of the most little brother-coded behavior we’ve seen on a baseball field in recent years, an admission that you don’t even care about your franchise enough to think that other people might. But of course, we’d expect nothing less from Jerry Reinsdorf at this point.

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White Sox City Connect unis aren’t beating the ‘Jerry Reinsdorf only cares about the Bulls’ allegations

Among the many, many accusations that White Sox fans have justifiably lobbed in Reinsdorf’s direction over his more than four decades in charge is that his baseball team has always come second to his basketball team. While he spares no expense for the Bulls, especially during the team’s heyday with Michael Jordan, he spared every expense for the Sox, who only occasionally were able to win despite their owner’s complete indifference. There’s a reason that, in the event of his death, Reinsdorf has reportedly advised his family to keep the Bulls but sell the White Sox.

These unis certainly won’t disabuse anyone of that notion. When asked to express its feelings about the city of Chicago, and its fans — fans who have stuck with this team despite historic futility in recent years — the best the White Sox could come up with was “hey, remember the Bulls?” As if the product on the field didn’t make this abundantly clear already, Reinsdorf doesn’t really care about whether his baseball team is competitive or not, at least not enough to invest the requisite money. He’s got a basketball team for that, and if the former gets too embarrassing, he can always turn them into a walking advertisement.