With Michael Lorenzens no-hitter, skateboard culture crosses over into MLB

By Evan Drellich, C. Trent Rosecrans and Cody Stavenhagen

In 1966, brothers Paul and Jim Van Doren opened the Van Doren Rubber Company on 704 East Broadway in Anaheim, Calif., offering custom-made shoes. “Vans,” as they’d come to be known, became the preferred shoe for Southern California’s burgeoning skateboard scene. A few decades later, a kid who grew up on nearby Elder Street would bring a slice of that subculture to the major leagues.

Advertisement

Michael Lorenzen played baseball in the parks of Anaheim and skateboarded on its streets. And on Wednesday, during his moment of triumph at Citizens Bank Park, he made sure that connection was displayed prominently. When the Phillies’ right-hander tossed his no-hitter against the Nationals he donned UltraRanges, made by Vans.

“I’m not really a shoe guy,” Lorenzen said last week, “but I’m a Vans guy.”

In the past decade, custom shoes with unique designs became routine across pro sports, although Major League Baseball was slower to welcome player expression than other sports. Yet even in a landscape where attention-grabbing footwear is the norm, Lorenzen’s choice stood out.

“He’s one of those bold athletes that really wants to express his own style,” said Anthony Ambrosini, who converts regular pairs of Lorenzen’s Vans into their playing form, including Wednesday’s set. “Vans is so unheard of on a baseball field, I think that even adds to why he would want to wear it.”

To the 31-year-old Lorenzen, Vans are a way of keeping Orange County close. He’s played for his hometown Angels, but he’s also relocated to Cincinnati, Detroit, and now, Philadelphia. On the digital baseball talk show “Foul Territory,” Lorenzen noted that the original Vans store was “three blocks from my house.”

Beyond skateboarding and Southern California, Vans also came to symbolize punk rock as the title sponsor of the Warped Tour, which ran for decades. But that culture has rarely leaked into baseball, or the other major U.S. sports — at least not this visibly.

@Lorenzen55 those @VANS_66 cleats look even better in that @Angels uniform! 💪🏽😤 #Anaheim pic.twitter.com/l7ozOwlG1Y

— Anthony Lorenzen (@ALorenzen1227) March 19, 2022

No other athletes in the most mainstream of sports prominently wear the brand. In football, some players have regular Nike or Adidas cleats painted to mimic the style of Vans, said Anthony De Lucia, who makes custom shoes for other athletes.

Advertisement

“But Lorenzen I think is the only guy in professional sports actually wearing Vans in-game,” De Lucia said. “I’ve probably painted over 3,000 pairs of shoes since I’ve started doing this. I’ve painted maybe five pairs of Vans.”

And those, De Lucia said, were commissioned as gifts.

“I go to a lot of like alternative-rock or punk concerts throughout the summer, and everyone’s in Vans,” De Lucia said. “But in sports, they’re not designed for anything outside of casual or skateboarding use.”

Lorenzen debuted his custom Sk8-Hi Vans at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park in 2020, and is undoubtedly the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter while wearing any variety of the brand. The National Baseball Hall of Fame took Wednesday’s pair into its collection following the game, and spokesperson Jon Shestakofsky confirmed it as the first pair of Vans in the Hall’s charge.

One explanation for Vans’ absence in mainstream sports: the company doesn’t offer its own line of cleats, necessitating a custom job. Ambrosini, a former minor-league baseball player who does the conversions for a company called Custom Cleats, said he has patented his process of attaching spikes to the base of regular shoes.

Although Lorenzen has long favored Vans, far-out shoe choices on the field were uncommon early in his major-league career, which began in 2015. Before the 2019 season, MLB relaxed rules governing what color and design of shoes players could wear, an overdue attempt to allow more individuality in the sport.

Ryan Lefebvre, a Royals broadcaster who grew up in Santa Monica — in the days when teenagers would write the names of their favorite punk-rock bands on their Vans — had a special vantage Wednesday night. Lefebvre wears Vans daily, and got about 10 text messages about Lorenzen: Did you see what he was wearing?

Advertisement

“What I remember was that when Vans became popular for my age group, and we’re talking late ’70s into the early ’80s, it wasn’t a fashion statement. It was a street-cred statement,” Lefebvre said. “So when I saw Lorenzen wearing them, my first thought was: Where is he from? Who does he think he is to be wearing Vans? And when I saw he was from Southern California, I was like: ‘Alright, OK.’

“I know if I was in Little League and there was a guy pitching in Vans, I’d think: This is a bad dude,” Lefebvre said. “This guy is probably gonna pitch a no-hitter.”

Although the Van Doren Rubber Company would spawn a brand that became iconic, Vans went bankrupt in 1984 as counterfeit shoes flooded the market and other products drained the brand’s resources. It emerged from debt within three years and became a publicly traded company in 1991. In 2016, Vans celebrated its 50th anniversary.

Lorenzen has been on his own winding journey. Once a two-way player with the Reds, he has a career .710 OPS in 133 at-bats. He has served as a starter and reliever with the Reds and Angels. He’s long had good stuff, but putting it all together remained a riddle. This season, Lorenzen simplified his arsenal, doubled down on the best elements of his game and made a surprising All-Star appearance as a member of the Detroit Tigers, where he wore custom home and road pairs of Vans.

“I believe that white pair he did wear for the no-hitter was part of that All-Star batch that we made,” Ambrosini said.

Since the All-Star game, Lorenzen has been on the hottest stretch of his career. Knowing Detroit was likely to trade him, Lorenzen kept generic gray and white pairs of Vans that would suit him wherever he ended up. He was dealt to the Phillies at the Aug. 1 trade deadline and has not disappointed since.

Wednesday night in Philadelphia, still riding the high of emotions, Lorenzen took a picture with his gray and white spikes before he sent them off to Cooperstown.

Advertisement

“I’ve got to get a new pair for sure,” Lorenzen told reporters. “I mean, those are my only pair. Vans, we need to make another pair as soon as possible.”

“I think we might come out with some Phillie-colored ones,” Lorenzen added Thursday, “which will be cool.”

One day after the no-hitter, Ambrosini said that he had yet to receive a new shipment of Vans to work on for Lorenzen, but expected it would only be a matter of days.

“He always orders more,” Ambrosini said laughing. “He always orders more.”

For now, Orange County’s own remains unique in that.

“Seeing (Vans) on a baseball field, that is the signature move by Lorenzen,” De Lucia said. “There’s nothing even, like, similar. No one’s wearing, like, Converse — nothing. This is it.”

— The Athletic’s Matt Gelb and Rustin Dodd contributed to this story.

(Top photo of Michael Lorenzen celebrating his no-hitter with J.T. Realmuto: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k3Btb29gbXxzfJFsZmlwX2Z9cLnInJ%2BanZxiubC%2BxKexnqZdo7xutMitq56qXauur7%2BO