I reduced the company to a little store at 13th and Walnut Streets (in Philadelphia). It was down to just me and my wife." In 1983, a customer walked into the store and asked if Mitchell & Ness could repair his 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates game-worn vest, and his 1949 St. Louis Browns game-worn shirt. They were both made of wool flannel as all baseball uniforms had been during that era. Mitchell & Ness found that it could do it, and with the realization that Mitchell & Ness was capable of this task, an idea was born: Reproduce historically accurate wool-flannel baseball uniforms. Mitchell & Ness recruited history buffs and sports gurus most notably Capolino's friend Bob Downes. They dug through old newspapers, periodicals, books, programs, and old film footage. They consulted vintage uniform collectors throughout the country and visited the archives at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Major League Baseball (MLB) teams had stopped wearing wool flannel jerseys by 1972 to wear double-knit polyester jerseys. In a dusty warehouse in North Philadelphia, Mitchell & Ness discovered rolls of old baseball flannel from 50 years earlier. They were still carefully wrapped, untouched, and in like-new condition ready to be cut and sewn. The flannel was sewn. The lettering and patches were recreated and applied. The jerseys were completed, and they were offered for sale. The first shirts sold almost overnight. So did the second batch of a dozen or more. In time, Mitchell & Ness attracted customers from across the United States. Sports Illustrated wrote a flattering piece about Mitchell & Ness in June 1987. The New York Times wrote about the company two years later. In 1999, Mitchell & Ness expanded into the history of the National Basketball Association (NBA), when it introduced its Hardwood Classics collection of basketball jerseys. Football followed a year later with the Mitchell & Ness Throwback Collection. In 2002, the National Hockey League (NHL) granted Mitchell & Ness rights to remake vintage hockey sweaters. Mitchell & Ness now has on file every MLB uniform worn since the founding of the original Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869. In 2007, Adidas purchased Mitchell & Ness in order to get into the retro-apparel style market. On May 29, 2008, the Philadelphia Phillies announced that they had signed Mitchell & Ness as a naming-rights partner of its clothes store at the Phillies' Citizens Bank Park.