Back in June, the San Diego Padres held a Filipino Heritage Celebration. It was at their game against the Washington Nationals. They had Katriz Trinidad sing the anthem. Filipino dance troupes performed and some Filipino vendors turned out at the ballpark. They gave away some white bucket hats with baybayin script and Filipino flag colors. I would've gone if I wasn't traveling.
It was a big success. So much so that they ran it back almost right away. They hosted a second Filipino Heritage Celebration in early September. This time against the Cincinnati Reds. This time around they ran it back. The gave out similar looking basketball jerseys matching the bucket hat. You could imagine your Filipino uncle wearing it to a garage party in Paradise Hills.
To their credit the Padres have been pretty good at celebrating the diverse cultures of the city. The 2025 season had Hispanic, Pacific Islander, and Portuguese nights. Puerto Rican, Irish, and Mexican heritage nights too. Early in the year they held a BCLT (Burmese-Cambodian-Lao-Thai) night. That made them the first pro sports team I know of to have such a commemoration.
These heritage themed nights sit at a unique cross-section of my interests. The stadium giveaways are only part of the fun. When a team goes all in, you also get cultural nonprofits participating. Local artists perform the national anthem or seventh inning stretch. You get special performances by DJs and dance troupes. Oh… and food.
The best example of a flourishing Filipino Heritage Night is on display. It's in a YouTube video by Asian Verified. The vlog is: The BEST Filipino Heritage Night in Sports.
According to the vlog, that distinction belongs to the Seattle Mariners. In 2025, the M's gave away blue-yellow-and-red remakes of the team’s classic jersey.
The vlog also celebrated food options like ube churros and sisig nachos. Then it dove into the rally tabo and barrelman. I don’t have time to dive into these niche Filipinoisms, so IYKYK. Filipino Heritage Night at the ballpark contains multitudes. In this post, I’m gonna focus my reflection on the swag. The giveaway jerseys and merch.
In this department, the Mariners have elevated Filipino Heritage Night to another level. The royal blue dugout jacket they gave away in 2024 can easily fetch $120… and that’s assuming you can find it in your size. Their Filipino-sun hockey-hoodie also does numbers.
Alas, not every Filipino themed item is quite so refined.
In 2023, the New York Mets gave away a hat. It featured the Philippine flag within an outline of their cap logo. It also sported blue and red side panels, yellow buttons, and a repeated map of the islands on the under-visor. There was a lot going on.
This example represents one of the most common missteps. Doing way too much. It’s a common issue that previous efforts by the Padres have been guilty of.
There's another issue that plagues a lot of Filipino heritage night designers. Not being able to go beyond the sun-and-stars. Yes… they are a great visual icon. There’s a reason they’ve made it onto so many Filipino biceps and logos. But we’ve seen it. We’ve seen it again and again. I look at examples like the Houston Rockets in 2022 and the LA Dodgers in 2023. The common pattern is not being able to imagine a tribute beyond the flag, sun, and stars.
The Philippines are 7,000 islands with a wealth of rich inspiration for visuals. They range from textiles to tattoos to nature.
That said, I’m not mad about the sun-and-stars, especially when you can pull it off. When it comes to baseball caps, less is more.
When the sun can integrate with your team logo, that kind of opens up a good opportunity to have fun with it. The Golden State Warriors are the best at this. Their logo is already circular and their team colors overlap well with the Filipino flag. Filling the sun in with the Bay Bridge feels like a natural fit. It works out well that the Bay Area’s Daly City is one of the largest Filipino communities in the United States.
Speaking of cities with a large Filipino presence... that raises expectations for Toronto. The Toronto Raptors have delivered without even trying too hard on their snapback. They’ve got the classic red dinosaur logo that we already love with the eight rays behind it.
The undervisor is a pattern inspired by textiles or tattoos. Not quite a classic batok design. It does make the hat busier. I figure that if you’re already rocking a red and purple dinosaur hat, you already weren’t going for subtle. I could do without the side logos of the flag or Raptors’ claw logo, as they’re redundant. And I could do without the huge FILIPINO colored with the flag on the back, because it’s hard to read, and also, WE GET IT.
One of the best incorporations of the sun has to come from the WNBA. Specifically the Golden State Valkyries. The Bay Area strikes again! Here, they omit the circle to get the rays to line up with the bridge lines on their triangular logo. It doesn’t hurt that on the night of its release, they had Ruby Ibarra and Jeremy Lin in attendance tor ock the gear.
Similarly, the Winnipeg Jets managed to incorporate a lot. Sun rays, the angular outline of a jet, a chevron pattern, and a Maple Leaf. Somehow they did this in a way that doesn’t feel too busy… thanks to some well-thought use of negative space. It would’ve been easy to overlook the NHL when it came to Filipino Heritage Night. I don’t follow hockey much. But there are some jersey gems.
The Clippers’ logo variation seems pretty similar, and they’re a team that gets the less is more approach. It helps that their whole brand is built on minimalism. They do find a way to reflect those vibrant Filipino patterns in a contained way.
The tricky thing about minimalism is that it can quickly veer into laziness. That's the feel I get from the Chicago Bulls, who decided to turn their hat blue, slap a flag on it, and call it a day. That said, while their hat fell short, their bobblehead more than made up for it. The giveaway of Benny the Bull in a Barong draping the flag over his shoulders is a fun one. Teams should get their mascots in on it more. I suppose a bull works very well for Filipino Heritage, being cousins with the carabao.
There are some teams that I’ve simply expected more from.
Let’s start with my beloved Phillies. Philadelphia’s Filipino population isn’t necessarily huge. Especially for the sixth largest city in the US, but it’s there. About 31,000 deep. The missed opportunity is the fact that the team name would be such a layup to work with!
Chan Ho Park, Hideo Nomo, and Fernando Valenzuela were trailblazers for their countries. When a Filipino or Filipino American truly makes a big splash in the MLB, it'll gets things flowing.
This has happened in the NBA to some extent, with Jordan Clarkson, Jalen Green, and now Dylan Harper. To be fair, the Rockets have rolled out some Filipino gear… just not very inspiring editions. But now… Jalen Green is on the SUNS, which seems like a free throw if there ever was one. Jordan Clarkson going from the Jazz to the Knicks greatly increases the odds. I would’ve loved to see the Jazz play with their classic mountain jerseys.
I’ve already shouted out some good examples from the Toronto Raptors. I’ve got to say, the Maple Leafs and Blue Jays seem to come up short. You mean to tell me we can’t be the Toronto Banana Leafs for a day? Or that the Jays’ logo doesn’t lend itself to some play?
The biggest missed opportunity, in my opinion, belongs to the NFL. The entire league. The themed games have been almost non-existent. Granted, with 16 game seasons, the NFL is probably the stingiest at themed games, but still. I especially expect more from the Niners representing the Bay. Or the Raiders representing three hubs of large Filipino Populations. Or the Vikings having Cam Bynum.
Minor League and Semi-Pro teams have never been stingy about themed games.
There's the Canadian Elite Basketball team, the Vancouver Bandits. They had one of the best logo adaptations. They rolled out pretty true-to-style batok designs on a variation of its usual fox head. The jersey patterns are also a win.
And then there’s the Norfolk Lumpia… usually the Norfolk Tides. Minor League Baseball never misses the opportunity to rebrand as a beloved food item.
Funny enough, Norfolk’s Filipino population barely hovers above 4,000. But its surrounding area of Hampton Roads has around 40,000 Filipinos thanks to being a Navy hub.
I often get tired of lumpia and adobo being the only Filipino foods non-Filipinos know.
“You’re Filipino? My friend’s mom makes some really good adobo.”
“Congrats, you’re the 99th person to deliver that exact line.”
But still, I applaud Norfolk for branching out beyond the sun and stars.
Speaking of good ways to branch out, in 2024, the San Francisco Giants gave away a barong inspired jersey. This is currently one of my hands down favorite Filipino Heritage Giveaways. Maybe some day someone takes it to the next level. Maybe they do actual patchwork on barong material, that would be a work of art. Probably way too expensive for a stadium giveaway, though.
Now… let’s talk about those Seattle Mariners again. Seattle has about 200,000 Filipinos in its surrounding area and… OH SNAP! I’ve been writing about Filipino Heritage jerseys for quite a while now. And I have like… work and life to tend to.
Okay friends, this is very clearly gonna have to be a two-parter. We haven’t even begun talking about the US Soccer League, or DJ Javier’s NHL collaborations.
I hope you’ve found my takes on Filipino Heritage jerseys amusing… because I’ve got plenty more in the tank! Stay tuned, my friends.