CINCINNATI — If there’s one thing the Reds as a franchise have done well since the Castellini group took ownership in 2006, it’s been to look back at the team’s glory years.

The Big Red Machine has been honored on several occasions and statues of Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench and Pete Rose were built. The All-Star Game in 2015 centered on the Reds’ claim as the first professional baseball team, leaning on the motif of the handlebar mustache favored by many of the first Cincinnati Red Stockings. And in 2019, the team celebrated 150 years of professional baseball with a whopping 15 throwback uniforms.

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When it came to the Nike MLB City Connect Series uniform program, the Reds wanted to look forward instead of to the past. The Reds are the fourth team to introduce their City Connect uniforms this year, following the Braves, Rangers and Mariners. All three of those teams looked back into their history with their designs, the Braves basing theirs on their mid-70s uniform design, the Rangers referenced the minor-league teams from the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex and the Mariners utilized their original trident logo.

“We’ve done that — we do that really well,” said Ralph Mitchell, the Reds’ vice president of communications and marketing. “This (design idea) was the culture, the community, the vibe, the personality. And we wanted to draw parallels between Cincinnati as this up-and-coming, cutting-edge, vibrant city and this team, this young, energetic team that’s chock full of talent right now. We appreciate our history, we celebrate our history. Everybody knows that. So we were really intentional about looking forward.”

Many of the releases for these uniforms contain multiple explainers, pointing to a host of different elements, like the “Peagle” of the Rangers, a mash-up of the Ft. Worth Panthers and Dallas Eagles, or the Braves’ use of what they describe as a crown to honor home run king Hank Aaron. The Reds aren’t looking to explain every single centimeter of fabric.

“You’re not going to find Easter Eggs there,” Mitchell said. “It’s exactly what we were intending it to be and we’re super proud of it and all the players loved it.”

There were ideas, Mitchell said, of using the Roebling Bridge, the Tyler Davidson Fountain from Fountain Square, Union Terminal, flying pigs or even chili. Instead, Mitchell said, it was about a “vibe.”

That can sound like marketing mumbo jumbo, and there’s plenty of that in the official release with the mention of “collective energy,” “wavelength lines” and “infrared color,” the idea is less about specific parts of the city than modernizing the team’s identity.

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The C on the cap is not based on anything, but just an updated version of the wishbone C the team has used for most of its history. It’s the same height and width as the ones used on their standard caps.

“Since the ’30s and ’40s the logo hasn’t changed a lot,” Mitchell said. “Nike delivered exactly what we were looking for — something definitely more edgy and bold design. It’s not meant to represent the shape and it’s not meant to represent anything other than it’s supposed to be a modernized version.”

Mitchell wouldn’t even commit to the reasoning behind the consistent use of five red stripes that are in the C on the hat, on the shoulder stripes and the piping down the legs of the pants. The Reds have five World Series titles in their history — 1919, 1940, 1975, 1976 and 1990 — but Mitchell wouldn’t commit to that (or Johnny Bench’s No. 5) as the reason.

“We’ll let the fans draw their own conclusions,” Mitchell said. “We’re not looking back at anything.”

Well, almost anything. The Red band around the base of the hat (and matte black helmet) came from the 1919 hat the team wore in 2022 at the Field of Dreams game, as well as several of the team’s other earlier hats.

Two other previous uniforms were instrumental in the final design, as well. From 1999 to 2006, the Reds wore sleeveless uniforms with T-shirts underneath. At first, the red undershirts were supposed to be worn at home, but the players liked the black so much that they started wearing those at home as well. The team’s black hats have always been among their best sellers. And then there was the 2019 throwback program. The most popular uniform in the team store that year was the blue 1911 uniform the team wore complete with a blue jersey and blue pants. The monochrome look was better on the field than on mannequins, something Mitchell believes will be the case with the all-black uniforms and red socks.

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A small group from the Reds, including Mitchell, started working on this project with Nike in 2021, the year the City Connect uniforms debuted with the Boston Red Sox wearing blue and yellow to match the logo of the Boston Marathon.

With the Reds, one of the first decisions was that red was going to be a prominent color — the team’s name is the color, so it’s hard (though the Red Sox with blue and yellow socks proved not impossible) to go in another direction.

The other big decision was to go with “Cincy” as the word mark. There were other choices, including the full city name, the Queen City or Porkopolis, but the choice of Cincy came early (and will hopefully inform people outside the area that the abbreviated name should use a Y and not an I).

With black as the base, Mitchell said they didn’t want to put too much on the jersey, with a little red going a long way. The updated wishbone “C” is used as a patch on the shoulder. The other shoulder will, like all of the Reds’ jerseys, feature an advertising patch from Kroger, a local company. Advertising on jerseys is new this year and all teams were allowed to have two different patches. Every other Reds uniform uses a white patch with a blue Kroger logo. Instead of a patch with a red or gray base for the team’s non-white jerseys, the decision was made to save one for the city connect. The Kroger patch has a black base and the logo in white, making it feel less out of place than maybe some other advertising patches.

Inside the neck, there is a stylized buckeye leaf and the words “Juncta Juvant,” a Latin phrase that appears both on the city’s seal and flag meaning “strength in unity.”

Red is used throughout, from the socks to the band of the hat to the belt, which has its top and bottom lined in red and a red belt loop.

The batting helmet is matte black with a raised rubber logo on the front and numbers on the back.

Those, too, of course, are red. But it’s a different red than usual. Since 2007, the Reds have used Pantone 200 for their red, Mitchell said. But the City Connect uses Pantone 199, the shade worn by the team from 1999 to 2006. Before that, Mitchell said, the team used Pantone 185.

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The team commissioned a video from local production company Fourth Floor Creative, emphasizing that “it’s about who we are and who we will be,” showing mostly the team’s younger players, like Jonathan India, Tyler Stephenson, Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo and Graham Ashcraft. It also features Joey Votto, because he’s Joey Votto.

Fans lined up outside the gift shop at Great American Ball Park on Saturday morning when it opened at 9 a.m. to buy hats, jerseys, mugs, keychains, sweatshirts, T-shirts and the rest of the merchandise with the new look.

The Reds will debut the uniform Friday against the Yankees and will wear them every Friday night at home.

(Top photo of Joey Votto courtesy of Cincinnati Reds)