{"id":496605,"date":"2025-11-03T10:15:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T10:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/496605\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T10:15:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T10:15:31","slug":"working-capital-the-baltimore-ravens-have-a-secret-weapon-working-on-their-jerseys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/496605\/","title":{"rendered":"Working Capital: The Baltimore Ravens have a secret weapon working on their jerseys"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ebony Short applied to the Baltimore Ravens’ director of uniform services opening out of curiosity more than anything else.<\/p>\n

In the D.C. region, conversations often start with, \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d WTOP\u2019s series \u201cWorking Capital<\/a>\u201d profiles the people doing the work that makes the region unique. <\/p>\n

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The Ravens\u2019 secret weapon? The official team seamstress<\/p>\n

Ebony Short didn\u2019t grow up thinking she would work in sports. The Baltimore City native went to design school in New York and did costume work for a company behind some of the unique outfits seen in Broadway shows, including The Lion King and Cinderella.<\/p>\n

She was in the midst of moving to California when she stopped at home to visit family and stumbled upon the opportunity. She applied to the Baltimore Ravens\u2019 director of uniform services opening out of curiosity more than anything else.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was great was that it just looked like I could see potential for growth, that it could be even bigger than what I think that they maybe even realized,\u201d Short said. \u201cAt first it was like, \u2018We just need someone that can kind of like hem and put things together.\u2019 But now it\u2019s grown into this thing where we are customizing the majority of our gear for the guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gear being jerseys, pants and every other aspect of uniform equipment a player might wear.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do a lot of special alterations,\u201d Short said. \u201cWe\u2019ll make padding. We make about 3,500 pads a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pads go inside jerseys, pants \u2014 she\u2019s even had to sew them into socks. Anyone that\u2019s bought a football jersey to support their favorite team knows the sizes are fairly uniform, and anyone who has watched football knows players come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes players are between jersey sizes. One size might be too tight and restrictive, the next size might be too loose.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe primary goal is to help create performance wear so that these guys can go out and perform to their best ability,\u201d Short said. \u201cSo we accommodate that in whatever way that looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ebony<\/a>Ebony Short alters a uniform for a Baltimore Ravens player as part of her job customizing the team\u2019s gear. (WTOP\/John Domen)<\/p>\n

Sometimes that means altering specific parts of the jersey.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome things we\u2019ll do is open up arm holes, because our linemen don\u2019t have as much mobility from their uniform that\u2019s restricting them,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd if there\u2019s one thing you don\u2019t want as a player it\u2019s to be restricted by your uniform. Or if it\u2019s a little loose and they\u2019re being held and the referees aren\u2019t calling it \u2014 you want to be able to cover all of the, like, possibilities of what their performance would look like.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a job she admitted she never even knew existed, and one that\u2019s evolved a lot in the years since. It\u2019s also not as far away from the theater scene she got her start in as you would think.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t stick rhinestones on the guys, which would be fun,\u201d she said with a smile. \u201cBut I think most of the creation comes into, like, the problem-solving.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a lot of ways, it\u2019s very similar to theater,\u201d she added. \u201cSome of the magic of theater is that you don\u2019t know how the trick happened. And so I think here is the same thing. \u2026 We have these things that we have to solve, but we also don\u2019t want people to know how the trick happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Short has a good reason for not knowing the job even existed; as far as most NFL teams are concerned, it doesn\u2019t. Most teams just have an equipment guy figure it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had some teams that are like, \u2018We\u2019ll send you jerseys, can you just help us figure this out?’\u201d she said. \u201cOr the best part is, when we\u2019ve got guys who played with us before, and they go to other teams and they\u2019re like, \u2018I want my stuff like the Ravens.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The job can easily run 60 hours a week during the season, and she doesn\u2019t do it all alone. And in a sport known for being a copy cat league, she think it\u2019s only a matter of time before more teams employ someone like her. But for now, she\u2019s quite happy having a unique role.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it gives us an advantage,\u201d she said. \u201cThey get similar uniforms, and the positions are similar, so the body types are also similar.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ebony Short applied to the Baltimore Ravens’ director of uniform services opening out of curiosity more than anything…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2052],"tags":[184,117,2282,24496,7,7171,6,44377,80443,169,80444],"class_list":{"0":"post-496605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baltimore-ravens","8":"tag-baltimore","9":"tag-baltimore-ravens","10":"tag-baltimoreravens","11":"tag-ebony-short","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-john-domen","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-nfl-jerseys","16":"tag-nfl-jobs","17":"tag-ravens","18":"tag-working-capital"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115485247363964146","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}