Blue Jays’ white panel hat superstition adds to team’s long history of uniform rituals

The Jays abandoned their white panel caps in 1993

To many fans, this white panel cap look is new, but it was a staple in the franchise from 1977 until 1993. After a 17-year absence, the team brought the look back during the 2017 season for select games, until they discontinued the cap during the 2022 Blue Jays season.

Back in 1993, the Blue Jays said they were planning on phasing out the white panel cap for a solid navy hat anyway, starting in 1994, but the Blue Jays expedited that change when they hit a five-game losing skid in early July 1993.

In a piece written by Neil Campbell from the Globe & Mail, he spoke with Blue Jays equipment manager Jeff Ross regarding the team’s about-face decision to no longer wear the white panel caps.

“We wanted to see how the blue hats looked with the white uniforms. It wasn’t really a superstitious thing, but when you’ve lost five in a row, it’s a good time to try something like that. If you win five in a row and change something, the players aren’t going to be too happy if you lose.”

According to another piece in the Globe & Mail, the dye in the white panel caps was running and seeping into the front of the cap and discolouring them. That may have driven the change all along, but a defective cap combined with a losing streak is a recipe for a switch.

Come 1993, those white panel caps were also no longer fashionable in the eyes of critics.

“It shows we’re staying relaxed, trying some different things,” said 1993 Blue Jays designated hitter Paul Molitor, who was on board with the decision to shake things up. “It’s a long season and you’ve got to do things like that from time to time, take your mind off things like how we’ve been only a hit or two away from winning in some of our recent games.”

By golly, it worked (temporarily). The Blue Jays snapped their skid and beat the Chicago White Sox 5-1 on July 6, 1993. But the Blue Jays lost the next five games in a row.

The Blue Jays ditched their road grey uniforms in 2015

It’s not the first time in franchise history that the team has made a uniform or cap change to reverse its fortunes. Most recently, after planning to wear their red “Canadiana” uniforms for every Sunday home game in 2017, the club did an about-face after going 2-7 in those uniforms and took them out of the rotation.

Perhaps the most impactful and sustained uniform shift happened during the Blue Jays’ storybook second half to close out the 2015 campaign. At the end of the 2015 regular season, the Blue Jays all but ditched their road grey uniforms and instead wore their blue alternate jerseys with the grey pants.

In a span of 34 games, the Blue Jays had a 22-12 record on the road wearing their new getup. During the second-to-last game of the regular season, the team wore the road grey uniforms again, but they abandoned them shortly after and stuck with the blue alternate uniforms for the rest of the regular season.

According to Sportslogos.net’s 2015 uniform tracker, that road grey kit was the fifth-worst-performing uniform in MLB that year. So it’s no surprise the Blue Jays were willing to do anything to get some good juju going in their second-half games on the road.

From the time the Blue Jays made that switch on July 11, 2015, they went 49-24 down the stretch, as opposed to a 44-45 record until that date. Not that a jersey change was the catalyst for the 2015 Blue Jays’ magical second half, but if the players believed it was real, then it probably was.

Despite getting bounced out of the 2015 ALCS by the Kansas City Royals, enough time had passed over the offseason that the road grey uniforms returned to the stable to begin the 2016 season.