Ferdinand Cesarano

1 hour ago, McCall said:

When I think vests, I think Pirates more than any other team.

I can understand that.  But for me, Ted Kluszewski takes it for the Reds.

(By the way, the player on the right is Gus Bell, the grandfather of the Reds' manager David Bell, and the father of Buddy Bell, who also played for the Reds despite being best known for the Texas Rangers.)

We see that Kluszewski cut his undershirt to display his large arms.

Klu did indeed also play for the Pirates, where he wore that team's vests.  But he evidently was not allowed to do such extensive surgery on the undershirt there (even though he wore the undershirt much shorter than other players).

Anyway, Klu was so identified with the Reds' vests that he cut the sleeves of his White Sox jersey almost into a vest.

And he had his Angels jersey custom-tailored into a vest, with the piping moved.  Compare Klu's jersey with the standard 1961 Angels jersey.

So I am heavily influenced by Klu on this.  But I would settle for both the Reds and the Pirates wearing vests, as I would settle for the Reds wearing the early-1970s style.

2 minutes ago, BC985 said:

@Ferdinand Cesarano I think the Pirates pulled off the vest uniform too.

Yes, if there is another team that can claim vests, it would be the Pirates.

Also, from a purely ahistorical standpoint, I wouldn't call the Marlins' vests ugly, as I would call the Rockies' vests.  But vests just strike me as Reds feature that, ideally, no one else should use.  Still, if it's just the Reds and the Pirates, then I wouldn't really mind too much.  I just don't think that vests should be a standard design element available to any team, like, let's say, pinstripes.

I was hoping for them to follow the good example of Burger King, and just go back to the best-known logo.  But if this is as close as we are going to get to the real Pepsi logo, then I guess it'll have to do.  It's definitely an improvement over what came before.  Still, the flaws in the font would be so much less irritating if the lettering were in blue instead of black.

6 minutes ago, LogoFan said:

I'm really, really, really starting to hate contrasting shoulder panels.  Side panels don't bug me

I go the exact opposite way.  I consider side panels to be unsightly; I've never seen a good use of that feature, which has marred several otherwise good uniforms (for instance, the current uniforms of the Philadelphia Stars).  It's a disease of design; and the Denver Broncos were the superspreaders.

Whereas, contrasting shoulder panels tend to look good to me, whether on the early-1960s Dallas Cowboys (the uniform which is so nice that it became a beloved throwback), or even in the exaggerated shoulder panels on the L.A. Xtreme of the XFL in 2001.

Any feature can be overused; but for two teams out of eight in the current USFL to have that feature definitely does not feel like too much.  

On top of that, I really like the looks of Memphis (except the logo, which should have just been the original logo recoloured) and Pittsburgh.

47 minutes ago, Sport said:

They were the last team to drop their pullovers and sansabelt pants and rather than embracing their pre-pullover look like most teams did, they chose to redesign to a vest and pinstripes look

Which was an awesome look; the Reds are the only team who looked good in vests, whether in the 1950s or the 1990s.

47 minutes ago, Sport said:

with silly white hats

Yow.  The white pinstriped hats are beautiful, even better than the plain-white-crowned hats of the late 1950s.

Nevertheless, I do agree that simply restoring the pre-1972 look would have been the a great move after the disease of pullovers and beltless pants was excised from baseball.

31 minutes ago, BBTV said:

Yeah these are fine:

Right.  And look how good a mature Johnny Bench looks in a button-down version of the uniform, at an old-timers' day soon after he retired.

(The Getty Images caption claims that this photo is from the 1970 All-Star Game.  I don't think so.  For one thing, both Bench and Bob Gibson look too old for this to be 1970.  For another, Gibson famously hated All-Star Games because he refused to fraternise with opposing hitters. The only time Gibson would be smiling and palling around with a hitter would be after his career was over.)

47 minutes ago, Sport said:

If they'd just readopted the 1970 uniforms . . . then I don't know if we would've had the BFBS Reds. 

I don't think that this follows.  As @BBTV has demonstrated, the C logo was filled in with black in the early 1960s.  The Reds might very well have done that again anyway in the late 1990s, no matter what style they were wearing.

20 hours ago, MNtwins3 said:

If the Reds dropped every ounce of black but kept everything else, their current uniforms would be outstanding

47 minutes ago, Sport said:

I think an overwhelmingly high percentage of Reds fans would love if the team dropped the 90's drop shadows and went back to being a strictly red/white team. 

Honestly, notwithstanding my strong preference for the early-1990s look, and my placing of the early-1970s look as a close second, I would agree that just removing the black from the current set would make that set a great one.  (Note that here I am referring only to the white home jersey with the piping, and to the grey road jersey.  That awful red jersey with the "Reds" script is irredemable.)  The old-timey lettering suits the team well.

23 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

I mean, I understand why an XFL 2020 QB like Ta'amu or Perez would jump to the USFL last year; it was the only alternative. But I wonder what prompts them to then ditch the USFL for the XFL this year? 

Is signing with the XFL tantamount to ditching the USFL?  It could be characterised in that manner only if there is something in the XFL contract that prevents a player from playing in the USFL.  If there is no such clause, then presumably an XFL player (especially a high-quality quarterback) could catch on with a USFL team after the XFL season is over.

6 minutes ago, Dilbert said:

Am I the only one who hates the black in the Reds uniforms?  Ive loved the red/white that they have had prior to 1999.

You are definitely not the only one.

This is the best the Reds have ever looked.

8 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

I think that’s the point that’s trying to be made. Hockey fans I’m assuming can be seen as more “blue collar” (at least in comparison to your traditional NBA fanbase), and with that can come some warts. 

And with that comes the obligation to stand against such nonsense.

Recall the powerful liberating slogan "We're here. We're qu--r. Get used to it." That states, quite plainly, that gay people exist, have always existed, and will always exist, and that they constitute a normal part of human duversity. It's the simple reality that gay people are found within every group — including hockey players and even hockey fans. This understanding is what is underscored by "Hockey is for everyone".

Certain governments may wish to distinguish themselves from the Western world by embracing a toxic anti-gay hatred that is no longer acceptable in the West. Still, in the immortal words of George Costanza: we're trying to have a civilisation here.

1 hour ago, gosioux76 said:

Can someone explain the significance of this to me? 

 

If he's the first-ever draft pick to "get arrive" (), then what is the point of having a draft at all? 

A draft assigns the rights of players to the various teams; it doesn't compel those players to sign.

Furthermore, teams can presumably still sign players who were not taken in the draft.

31 minutes ago, WSU151 said:

New Era should have figured this out. 

The Reds' hats at that time, while beautiful, had inconsistencies with the placement of the pinstripes.

59 minutes ago, MJWalker45 said:

1 hour ago, McCall said:

I think if they had teams 100% based out of their home markets like in 2020 and not flying in and out of Arlington every week, it would go a long way to establishing fanbases better. 

I think this is the problem. Even with San Antonio just down the road, they can't have players going back and forth for community events once the season starts, unless they do something the day of the game. And no player wants to do a meet and greet when they are trying to get ready for a game.

But the teams' presence in the Arlington hub doesn't explain the absence of the types of  promotion which do not require players to be physically present, such as interviews on sports talk radio stations — not to mention billboards, print ads, and ads on television and radio. 

1 hour ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

There is zero local XFL presence. Haven't seen a sign, a TV ad, targeted social media, nothing. Unless you know the XFL exists, you'd have no way of knowing the XFL exists.

I was surprised to find that none of the teams has a local radio deal, whether a rights sale or a time-buy.  I know that last season (meaning 2020) at least one team, Houston, had an arrangement with a local station, in that case ESPN 97.5 KFNC-FM.  I listened to a couple of games on that station, including the week 4 game against Dallas that felt like a pretty big deal, and I really enjoyed the presentation.

But this season, when I went to that station's stream in order to listen to a Roughnecks game, I found a talk show there discussing some weird obscure league.  (I think it's called "NFL" or something like that.  Whatever.  It'll never catch on.)

The absence of local radio is no doubt a symptom of the XFL's lack of effort at advertising in the teams' cities.  Surely the Dragons would be helped by even a meagre few billboards; and if a Seattle station were broadcasting the team's games, that station would presumably promote those games and would program around them, such as by discussing the team on the station's other shows.

Speaking as someone who enjoys games on radio, I am sad to say that the XFL's only "radio" (if you can call it that) is on the ESPN Xtra channel on Sirius XM channel 81.  But that's only the audio track of the television call, so it's a pretty poor way to follow a game.  What would be nice would be if those TV announcers, who are aware that their calls are going out over radio, adjusted those calls to account for radio.  But, alas, you can't expect Vin Scully-level professionalism from everyone.

Still, even as a radio lover, I would watch the games on television if I could.  But I only recently dropped cable, after those thieves priced me out.  I have some streaming apps, but not ESPN, which I do not want.  So watching on TV is not possible for me.  Luckily, I found a guy on YouTube who just live-streams his television.  (Don't tell anyone.)  The guy shoots his TV from clear across the room — and in portrait orientation, to boot; so it looks like crap.  But, thanks to the new YouTube functionality of zooming in on a video on a phone or tablet, I can blow up the picture to a visible size, and then synch the stream to the audio track on Sirius XM, and watch the games, albeit with terrible video quality.  But it's still enough to follow everything.

(Fortunately, the USFL is on Peacock, a streaming service which I do have.)

25 minutes ago, IceCap said:

Branding. Probably not a huge thing and it's easy to overcome if other stuff is fixed but "Orlando Apollos" was a great name. Apollo, Greek god of the sun. Florida. Sunshine state. Apollo is associated with archery. Lots of dynamic imagery. It was a great identity that felt like it fit. 

 

"Guardians" is a name the XFL 2.0 picked for NYC and it fits there, and the XFL 3.0 recycled for Orlando to maximize on its already-owned IP. 

While I will agree with almost all of your points, including the point that Apollos was a great name, I have to quibble with the notion that the name Guardians had a particular fit for New York.  The name doesn't really fit in one city more than any other. 

Cleveland found a way to contrive a connection to the Guardians name with its bridge statues; and New York did likewise with the New York Public Library lions. But, really, the name Guardians is as generic as Tigers, and could equally well be used for a team in any city.

Still, it's curious why the league, in moving both the New York and Tampa Bay teams, didn't elect to keep the Vipers' name (and green colour scheme) in Florida and, to use the Guardians' name (and that team's black and red colour scheme) in Las Vegas.  Surely the attraction of the alliteration "Vegas Vipers" couldn't have been so irresistable; there must have been some other reason.

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

I'd say its similar to NHL players in the Olympics, but that's at least the Olympics, and not some fabricated event.

As though the Olympics is a naturally-ocurring event. Egad.

The WBC is the baseball equivalent of the World Cup. For those who didn't read the earlier messages, it bears repeating that even that tournament took several iterations to reach the stature that it eventually attained.

1 hour ago, walkerws said:

9 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

I understand the Showboats moving away from red in a league in which so many teams use red.  But there was no reason to change the logo.  Just recolour the classic logo and helmet.  

I get the nostalgia of it, but it wasn’t a good logo

I strongly disagree. The old logo beautifully abstracted the look of a riverboat wheel. It definitely deserved to be retained, not to be replaced by a logo appropriate for a team called the Speedboats.

I understand the Showboats moving away from red in a league in which so many teams use red.  But there was no reason to change the logo.  Just recolour the classic logo and helmet.  Here are my crude attempts to show that.

1 minute ago, gosioux76 said:

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but that gold looks terrible next to the orange.  Assuming this will only be worn for opening weekend, it would have made more sense to drop the orange and just go with gold and navy. And it's not like this franchise hasn't worn those colors before. 

I think the gold looks better next to the Astros' orange than it looked on the uniforms of the Red Sox or of the Giants (which, yes, include orange) or of any other team that I can think of having seen it on.

In my opinion the whole practice of adding gold shouldn't be done at all; but aesthetically that colour goes well with the Astros' set.

2 hours ago, Silent Wind of Doom said:

On 3/12/2023 at 4:24 AM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

the Olympics  uses "Great Britain" to refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So this is probably the case in this tournament, as well.

 

I thought the GB moniker was used in some international competitions because in those Ireland competed as one team

It is indeed the case that athletes from Northern Ireland can choose to complete at the Olympics either for Ireland or for Great Britain. But I don't think that that is connected to the Olympic convention of using the name "Great Britain". The same option for athletes from Northern Ireland could perfectly well exist even if the Olympics used the name "United Kingdom".

2 hours ago, Silent Wind of Doom said:

 I loved the old China mark, but I think the new one fits better.  I think Blackletter should be used for a European nation with a lot of cultural stuff going on at the time such fancy lettering was used. 

I can understand the point that Old English or Blackletter script is more associated with European countries than with China. But I look at that lettering as part of traditional baseball design, and I strongly suspect that China chose it on that basis.

I am thankful that I was able to get a China hat with the Old English initial. And, unlike with my Italy hat, I bought the China in the right size, so I can actually enjoy wearing it.

To call the WBC "meaningless exhibitions" is embarrassingly clueless. That tournament is for the championship of the entire world.

It's also for the growth of the global stature of baseball. The WBC is important for countries where baseball is already huge, such as Japan, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela (and, of course, the U.S.); but it is more important for countries where baseball is still small but growing, such as China, Italy, and the Czech Republic.

Comparisons to the World Cup ignore the reality that even the World Cup wasn't immediately regarded as huge.  England didn't send a team to the first several iterations of that tournament.

6 minutes ago, BBTV said:

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Well, every city has plenty of entertainment options.  Indeed, that's the nature of a city.

Many cities don’t have great - or at least warm - weather year round with beach activities available every day. 
 

im willing to be that the entertainment activities available in Miami or Tampa in March are a little more than what’s available in Kansas City or Minneapolis or Philadelphia or… etc. 

It's true that not every city has the beaches that Florida cities can boast.  But if you look at the full breadth of things to do instead of going to sporting event, a list which includes restaurants, live music, theatre, museums, etc., I think that you'll find that every place that we think of as a city will have an enormous variety.

14 hours ago, BBTV said:

If I'm in Miami, there's plenty of things I'm doing besides sitting in a lifeless domed park watching mediocre-at-best baseball.

 

I don't know the Tampa area too well, but I assume there's also plenty of awesome distractions. 

Well, every city has plenty of entertainment options.  Indeed, that's the nature of a city.

24 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

At the end of the day the NHL is a for-profit pro hockey league, not some cultural institution that exists to preserve the history of the sport.

That perception is the entire problem. The denial that hockey is a Canadian cultural institution, and that the NHL is morally obligated to preserve it as such, would at one point have been considered positions beyond the bounds of decency.  But here we are, and certainly not for the better.

11 minutes ago, See Red said:

You're asking the defender to stop on a dime from a full sprint while being pushed. To defend that play, the defender would need to defy physics.

I'm asking nothing of the sort. If the defender thinks he can withstand being pushed away, then he should go for the ball. If he does not think so, he should concede the catch and go for the tackle.

In either case, the laws of physics remain intact.

49 minutes ago, See Red said:

It would be impossible to play defense. Watch that play again and consider how easy that completion would be if the WR didn't have to be subtle with his push-off

I have watched that play many times.  It so perfectly embodies the type of contact that should be legal that I put the clip aside just so that I could use it as a reason to revive this thread.

If a receiver could legally push off in the manner of the receiver in that clip, playing defence would certainly be harder (which is a desireable thing); but it would by no means be impossible. The defensive back would just have to be stronger than the receiver, or else he'd have to concentrate on out-positioning the receiver on a ball that is underthrown or overthrown.

59 minutes ago, MJWalker45 said:

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

It should be a formalised principle that there exists some level of contact that the receiver can initiate but that the defensive back cannot initiate....

Nope, have to disagree on that. One shouldn't be allowed to do one thing that the other can't. 

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the principle at work is that it's the offence's damn ball, so the offence should be in an advantageous position with respect to going up for a catch.

26 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

39 minutes ago, Digby said:

I think we have enough years under the belt with both Tampa Bay and Miami at this point to conclude that maybe Florida just isn’t a good MLB market.

 

This is where I'm at. World Series runs for both teams. A new stadium for one of them. New branding for both.

 

If it's not working, it's not working.

Right. Few things in life have been proven more conclusively than the notion that Florida is for spring training only.