In 1999, some MLB teams participated in a promotional event sponsored by Century 21 known as "Turn Ahead the Clock". The concept was to stage games for the 2021 season.
Not all teams chose to participate. Fans, players and media outlets ridiculed the garish uniform designs and the promotion hasn't happened since.
But the caps created for these games and worn by the players are considered to be the "holiest of holies" by collectors.
I wanted to learn more about what has become my favorite promotion of all time.
Let's start on July 18, 1998, when the Seattle Mariners hosted the Kansas City Royals in the original Turn Ahead the Clock game.
It was the brain child of Mariner's director of marketing, Kevin Martinez, and the idea was to stage a game in the year 2027 with the teams wearing futuristic uniforms.
Why 2027? Because it would be the 50th year of the Mariners franchise.
The promotion was a huge success. The Mariners marketing director was heavily involved in the promotion and the Royals were enthusiastic as well.
Talk about attention to detail, a Star Trek character threw out the first pitch, futuristic teams were added to the out of town scoreboard, a future Mariners logo appeared in the stadium and the umpires even wore metallic shirts. (Lukas).
Ken Griffey Jr., and a host of his teammates, loved the idea and spray pained their shoes, cut the sleeves off of the jerseys, and wore their caps backwards. (Reiper).
Not to be lost, is the fact that the Mariners are one of the more recent additions to MLB, and began play in 1977.
The Mariners do not have the tradition, per say, as the Yankees, Cubs, and Dodgers.
The 1998 Mariners TATC game got lots of attention.....and well, if something works once try it again.
In 1999, Century 21 Inc. enters the picture and fourteen Turn Ahead the Clock games are scheduled. If you would like to see the entire article, here it is: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/21/business/media-business-advertising-century-21-promotion-21st-century-baseball.html.
The scheduled game, score, attendance, day of the week (Night or Day) and increase in attendance compared to season average attendance are as follows:
June 26 Oakland at Anaheim 5-4 Oak 29,957 Sat N + 1,286
July 21 San Diego at San Fran 10-2 SF 19, 616 Wed D + 2,116
July 22 Kansas City at Detroit 9-8 Det 29, 322 Thu D + 5,368
July 23 Milwaukee at Florida 5-4 Fla 19,745 Fri N + 640
July 24 Seattle at Minnesota 10-3 Minn 30,138 Sat N + 15,125
July 25 Anaheim at Baltimore 8-7 Balt 44,724 Sun N + 296
July 27 Pittsburgh at Mets 5-1 Pitt 36,337 Tue N + 2,735
July 30 Colorado at St. Louis 5-4 Col 46,208 Fri N + 5,518
Aug 14 Tampa Bay at Kansas City 11-4 TB 20,684 Sat N + 1,095
Aug 18 Atlanta at Colorado 4-1 Col 46,553 Wed N + 3,396
Aug 20 Arizona at Pittsburgh 5-4 Pitt 23,934 Fri N + 3,934
Sept 10 Cleveland at White Sox 14-6 Cle 19,132 Fri N + 1,336
Sept 11 Phil at Arizona 4-0 Az 42,442 Sat N + 2,225
Sept 18 Detroit at Boston In this game, the uniforms did not arrive because of Hurricane
Floyd and regular uniforms and caps were worn.
Now it's time for Steve Mckelvey, currently an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts. In 1999, he worked for PSP Sports and was the VP of Sports Marketing. Century 21 was a client of PSP. He was kind enough to give me some of his time and information for this post.
I had many questions ready, particularly about the design of the caps and the teams that did not participate: Yankees, Blue Jays, Rangers, Astros, Expos, Reds, and Cubs.
Do you know why some of the teams did not want to participate?
"The Yankees, Cubs, and Dodgers made it very clear that they did not want to participate in the promotion. These are teams that are very protective of this history and their brand and the sanctity of their uniforms."
Was the promotion supposed to be more than one year?
"The TATC Series was announced at the All-Star game in 1999 and then in the second half of the baseball season. The promotion was supposed to continue in 2000. It did not because of all the negative press."
The caps that were made and used in the game have a Genuine Merchandise tag on the inside as opposed to the usual Authentic Collection tag that is on the inside of on-field 5950's. Is there a reason for this?
"Russell Athletic made the uniforms. I believe MLB's Official ON Field cap supplier,New Era, passed on producing the on-field caps for this promotion , so MLB used a different supplier who only had the rights to "Genuine Merchandise" tag. My company did not have control over who produced the uniforms and caps."
How about the logo designs on the caps? The Mets and Athletics were very unique while everyone else just added silver.
"We had no control over the logos, that was all MLB. We just had some suggestions and recommendations. The Mets really ran with it, changing the name of their team for the day to the Mercury Mets. I have no idea what the A's logo means or signifies. Silver was used because it is futuristic as the proposed year for these games was 2021."
What was an interesting part of the promotion that people do not know?
"Before the Cleveland and White Sox game, the Indians manager (Mike Hargrove), came over to me and said that they had a catcher who was called up to the team the day before and did not have a uniform with his name on it.
Hargrove insisted that the team would not be wearing the uniforms if we did not have one for every player. The White Sox would not be wearing them either. So we ran out to get super glue so we could attach the letters of the player's name on the back of the uniform.
I was literally standing on the back of the jersey to get the letters to stay on as they kept falling off. Eventually they did stay on."
Do you have an idea of how many of the on-field caps were made?
"Each team had around 50 uniforms and caps made along with 10,000 stadium give aways."
Are you aware of how rare and sought after these caps are? They sell for hundreds of dollars.
"I am not. I do have a Twins and Red Sox stadium give away."
What was your favorite part of the promotion?
"I was at the Mets-Pirates game and the Mets did a great job. When the players images were up on the scoreboard, they altered their photos to look like aliens-green men.
I will never forget the expression on Rickey Henderson's face when he stepped out of the batters box and looked at his picture while batting."
Looking back on the 1999 Turn Ahead the Clock promotion:
For a cap collector, this promotion brought a unique cap design. The fabric on the visor was done backwards with the bottom fabric overlapping the top , which was never seen before.
The Rockies debuted this style in 2004. On the left is the Rockies Turn Ahead the Clock cap and on the right the 2004 on-field cap with the cap with the visor bottom overlapping the top.
I learned a lot by doing the research for this article. There is no doubt that the teams and players did not buy into the idea as the Mariners did in the original Turn Ahead the Clock 1998 game.
But why are Turn Back the Clock games wildly popular? The White Sox and Pirates wear caps and uniforms from the 70's for all Sunday home games
.
MLB is about tradition and history. It's not really a forward thinking institution. Radical changes to uniforms, colors, and renaming the shortstop position to "intermediate station" will move some outside of their comfort zone.
Was the Turn Ahead the Clock promotion a success? Add up the numbers, it brought nearly 50,000 additional fans to the stadiums.
Misunderstood..... as genius almost always is.
Special thanks to Paul Carr for assisting in this article.
Much appreciation to Steve Mckelvey for agreeing to participate in the interview.
Lukas, Paul. "Looking Back at the Mariners' Futuristic Night." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 21 July 2008. Web. 12 May 2016. <http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lukas%2F080718>.
Reiper, Max. "Remembering "Turn Ahead the Clock Night" with the Royals and Mariners." Royals Review. N.p., 29 Jan. 2016. Web. 12 May 2016. <http://www.royalsreview.com/2016/1/29/10863592/remembering-turn-ahead-the-clock-night-with-the-royals-and-mariners>.
