Two years. That's how long it took Nike to fix the Dodgers script after they broke it. Not a long time in most industries. A very long time when you're one of the most famous uniforms in baseball and your chest reads like a knockoff of itself.
When Nike took over the MLB uniform contract in 2024, the Dodgers script came out wrong. It was the kind of wrong that takes a few seconds to notice and then you can't unsee it. The lowercase "d" was slightly off. The whole thing had been run through a template and came out the other side a little less like the Dodgers and a little more like a Dodgers t-shirt from a gas station.
What Was Actually Wrong
The "d" in Dodgers lost the clean closure on its loop. Nike's version approximated it. Close, but not right. The root cause turned out to be mechanical: the new template used a narrower jersey placket than the old one, which meant the script broke across the button line at a different point. The Dodgers faced a choice between recentering the script slightly toward the left sleeve or keeping it centered and letting the "d" split. They chose the latter. It was the wrong call.
These sound like small things. For most jerseys they would be. The Dodgers script is not most jerseys. It's one of the five most recognizable wordmarks in American sports, full stop. When you mess with it, people notice.
The Fix
The corrected version debuts this season and it's right. The font is larger. The spacing is cleaner. The "d" no longer straddles both sides of the jersey opening. The script looks like the Dodgers again instead of someone's memory of the Dodgers.
Worth noting: this is still the Nike Vapor Premier template, the same one that's been criticized across the league for fabric transparency and fit. The script fix doesn't solve those problems. But it solves the one that bothered people most in Los Angeles, and that matters.
It took two years, but they got it right.