Why This Houston Astros Reliever’s Uniform Lettering Looks So Weird

It's safe to say that Major League Baseball has dealt with some controversy in the past couple of seasons when it's come to player uniforms.

MLB's uniform partner, Nike, made new uniforms for all teams last season, and most players had negative feedback on the uniforms, most notably the lettering on the back. Nike opted for a smaller font size and players and fans both reacted poorly to the downgrade in player name size.

This season, most teams are back to the traditional font size on the back of jerseys when it comes to player names. A few teams will get their updated jerseys next season. But, for the most part, all appears quiet on the jersey font size front.

But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t nuances when it comes to certain players, including one on the Houston Astros.

Astros uniform is, both home, road and City Connect, feature the player’s last name in capital block letters on the back of the jersey.

There is one glaring exception — reliever Logan VanWey. He made the team coming out of spring training and, as it turns out, his jersey lettering is completely different. His looks just how it’s spelled — VanWey. No block capital letters for him.

Strange, right? It’s certainly outside the norm.

UniWatch.com, which follows uniforms across all sports, was tipped off about the lettering on his jersey and, as it turned out, the Houston Chronicle (subscription required) had already done the legwork to find out what was up.

Turns out, it’s a whole thing. His surname is Dutch and it’s pronounced Van-WHY. For most of his career, people have pronounced it incorrectly and given him the traditional block letters on the back of his jersey, and that includes his time with the Astros’ Triple-A affiliate, the Sugar Land Space Cowboys.

“It’s kind of been a thing growing up,” VanWey said. “Every time like in college or the minor leagues, it’s been pronounced ‘VanWay’ or it’s spelled different with a space and I’ve just kind of like not corrected anybody but now my mom (Brittany) hears it and she’s the biggest one (saying) ‘It’s VanWey, it’s a capital W and there’s no space.’ It’s just kind of been a mess sometimes.”

The Astros spelled the name correctly with the lowercase letters on his spring training jersey. While there, the Astros’ equipment staff asked him how he wanted his name to be lettered on the back of his jersey, should he make the team.

That’s what the equipment staff has done — spelled and lettered his name correctly.

It looks odd set against the rest of the game, but it’s correct and that’s all that matters to VanWey.