Is That a $10,000 Necklace on the Baseball Field?

There’s a moment every baseball player dreams of as a child: it’s the 9th inning in the deciding game of the World Series, his team is down to its last outs. He steps to the plate, hangs the bat on his shoulder, and waits for the right pitch. He smacks a home run and becomes an instant hero.

Los Angeles Dodgers player Miguel Rojas did almost exactly that last month. While his late-game heroics enraptured sports fans, something else captured much of the internet’s attention. Wrapped around the 36-year-old second baseman’s neck was a Van Cleef & Arpels 10-motif sapphire Alhambra necklace, a piece of high jewelry that can cost over $10,000. As Rojas told E! News, his wife got him the necklace for Father's Day to match a pair of Alhambra earrings he wore during spring training. He wore the necklace for most of the season as a lucky talisman even though he has no official partnership with the brand.

"There were women watching with their husbands or significant others, and they saw the Van Cleef necklace, and everyone was stunned,” says Jack Savoie, a stylist whose viral videos breaking down athletes’ jewelry choices have garnered millions of views. While male athletes of previous generations sported jewelry, it was mainly worn off the field and tended to be of the hyper-masculine, oversized medallions variety. Now, athletes are gravitating toward high jewelry houses, wearing accessories more often seen on a red carpet.

Rojas isn't the only Dodger embracing on-field fine jewelry. World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto wore a custom-made blue sapphire tennis necklace, while his teammate Enrique “Kiké” Hernandez wore one studded with rainbow-colored sapphires. Both were custom made by the Fullerton, California based jeweler Happy Jewelers, which has become something of a team favorite.

"In pre-season when players like Kiké and Yoshinobu came in, they told us they don’t want the regular white tennis necklace," says Gabe Arik, owner and founder of Happy Jewelers. Athletes, Arik explained, come to his store for something that will stand out on the playing field and project their personalities. As the rigid boundaries that once defined masculine dressing have loosened considerably, caring about how you look has been largely stripped of gendered signifiers. Wearing diamonds is simply a way to look cool and get noticed.

The trend extends beyond baseball. Dallas Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb has become known for his game-day Cartier stack, which includes multiple Love bracelets in different metals.

Justin Jefferson, a wide receiver on the Minnesota Vikings, wears a stack of diamond tennis necklaces designed by the New York jeweler Leo Frost. (Savoie estimates is 300 karats worth of stones.)

Bulgarian tennis star Gregor Dimitrov wears his own stack of Van Cleef Alhambra motif bracelets under his sweatbands as a good luck charm.

These men aren’t just wearing jewelry—they’re wearing five-figure pieces while performing at the highest levels of physical competition. Jefferson’s diamond necklace has broken at least twice during play; during a 2024 game, he stuffed the snapped string of diamonds into his pants during a huddle. "When we're making [jewelry], I work with my designers to make them very strong," Arik explains. "We make the cables a little bit thicker. Because, you know, it's gonna break if you're sliding in the dirt."

While these accessories are expensive, "it's not really about flexing wealth anymore," says Savoie. "It's more about beauty. It's showing off in a different way." The shift reflects how athletes are evolving beyond their on-field prowess into multidimensional personal brands. The jewelry industry is taking note: David Yurman launched a male-focused brand last year and tapped NBA players like Jalen Green, Kyle Kuzma, and Josh Hart for the debut campaign. As the global athlete endorsement market is projected to grow to over $3 billion by 2030, jewelry choices are an exercise in creating an aura that might pay dividends off the field.

The influence seems to be trickling down: sales of men’s jewelry have more than doubled on the e-commerce site MyTheresa since last year. "I think people, not just athletes, are feeling more comfortable wearing jewelry and bags in a different way now," Savoie says. "Social norms are changing and breaking down a little bit which is a good thing."