Pittsburgh Pirates chairman Bob Nutting admits he was slow to embrace the idea of adding advertising to Major League Baseball’s game uniforms, that it took time to get used to the change.

“The idea of putting a logo on a uniform is something baseball just hadn’t done,” Nutting said, “so probably I was a little concerned and a little bit of a contrarian early in the process.”

When the Pirates searched for a corporate partner whose logo would adorn the sleeve of their game jerseys, it was important to them to find a long-term alignment with a company whose values mirrored their own.

The Pirates announced Friday that Sheetz will be the club’s first jersey patch partner, signing a three-year partnership with the convenience store chain that will include the red Sheetz logo on the sleeves of the Pirates home and away jerseys beginning with Friday’s series against the Tampa Bay Rays at PNC Park.

“I think what we’re most excited about with the partnership really is finding ways to bring it to life and activate it within the ballpark and in the community,” Nutting said. “I think the Sheetz family, particularly beyond a corporate partnership, has so many shared interests and shared values with the Pirates and Pirates Charities. I think that’s where we’re really going to create the biggest impact.”

As part of the new collective bargaining agreement, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association approved the use of sponsor patches for the 2023 season. Of the 17 teams that had jersey patch deals, the majority signed sponsorship deals with companies from their market. The Cleveland Guardians, for example, have a deal with Marathon, the retail brand of Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum Corporation (MPC).

Sheetz president/CEO Travis Sheetz emphasized his family business, which he said has 70 stores in the Greater Pittsburgh area, can create synergy with the Pirates at PNC Park and beyond. Sheetz was founded in 1952 in Altoona, which is home to the Pirates’ Double-A affiliate, the Altoona Curve, so many of the team’s players became regular customers while playing in the minor leagues.

“If you took our market and the Pirates’ fan base and overlayed these two, you’d be hard-pressed to find many gaps,” Sheetz said during an on-field news conference at PNC Park. “The city of Pittsburgh has been an essential part of the growth of Sheetz for more than 40 years. We are so excited to take our partnership with the Pirates to the next level with this new jersey patch. Like the Pirates, we are dedicated to giving back to our communities and providing great experiences for our customers in Western Pennsylvania and beyond. This is why this partnership makes perfect sense.”

Pirates president Travis Williams noted the club has had a longstanding partnership with Sheetz for the past decade and quickly realized how aligned their values are and how they could elevate the partnership beyond one that is purely transactional.

The partnership with Sheetz also will include ballpark signage, in-game activations and social and digital content. Williams said the Sheetz logo patch will appear on the sleeve of the leading arm of Pirates players — in other words, the left sleeve of a right-handed pitcher and the right sleeve of a left-handed hitter — to get maximum exposure on television.

All Nike Elite jerseys sold at the Pirates Clubhouse Store will now include the Sheetz patch, while fans purchasing the Nike Limited jerseys, blank or customized, will have the option to add on the Sheetz patch for a cost of $10.

“As we were looking for jersey patch partners, we wanted to target companies that were in the Western Pennsylvania region that had a real connection to us, as opposed to taking the so-to-speak ‘easy dollar’ and just slapping a patch on,” Williams told TribLive. “We wanted it to be somebody who has alignment with us, not only in terms of their business values but their family values and their community values.

“We had a lot of discussions that went very far and deep with a lot of Pittsburgh companies. Ultimately, this was the one we felt fit best.”

Kevin Gorman is a TribLive reporter covering the Pirates. A Baldwin native and Penn State graduate, he joined the Trib in 1999 and has covered high school sports, Pitt football and basketball and was a sports columnist for 10 years. He can be reached at kgorman@triblive.com.

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