Carolingian Steamroller

1 hour ago, Brave-Bird 08 said:

This may sound sacrilegious in these parts, but I am a big fan of the experimenting Nike is getting into with the City Connect -- especially the idea of monochrome uniforms and/or shifting into new tints for clash uniforms, like the sand of the D-Backs. 

 

I am a traditionalist with most of baseball, but I've always found the uniform aspect quite boring. Seems like nothing is really warranted but white and grey tops, simple piping, standardized wordmark and logo placement and monograms on caps. 

 

Baseball has always had room to get more interesting uniform wise. Definitely did in the 70s and 80s, but with the ballparks reverting back to classic style so did nearly every team that had thought outside the box. 

 

 

Also it really depends on what you consider to be "traditionalist."

In my opinion:

this...



is actually more traditional (more in line with the unwritten rules of baseball design), that this...

13 hours ago, Old School Fool said:

I'm starting to think that Nike wants to do away with gray jerseys on the road. I don't hate the idea but I also don't like it either.  It's conflicting.

Nike or the clubs themselves?

Remember teams have the final say in that discussion.

We saw this happen in the 70's and 80's too with teams like the Padres, Braves, Cubs, Rangers, Mets, Indians, Giants, Pirates, A's, White Sox all eschewing traditional road greys at some point. Not including the powder blue revolution.

On 5/9/2022 at 10:54 AM, Carolingian Steamroller said:

 

Depends on the definition of poor decision.

 

From the Mets organizational perspective, the 14 years of black uniforms was a likely a success.

 

I recall them being reasonably popular in the early going. Certainly popular enough that the throwbacks have been a success.

Follow up on this. I had forgotten that the New York Knicks had introduced a black accented version of their orange and blue uniform at least as early as 1996 to significant fanfare. Within the New York market, there was already an example of a royal and orange team successfully incorporating black into their pre-existing identity.

1 hour ago, GhostOfNormMacdonald said:

I know people born in Arizona that consider themselves Minnesotan, Wisconsinite, or from Chicago because their parents are from there and they support the Vikings/Packers/Bears/ect. instead of the home team. Arizona has less state pride than Iowa and the Dakotas. City pride for Phoenix is mostly constrained to ":censored: Tucson." Idk if it's transplant markets or if AZ/Phoenix area is just uniquely unable to garner civic pride. Either way it's weird

I have a cousin who grew up in Phoenix (her father is a Chicago transplant) but spent many summer here and considered herself more a Chicagoan to the point where she eventually moved here becoming indistinguishable from any other Lincoln Square lifer.

We in Old Northwest send a lot of people to Arizona because our winters are good and truly miserable but we tend to get people back over time because our summers cannot be beaten.

11 hours ago, Marlins93 said:

 

Sorry if I'm being a little harsh, but designers and brand managers come up with all kinds of silly justifications for their poor decisions.

Depends on the definition of poor decision.

From the Mets organizational perspective, the 14 years of black uniforms was a likely a success.

I recall them being reasonably popular in the early going. Certainly popular enough that the throwbacks have been a success.

Also the black Mets identity went through multiple phases. Originally, they were supposed to continue wearing blue caps and pins stripes at home but that shifted over the years to them wearing the black crowned, blue billed road cap. Then the snow whites with blue headspoons took over as the home uniform. In later years, the team shifted back towards the pinstripes and blue caps before finally ditching black in favor of cream pinstripes and plan snow whites at home before dropping the cream uniforms for straight white pinstripes.

5 hours ago, Marlins93 said:

 

I never bought into the whole gimmick that "we must have black in our color scheme because our city has nightlife." It doesn't work for the Marlins. It doesn't work for the Mets.

 

As others have said, the Mets had a great brand identity for decades before the introduction of black ruined it.

There's been some really interesting reporting on Mets introduction of black in the late 90's. Reportedly, the design came up with idea of New York as a "city of shadows," something I've found to be true. Even the pinstripes were supported to have black accents.

http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?sportCat=mlb&page=lukas/110512_new_york_mets_black_uniforms

But more to the second point, there's been a lot more fluctuation in the Mets identity that people probably realize. What they had when they broke into baseball, right before they added black, and what they've worn since ditching black has been the same but in between they had henley jereys, the racing stripes, an odd tailed "Mets" script. 

It's generally been pinstripes and "Mets" but a lot around that has shifted.

On 5/4/2022 at 8:57 PM, mcj882000 said:

That they wanted to finally scrub the last vestiges of the Ballard era from their identity is still ironic to me because the new jerseys are, basically, just the Ballard-era sweaters minus the arm stripes and shoulder patches, aka their most interesting elements:

Could you clarify a little?

I see that the hem stripe, breezers, and socks are all similar but the sleeves are so different that the two sets don't appear similar to my eyes. The sleeves on the current uniforms look nearly identical to the 1934-1967 design to me.

17 minutes ago, Stu-BallsOmnicorp said:

Not a fan of those Edge uniforms but I did like the navy and copper set that preceded them. I definitely prefer the below to their current navy and orange uniforms.

Kind of amazing that they wore this color scheme for a decade and a half.

1 hour ago, spartacat_12 said:

 

So you're telling me you liked these?!

 

To be honest, I kinda liked these.

18 hours ago, IceCap said:

I get it to a degree...but also the King designation is kind of its own thing with playing cards, you know? It doesn't mean anything beyond "this is the card worth the most." 

Ace high in Poker. 

We're splitting hairs here but given how strongly Washington was against the whole concept of kings, its just "dog walking on hind legs" odd to see his face next an abbreviation for king.

1 minute ago, IceCap said:

Somehow I think the legacy of President Washington will survive a mock-up of a playing card. 

Of course. It's just weird.

34 minutes ago, Cujo said:

 

Do you this aloud every time you look at a $1 bill?

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

20 hours ago, Cujo said:

Here. Fixed.

 

GO COMMANDERS

 

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.

3 hours ago, CaliforniaGlowin said:

Beautiful.  I want a shirt and a poster.

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.

9 minutes ago, NicDB said:

As much as I'd love to see a socialist themed uniform set since it's legitimately one of the most interesting aspects of Milwaukee, no way are the Brewers gonna risk the tantrums from the season ticket holders from the WOW Counties.

I'm sure enough stacks would blow that it would be visible from space. 

11 minutes ago, NicDB said:

The dairy industry really doesn't have much of a presence in Milwaukee. The fancy cheese shops in places like Public Market and the Deer District are about it. 

 

There's a reason why even though Brewers fans invented cheeseheads as an inside joke, it was Packers fans who took off and ran with them.

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.

On 3/31/2022 at 5:38 PM, baseballfan2021 said:

The white sox wore theirs 3 times. Wouldn’t call that overboard, pal.

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.

22 minutes ago, TBGKon said:

New Orleans also had a black helmet in the 1969 preseason.

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.

2 hours ago, MJD7 said:

Midnight & silver without any black would be the ideal, for me.

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.