Getting your own signature shoe is a “pretty big deal” and Nike on Friday unveiled one for Angels CF Mike Trout, making him the “first MLB star to get his own shoe from Nike since” former MLBer Ken Griffey Jr., according to Mike Oz of YAHOO SPORTS. The shoe is “dubbed the Nike Lunar Vapor Trout, which doesn't roll off the tongue like Air Jordan.” It kind of “looks like a Popsicle,” but is an “accomplishment all the same” for the 22-year-old. Yankees SS Derek Jeter had his “own signature shoe through the Jordan brand, not Nike.” The cleats cost $140, and will “be in stores on July 12," with online presales beginning last Friday at Nike.com (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 6/20). MLB.com’s Doug Miller wrote the cleats are a “red and fluorescent yellow wonder of aerodynamics that had been almost two years in the making after numerous consultations between Trout and a team of more than 30 biomechanics experts, designers and innovators working in concert at Nike's Oregon headquarters.” Trout said of Nike, “Everything that I wanted in a shoe, they made it happen." Miller: “The look of the shoe turns heads, to begin with, with the aerodynamic ridges on the outside of the cleat that almost look like the scales on, well, a trout” (MLB.com, 6/21).
