The Lasting Embarrassment of “Turn Ahead the Clock” MLB Promotion
By Mark Williams, Jr.
Mon, Jul 27th, 09 at 1:57 pm
Ten years ago today, Major League Baseball and sponsor Century 21 came up with the nonsensical idea of playing a slate of 14 games with a futuristic theme — the polar opposite of baseball’s classic “Turn Back the Clock” games. The idea — first introduced a year prior by the Seattle Mariners — was to put baseball fans into the state of mind that these games were being played in the year 2021 (a plug for Century 21) where, apparently, uniforms are a galactic failure in fashion.
20 teams participated in the promotion, wearing ugly-ass stylized uniforms and caps, as well as turning stadiums into futuristic space fortresses complete with jumbotron player photos altered into alien beings. The New York Mets even went so far as to be called “Mercury Mets” during their “Turn Ahead the Clock” event of the 1999 season.
THE voice on Shea Stadium’s public-address system had a spooky alien squeakiness.
”Join us as we play baseball in the year 2021,” the voice announced. ”Your favorite team, the Mercury Mets, will do intergalactic battle with the Pirates of planet Pittsburgh.”
In that game played in 2021, the Pittsburgh Pirates went on to defeat the hometown? Mercury…uh, Mets 5-1. Fans of the Mets, however, would be on the losing end of this horrible gameday gimmick for the duration of their lives.
Mets' Pitcher Orel Hershiser throwing what very well may be a tiny; unpopulated planet
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Source:
Looking back at the Mariners’ futuristic night [ESPN Page 2: Uni Watch]
Sports of The Times; 2021? Mets Miss Chance For 1988 [The New York Times]
Related:
Turn Ahead the Clock jersey photos