trim color on polo shirt
 

I went through my older shirts and want to order new ones. I have always gotten shirts from officialgear and didn't worry about the trim colors. I cannot tell if my current shirts have the trim colors white, powder and navy or white powder and black. Some navy almost looks like black. Mine is really dark. I think it is white, powder and navy but want to know before I order. This is for NFHS softball. Dave

They are supposed to be navy stripes. Then again the buttons on the ones from ASA are supposed to be powder blue but will turn pink. If you get these shirts I recommend buying clear buttons to replace the ones they come with.

For NFHS I prefer the Cliff Keen powder blue shirt. Don't really care for the pocket on them but they wear better.

Only if you dry them in a dryer. Let them air dry, and they won't turn pink. I've got some shirts that are around 5 years old, and their buttons are still a perfectly matching blue.

A button shouldn't fade because of drying (which I know is the cause), it's a known defect they won't fix. Cheap materials!

My wife absolutely refuses to put my umpire shirts in the dryer. I have probably 4 or 5 shirts that have NEVER seen the inside of a dryer and still had pink buttons after awhile. She replaced them and they are fine now. Dave

Not true. I always air dry mine, and about half of the ASA shirts have pink buttons. It seems to take them about two years to change, so I am expecting the more recent ones I have purchased to change at any time.

For NFHS and NCAA/NJCAA/NAIA, I use the good quality Dalco shirts. I have some that are pushing a decade that still look crisp and new.

Scott, the only Dalco umpire shirt I can find is the mini or micro mesh. Is that the one you are talking about? I have one of these but wasn't sure if that was the one you had since you said the good quality Dalco shirt. I didn't know if Dalco had different quality shirts. Dave

I've always used Tide with the bleach alternative. My buttons have started falling off, but they've never turned pink since I started air drying them.

Yeah. They have a cheaper quality one as well, that usually sells for around 18-20 bucks. (Or at least they used to.)

Well...mine are washed in cold, with a good detergent, and always air dried yet, like I stated above, the buttons still have turned.

Don't know what to tell ya, my man. Maybe something in your water? I don't know.

I just checked my account on OfficialGear, and I must make a correction... The shirts are 3.5 years old, not 5. Either way, they're old, but their buttons are still blue.

My powder blue shirts still have blue buttons. They're 4 or 5 years old. They were purchased through officialgear.com. You guys with pink buttons, do you have hard or soft water?

Maybe someone else can fill us in better, but it was my understanding that not all buttons on ASA shirts are prone to fading/discoloration, just buttons from certain production batches. So you might have some shirts with the funky looking pink-ish buttons and some that look perfect, regardless of what kind of washing or drying methods you use.

I know that I have shirts I bought a couple years apart, which all get the same laundering and drying treatment, and some have faded buttons, some do not. That would tend to support the "bad production batch" theory.

A strange story about blue shirts and faded buttons...

Last winter I bought a brand new powder blue shirt from a seller on eBay. They had a photo in their auction of a Cliff Keen shirt- you could clearly see the label on the shirt tail. I thought that I was getting a good deal when I bought one for about $15.

I was disappointed when the shirt finally arrived. The seller had sent a new shirt, but it was a "Official's Choice" brand shirt. Now, these aren't necessarily bad shirts- very lightweight with an open mesh that is cool in warm weather and a nice roomy fit. But these shirts are nowhere near as durable and well-made as the Cliff Keen shirts.

To make matters worse, at the time the Official's Choice web site was selling these exact same shirts for LESS than what I paid through the eBay auction.

I tried to give the seller a chance to make things right, but they were steadfast in their stance that I had bid on one new shirt and received one new shirt. After politely explaining several times that a buyer has a reasonable expectation to receive the item pictured in the auction, the seller became abusive and I left her a much-deserved negative feedback.

Anyhow, while I do generally like the shirt- just not at the price I paid while expecting a shirt of better quality- after just two washings the buttons faded to a washed-out light blue. Not the pink-ish hue of the defective ASA shirts, but a noticably lighter color on the face of the buttons, while the underside stitched against the shirt is still the darker blue.

That is what I used once I saw the problem. Lent a couple shirts to a fellow umpire for a national. They came back nice and clean and with pink buttons.

Not saying that the heat is completely out of the picture, but quite possible bleach-type substances probably helped.