Carolingian Steamroller

On the rare occasion I actually see cash (who has since 2020), Mr. Washington isn't marked as a King.

This is wrong on all kinds of levels given Washington's intense disgust of Kings and his outright refusal to become something of a military dictator post Revolution.

That 30's Sox emblem works perfectly with that template. It's smooth and clean in a way that doesn't get in the way of the more outlandish elements of the design.

God I wish that Ballpark wasn't a nightmare to get to.

@NicDB I didn't want to say that but I've personally found that to be quite correct. When I first started visiting Milwaukee I found it to be a smaller version of Chicago. There's definitely a lot of cultural exchange with Milwaukee residents coming South and Chicagoans going North. Lots of similar neighborhoods, sights, restaurants, etc. (I made my coffee this morning with beans from Collectivo.) As I'm sure you know, at least half the population of Chicago isn't fond of the Cubs either. There's also the commonality that Brewers and White Sox fans both tailgate before games. Though last time I tailgated we brought fried shrimp from Lawrence Fishery rather than grill.

I think this is a long way of saying that the pandemic has meant that its been years since I've been to Milwaukee and thinking about the city is making me miss it.

I'm sure enough stacks would blow that it would be visible from space. This is something that I find legitimately fascinating. Milwaukee is very different civically and culturally from other parts of Wisconsin, even other urban areas. It's closest to Madison, but the capital has its own thing going between the seat of governance and U of W. Milwaukee is very, very different from Green Bay. It's not quite as distinct from the rest of its home state as Chicago is (once you're past the outer suburbs Illinois turns into Kentucky), but it would be very cool if the Brewers leaned into Milwaukee's specific character.

There's a lot of interesting stuff for the Brewers to go with: Destination for German Immigrants. Hot bed of Socialist governance in America. Industrial center for not just beer but also tools and motorcycles. Beautiful river and lakefronts. Magnificent, winged art museum. America's largest consumer of brandy. Not only macro breweries but widespread microbrew culture. Good times.

The supply chain issues put us at an interesting point, or rather an throwback point. Uniform supply problems, sudden changes in manufacturers, stop gap measures, uneven attention across baseball were all pretty commonplace in the first century of baseball. Teams often relied on rinky dink operators in their home cities to provide the patches, numbers, and repairs that needed to happen. And that's even if they were largely all buying their base uniform from the Spaulding Company (see for example May & Halas for the Cubs). Those providers were subject to any number of problems.

The plan was for them to use them as a regular alternate. Not sure what conspired to limit their use to three games. Hoping that changes and we get to them more this year. I know the Sox store sold out of City Connect jerseys in the span of hours.

I've seen that but I'm not counting pre-season since that's often when changes get beta tested without becoming official.

Taking up the subject of alternate helmets, I have to issue a correction to an earlier post. The Cardinals were not the last team to employ a non-throwback alternate helmet in 1957. The Eagles wore both a white helmet with green wings and a green helmet with white wings in 1969. So a 2 helmet aesthetic, while not seen in 50 years is not without precedent in the Super Bowl era.

It would be interesting to see. For now I'm just talking minimal tweaks to the current aesthetic, which happens to already include true silver in the logo and the helmet. Might be interesting to try and track the relative place of silver in the Eagles look since their inception. It's risen, fallen, and risen again.

If we're being honest though what's keeping the midnight from feeling bright is that they don't use a true silver in the uniform (unlike the logo), they use more of a charcoal. Swap that for a true silver and the light switch gets flipped.

I'd prefer the current set to this and I've not been a fan of double-green concepts for the Eagles. As a general rule, I don't like it when teams try to split the difference between two different historical aesthetics. This was a complaint I had about the Brewers before their 2020 redesign. I much prefer when a team commits to a theme and rolls with it. For example look at the Chargers pre and post 2020. They made about as good an effort at combining the navy blue and powder blue era as they could but increasingly it looked to me like they couldn't quite nail it. The 2020 redesign completely changed that and (two alternates aside) the Chargers have been committed to powder blue and gold to G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S effect. If the Eagles want to use Kelly green, great just make it the primary color. If they want to stick with midnight, that's good too, there's nothing really wrong with their current look and I'm sure lots of fans have a strong emotional connection.

Some of the first looks at the new Royals in action. https://twitter.com/Royals/status/1504906793570295812

While I disagree on the placket piping for the Mets black jersey (I happen to really like it), I agree wholeheartedly that occasionally breaking the rules to make something look right is the way to go. That's why I prefer the navy on navy version of the Braves road alternate while breaks several of my cardinal rules of design but I always was attracted to regardless.

Also the Guardians winged double-G logo on the sleeve is just outstanding.

I kind of want to see the NOB in mono-color (plain blue or plain white) just as a way to distinguish it from the stylized fonts. By having it in the same color schema (red outlined in white), my eyes want to see the NOB and the number as being the same font, even though they aren't. If I were to make a suggestion, it would be to scrap the outlined lettering for a more plain design to highlight that it is different.

Something about the blue over bone clicked for me the last time I saw it. I have no idea why but something clicked.

The Bears were ranked as #1 in Uni-Watch's original 2014 NFL Power Rankings.

I'd be very curious to see the Niners wear their 94 Fauxbacks with their gold pants. They tried to do that with their '96 rebrand (well technically when they added gold pants in '98) but I think the extra gold outlines on the numbers, the logo and shadows on the sleeves muddled things up too much. Just wearing the plain black shadowed numbers with the simple red jersey with their tan/gold pants with red/white stripes would be a good look. *whispers* also gold facemask....

Ah, see I don’t want the Eagles to use Kelly green as an alternate. For me, it should be Kelly green all the way or nothing. I think it would be cool if they went with the 1990 uniforms (Kelly green with silver wings, green jerseys, silver pants) as their full time home uniform and the 1970 uniforms (white helmet with green wings, white jersey/pants) as their full time road uniform. Swapping out the jersey only when they either wear white at home or play a team that wears white at home.

Forgot about the Jets. Though I suppose that's more of a throwback look than a straight alternate.

I recommend a white helmet with white uniform for exactly two teams on that list. One of which already wore that look: The other was part of the team's initial aesthetic. Indeed I'm also recommending colored helmets for otherwise white capped teams (Bills/Cardinals) and in the Cardinals case, explicitly moving away from an all white uniform.