The New York Mets, founded in 1962, returned National League baseball to New York following the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles and the New York Giants to San Francisco. The Mets' uniform was designed to incorporate elements of both departed clubs, with the Dodgers' royal blue becoming the Mets' primary color and the Giants' orange the trim color, along with the Giants' "NY" crest adopted as the new team's cap logo. The original Mets uniform had a "clean and classic" look that, while it has undergone a number of changes over the course of the team's history, has never been substantially revised. The basic template has always been a conventional short-sleeved baseball uniform with "Mets" in cursive script on a white pinstriped home jersey, and either "NEW YORK" or "Mets" on a gray road jersey, with the lettering and numerals in blue outlined in orange. The most notable variations were the "racing stripe" uniforms of the 1980s and early '90s, and the addition of black as a trim color along with black alternate jerseys and caps that were worn from 1998 through 2011. For 2012, in recognition of its 50th Anniversary, the club restored its classic look by removing the black trim from all of its uniforms and phasing out the black jerseys and caps. Since then the club has adopted blue alternate jerseys and caps but has generally worn its primary uniform in most games, home and away.
Primary logo
The Mets' primary logo is a circular crest with an orange outline, containing a blue silhouetted representation of New York City's skyline against a white background, with the word "Mets" in orange cursive script outlined in white just below the center of the circle. At the bottom of the circle is a generic image of a suspension bridge in white, symbolizing the joining of New York's five boroughs. The skyline itself includes, from left to right, representations of a church spire (symbolizing Brooklyn, the "borough of churches"), the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building (tallest building in Brooklyn), the Woolworth Building, the Empire State Building, and the United Nations building. Superimposed over the skyline behind the "Mets" script are orange baseball stitches. The logo was designed by cartoonist Ray Gotto, creator of the Ozark Ike comic strip.
From 1962–1998, the logo had a small interlocking "NY" in block letters just to the left of the "Mets" wordmark.
Current game uniforms
Home uniforms
The primary home uniform for the Mets is a white uniform with blue pinstripes, a conventional button-down jersey with short sleeves, and tackle-twill lettering in royal blue outlined in orange. The jersey has the word "Mets" in cursive script across the chest, angled upward, with the player's number in sans-serif block numerals underneath the "-ets" script on the player's left side. On the back of the jersey is the player's number in sans-serif block numerals, with the player's name radially arched above it in block lettering, sewn directly onto the jersey.
The Mets have two sleeve patches: a circular embroidered patch depicting the Mets' primary logo, and an advertising patch which is a blue rectangle outlined in orange, horizontally oriented, with the advertiser's logo and wordmark in white lettering. One patch appears on each sleeve; which patch appears on which sleeve depends on the player's handedness. Left-handed batters and pitchers wear the primary-logo patch on the left sleeve (its traditional location) and the ad patch on the right sleeve; for right-handed batters and pitchers, the ad patch is on the left sleeve and the primary-logo patch is moved to the right sleeve. For switch-hitters, the patch placement depends on the opposing team's starting pitcher; primary on the left, ad on the right against right-handed starters, the opposite against left-handed starters.
The Mets' home uniforms are worn with blue socks, belts, and undersleeves.
Road uniforms
The road uniforms are grey with blue piping on the collar/placket and sleeve ends. Like the home uniforms, the road jerseys have blue tackle-twill lettering outlined in orange. The "NEW YORK" wordmark is radially arched across the chest, in Tiffany typeface, with the player's number below "YORK" on the player's left side. The uniform pants are grey with blue piping from the beltline to the cuff on each side. The road jerseys feature the same numerals, lettering and sleeve patch(es) as the home jersey, and the uniforms are also worn with blue socks, belts, and undersleeves.