The San Diego Padres baseball team baseball has apparently ended up scrapping part of their new training outfits after some concerned fans complained about its design, San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
According to the newspaper, certain elements of the team’s emblem featured on the recently designed spring training cap apparently looked like swastika to some, with a number of people bringing up this issue on social media.
This is embarrassing. The Padres, days before spring training opens, have had to shelf the caps they were planning to wear and sell, because folks thought the SD inside the Friars logo looked too much like a swastika! pic.twitter.com/bsgfoCPT2I
— Charlie Meredith (@chbmeredith) February 11, 2020
@Padres For the love of god, please don’t wear those swastika spring training hats. #BackToTheDrawingBoard
— The Abominable ShowMan (@AbmnbleShowMan) February 6, 2020
@MLB @NewEraCap @Padres. The spring training hats have a swatsika on it. FIX THIS NOW! This is unacceptable.
— Sam in San Diego (@SammyGSanDiego) February 5, 2020
"Following our offseason uniform rebrand and the overwhelmingly positive response from Padres fans, we’ve decided to wear our regular season brown caps with the gold ‘SD’ for the majority of spring training," said Wayne Partello, Padres chief marketing officer.
The team, however, is expected to wear the controversial caps at least once during spring training because they were "introduced and sold to fans as the official on-field caps of spring training and regular season batting practice", the newspaper adds.