Jarren Duran’s first career All-Star Game may come at an unusual cost.
As the Red Sox leadoff man stepped onto the red carpet on Tuesday afternoon, he opened the jacket of his custom peach floral Gentleman’s Playbook suit to reveal “(Expletive) ‘Em.” and “Still Alive” embroidered on the silk lining of the left side.
These two mantras have come to define the Red Sox outfielder’s meteoric rise from struggling part-time player to fan-favorite and clubhouse leader. They’ve also incurred the wrath of Major League Baseball. “(Expletive) ‘Em.” is emblazoned on the chest of the custom undershirt Duran wears under his jersey. When he wore it on camera during a spontaneous NESN postgame interview (following his first career walk-off hit on June 24), the league sent him an official warning. That the expletive contains an asterisk isn’t enough and still doesn’t pass muster. (They don’t mind if he wears it away from the cameras.)
“It’s understandable,” Duran told MassLive of MLB’s warning earlier this month. “But that would be a fine I’d be happy to pay.”
Duran has gotten where he is by being himself: someone who plays hard and feels deeply. These slogans are deeply personal; he’s stepped out of his comfort zone to speak about his ongoing mental health journey, and how affected he was by the struggles he overcame in his first two partial seasons in the Majors.
His custom spikes for the game, designed by independent artist Mike Jordan, also bear the slogans. The cleats are intricate, with the All-Star logo, Duran’s No. 16, a colorful homage to the Texas desert, and green lizards, all hand-painted. (In Triple-A, one of Duran’s teammates compared his running style to “a lizard that runs on water like crazy,” and the nickname stuck.)
Jordan put “(Expletive) ‘Em.” in white and red on both tongues, and mimicked Duran’s hand – he writes the mantras on his wrist tape before every game – for “Still Alive” on the outer-right heel.
“I think that’s admirable,” Jordan told the Herald before the All-Star Game. “He’s supporting not only his own mental health, but mental health across the board. I’ve seen his interviews on this, and I fully support it.”
Jordan got his start designing cleats for New York Giants and Jets practice-squad players. That led to commissions from bigger NFL names such as Cam Jordan and Toronto Blue Jays slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who wanted a pair of cleats to pay tribute to Kobe and Gianna Bryant. A lifelong Yankees fan, Jordan has also worked with former Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia, but Duran was far from his first client on the other side of baseball’s storied rivalry.
“Believe it or not, I think I’ve had more Red Sox clientele than any other baseball team,” Jordan said. He did several Boston jobs during the 2019 season, including “Ice Horse”-themed ones for Michael Chavis’ nickname, Spider-Man for Christian Vázquez, and a smiley-face-covered set for Rafael Devers with his nickname, “Carita,” in bright yellow. “I guess you could say it’s ironic, but my fandom is irrelevant to me when I’m painting cleats.”
The work is time-consuming, and with a full-time job and two young children to raise, Jordan has to be selective with the projects he takes on. The turnaround time on this particular pair was almost as fast as the player who commissioned them; Duran’s agent reached out mere weeks before the midsummer classic. Miraculously, the All-Stars aligned: Jordan lives in New Jersey, and the Red Sox were spending the first weekend of July playing the Yankees in the Bronx. Duran invited the artist and his family to meet him there.
“To make a pair for his All-Star Game, I couldn’t pass that up,” Jordan said. “Went out to Yankee Stadium, went down for batting practice and met Jarren, and he handed over the cleats and the rest is history.”
Under a time-crunch, Jordan had to make a few key sacrifices to do the job right.
“Between my normal daily activities with my kids and my job – I was up for 40 hours straight. I took a half-day at work,” he said. “I have to stand out. If I’m doing a lot less volume than everybody else, I kind of have to hit a home run when I do it.”
To ensure he did that for Duran, Jordan took a few risks.
“I did a little bit of a no-no: on the cleat with the desert background, I did extend the paint job onto the midsole, which typically you don’t do, because the midsole isn’t the best at holding paint, but I just wanted to extend the scenery and the lizard. But everything is prepped correctly, so they’ll be in great shape, depending on how hard he does go,” Jordan laughed. “I’m used to working with football players, and they beat up their cleats way worse.”
That’s saying something, considering Duran is typically covered in dirt five minutes into a game, either from making a jaw-dropping defensive play or wreaking havoc – one of the team’s buzzwords this season – on the bases. However, Jordan also knew there was a possibility the footwear wouldn’t get into the game at all; players don’t always end up wearing what they order, which he said is something of a “pet peeve.”
“If you get paid for your work, a lot of people would say ‘Who cares?’ but I want them to be worn,” Jordan said. “Especially as a baseball fan, it will never get old. When it comes to baseball, I’m like a kid still; no matter how many times I see something that I made being worn by a Major Leaguer, it never gets old. I made them to be worn!”
On Tuesday afternoon, Jordan shared photos of the cleats to his social media accounts. Though MLB can’t fine him, the decision still gave the artist a moment’s pause.
“The greatest honor and recognition is to have the league, or team, or an outlet associated with them share your work, right? So it did occur to me that if I post these, MLB might be less inclined to share if the ‘(Expletive) ‘em’ was visible,” Jordan said. “But at the end of the day, I don’t have any guarantee that they’re going to share the work. Secondly, I think there’s something to be said about what Jarren is doing, supporting mental health and putting it out there. At the end of the day, if they don’t want to post it or share it, that’s fine. I’d rather be on board with Jarren’s initiative, because I support it.”
For both men, it’s a small price to pay to be true to one’s self in front of the world.
Postscript: Duran did, indeed, wear Jordan’s cleats during his first All-Star Game. They were on his feet as he took over for Aaron Judge in centerfield in the fifth, as he came to the plate for the first time and blasted a go-ahead two-run homer in his first at-bat and rounded the bases, and when he was named the Ted Williams All-Star MVP.
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