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kroywen

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Everything posted by kroywen

  1. SD would absolutely be in the informal Super Bowl rotation if they build a new stadium. Obviously LA will be as well, but I don't think the NFL would snub SD just because of the presence of LA. The NFL would probably love to have two Southern California venues in regular rotation (along with the other usual suspects - Santa Clara, Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Arizona, and the occasional SBs in Minneapolis, Detroit, Indianapolis, and perhaps the Meadowlands). In fact, I'd guess hosting the Super Bowl would be an implicit requirement of the City of San Diego putting up funds for a new stadium.
  2. I couldn't disagree more: I actually think that the Steelers have the best stripes in the NFL. The way the gold and white play off of one another, without ever touching, is perfect. The Steelers have perfected the white/gold color balance. All they need is to go back to block numbers, and they'll be all set.
  3. I'm a fan of the loopy W, myself. The Nats' "monumental" identity did have a lot of potential, but on the whole, I prefer their current identity. Not a fan of their home uniform - would much prefer the beautiful "Nationals" script be used on the front - but I think the current identity is more visually attractive than the "monumental" identity. Also not bogged down with unnecessary gold trim.
  4. The Bridgeport Bluefish, one of the two remaining original teams of the independent Atlantic League, released their 20th Anniversary logo, despite it being their 20th season, not 20th anniversary (which would be 2018). I haven't liked most of the recent tweaks to the Bluefish identity - they introduced racing stripes to their home unis last year that just did not fit, and have started using an awful looking "Fish" wordmark - but I actually really like this logo. It fittingly uses elements of their identity that have been there since the start in 1998 (except the font, though it's an attractive font anyway): It's somewhat remarkable that they've made it to their 20th season, and I can't help but think that the so-called "20th anniversary" celebrations might be doubling as a potential farewell, if they do wind up leaving Bridgeport (or folding) in the next couple of years. It's probably why they're celebrating this season, rather than next year. There may not be a next year. Their attendance plummeted in the mid-2000s, and they've been near last in attendance in the Atlantic League for over a decade now. There were talks about moving to Yonkers a few years back, but those thankfully fell through. Bridgeport is the only remaining mid-size struggling and/or post-industrial city left in the Atlantic League, which used to be the league's bread and butter. Gone are Newark, Camden, Atlantic City, Nashua, Newburgh... the league found that teams placed in prosperous outer suburbs or exurbs would make more money. (Well, other than the league's entry into New Britain last year, I suppose.) As a side note, the first ballgame I ever attended was the second Bluefish game ever back in 1998. Their entry into Bridgeport, along with the magic 1998 Yankees season, and the McGwire/Sosa HR chase, are what got me into baseball.
  5. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's ugly, but the colors are so painfully muddled and dark. It might look better if, say, the numbers were white, outlined in gold, rather than the old way around. And/or if you lightened up the gold (while keeping it metallic). But as is, it's just a terribly drab, boring, indistinctive look. No comparison to the beautiful and vibrant royal blue and athletic gold.
  6. Here, I'll throw down a truly unpopular opinion: I would love for the Raptors to completely ditch their identity forged around the Jurassic Park craze and instead adopt the excellent "Toronto Huskies" moniker. Short of that super-unrealistic scenario, just design a whole new logo and visual identity, because they've never had a good one in their entire 20-year history.
  7. This isn't so much a realignment as an alternate history. What if Walter O'Malley agreed to a stadium deal at Flushing Meadows, as proposed by Robert Moses, and kept the Dodgers in Brooklyn? I tried to keep the timeline as close to reality as possible. 1958: The Dodgers and the City of New York reach an agreement to build a new multipurpose stadium in Flushing Meadows. Realizing they are the odd man out in New York, the New York Giants announce a move to Minneapolis, and become the Minnesota Giants. 1961: Prior to the 1961 season, American League owners vote to expand by two teams. For the past few years, Calvin Griffith had been in discussions with Los Angeles officials to move the Washington Senators to LA. The main obstacle was trying to find another AL team to accompany them to the West Coast, without which other AL owners would not approve a relocation to Los Angeles. With the expansion, the original Washington Senators opted to relocate to Los Angeles to become the Los Angeles Angels. The San Francisco Seals and a replacement Washington franchise, the "new" Washington Senators, became the two new AL franchises. 1962: The new Flushing Meadows Stadium opens in Queens, and the Brooklyn Dodgers decide to rename themselves the New York Dodgers as a result. The National League, not wanting to have fewer teams than the AL, opt to expand as well for the 1962 season. Expansion franchises are awarded to the Houston Colt .45s, and not wishing to miss out on the West Coast, the Los Angeles Stars. 1965: The Houston Colt .45s rename themselves the Houston Astros upon their move to the new Astrodome. Meanwhile, the new Angel Stadium in Chavez Ravine opens up for the Los Angeles Angels. The Los Angeles Stars relocate to Anaheim, though they maintain their name. 1966: The Milwaukee Braves relocate to Atlanta, becoming the Atlanta Braves. 1968: With Oakland not being a relocation option for the A's, thanks to the presence of another AL team there, Kansas City Athletics owner Charles Finley reaches an agreement with the city of Milwaukee to relocate there for the 1968 season. AL owners, sick of Finley's constant attempts at relocation and aware of Milwaukee's success as a major league market less than a decade prior, approve the relocation. The Milwaukee Athletics are formed. 1969: Under pressure from Missouri Senator Stuart Symington, who would famously call Milwaukee "the luckiest city since Hiroshima" on the Senate floor, the American League hastily decides to expand in preparation for the 1969 season, with Kansas City guaranteed a replacement franchise. The National League, already planning on expanding in the early 1970s, decide to move up their expansion plans to align with the AL. The AL awards franchises to the Kansas City Royals and the Seattle Pilots, while the NL gives franchises to the Montreal Expos and the Oakland Oaks. 1970: With the Seattle Pilots going bankrupt, and no stadium construction in sight, a San Diego-based ownership group buys out the Pilots, and relocates them to San Diego, renaming them the San Diego Padres. 1972: The Washington Senators relocate to Dallas, and become the Texas Rangers. 1977: Under pressure from a lawsuit from the city of Seattle regarding the relocation of the Pilots to San Diego, the American League decides to expand, creating the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays. 1993: The National League expands, creating the Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies. 1998: The National League expands again, creating the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. 2005: After years of flagging attendance, the Montreal Expos relocate to Washington, renaming themselves the Washington Nationals. 2013: In order to even out the two leagues, the Tampa Bay Rays move to the American League. The NL East is reduced from six to five teams. The Detroit Tigers move to the AL Central to accommodate the arrival of the Rays to the AL East. The Texas Rangers move from the AL Central to the AL West, increasing the size of that division from four to five teams. In 2016, baseball looks as follows (differences from our timeline in italics): AL East: Baltimore Orioles Boston Red Sox New York Yankees Tampa Bay Rays Toronto Blue Jays AL Central: Chicago White Sox Cleveland Indians Detroit Tigers Kansas City Royals Milwaukee Athletics AL West: Los Angeles Angels (in Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles) San Diego Padres San Francisco Seals Seattle Mariners Texas Rangers NL East: Atlanta Braves Miami Marlins New York Dodgers (in Queens, NY) Philadelphia Phillies Washington Nationals NL Central: Chicago Cubs Cincinnati Reds Minnesota Giants Pittsburgh Pirates St. Louis Cardinals NL West: Arizona Diamondbacks Colorado Rockies Houston Astros Los Angeles Stars (in Anaheim) Oakland Oaks The toughest thing within this timeline was the A's relocation to Oakland and subsequent 1969 expansion. Finley was in talks with a slew of cities - Louisville, San Diego, Oakland, Seattle, Denver, Milwaukee, etc. The Sporting News actually reported in 1967 that he had agreed to a relocation to Milwaukee, and that he had a TV contract in place, but fell one vote short of getting the relocation approved by AL owners. This timeline assumes that sometime in 1967, he persuaded one other owner to vote in favor of the relocation. The other alternatives would've been to have Finley agree to move to either Seattle or San Diego (I know he had in-depth discussions with Seattle; not sure how far he even got with San Diego, though he may have been more interested in that California market had Oakland been unavailable). Seemed to be less of a jump to have the tentative Milwaukee deal get approved than to have him strike an agreement with either Seattle or San Diego. I would guess that under this timeline, the AL's Los Angeles Angels (who would've struck a stadium agreement in Chavez Ravine upon relocation from Washington) and San Francisco Seals would've become the "dominant" franchise in their respective metro areas, being that they were the first franchises to arrive, and would be in the largest city in the area. This would've dramatically changed the balance of power between the NL and the AL in the 1960s and 1970s, being that the AL would've had the two dominant franchises in the LA and Bay Area markets. Would they have been motivated to implement the DH in 1973 in that case? Would the NL have been looking to play catch-up with the AL and implemented it instead? Would the continued presence of the Dodgers (whose 1960's core would've looked largely the same) have resulted in them being the dominant franchise in New York from 1964 up until, say, the 90's? Would Bud Selig have ever gotten involved in baseball in Charles Finley moved a team to Milwaukee? (I tend to think that he would've - he might've bought out the Athletics once Finley decided to sell) Lots of interesting hypotheticals.
  8. I think just having sleeve piping would work well. Or perhaps a faux v-neck, like the Giants. Simple placket piping would look fine though - it's just that the gigantic piping they have now clashes terribly with the wordmark.
  9. If it were just thin navy piping (not outlines), it would definitely be easier to see the logo. Though I tend to think the front is busy enough as it is, between the wordmark and the tomahawk, that piping is unnecessary and just causes clutter.
  10. And with the benefits of (hopefully) good health and modern medicine, Kershaw should be able to keep pitching for quite a bit longer than Koufax did. The future is far from a given, of course - we've seen plenty of elite pitchers fall off a cliff in their early 30's - but there's a very good chance Kershaw winds up combining Koufax's prime with much greater longevity. It's amazing that he's only 28 still - he's been pitching at an elite level for 8 (!!!) years now. I can only hope there are a lot of years left in that arm.
  11. The Atlanta Braves' uniforms are a completely muddled mess, thanks to the awful front piping. The wordmark is hard to read against the oversized piping, and there are way too many uniform elements on the front competing for attention. The simple elimination of the front piping would improve the uniform immeasurably. Excuse the 5-second mockup in MS Paint, but I think the "clean" version on the right would be so superior. I'd also replace the sleeve and pants piping with simple, thin navy piping, personally.
  12. No way the AHL relocates a team to Atlantic City. The city goes through some pretty extreme boom and bust cycles, and right now, they're in terrible shape economically. The casinos are failing under intense competition from casinos Connecticut and the Poconos, as well as racinos in and around NYC, and the city is damn close to bankruptcy. The Atlantic League put a team in Atlantic City back in 1998, and they wound up failing within a decade, leading to a now vacant ballpark right in the middle of Atlantic City. No way a team would build a new arena for an AHL team, which would likely meet the same fate even quicker.
  13. Yeah, using a "best interests of baseball" clause to rip San Jose away from the Giants would essentially undermine both baseball's antitrust exemption, and send a message to all 30 owners that MLB can unilaterally strip away assets from the team in the name of the "best interests of baseball." The A's were incredibly shortsighted in letting the Giants gain rights to SJ without any sort of compensation, or agreement to relinquish rights if their Santa Clara stadium deal fell through. MLB can't just take away assets from the Giants and give them to the A's just to make up for a super poor business decision by the A's three decades ago. I really wish there could be a solution where the A's purchase shared territorial rights to San Jose (or the entire Bay Area), but the asking price may be beyond their means. The Giants have the right to ask for whatever to sell those rights to the A's. To undermine that would be to undermine both the MLB constitution and the antitrust exemption.
  14. The Bay Area should have had coterminous territories from the start. The ideal solution would probably be making the entire Bay Area coterminous, and having each team pay the other indemnities for half (or some other agreed-upon percentage) the fair market value of their territory. Of course, the Giants would never agree to that, since it would both allow the A's to move to SJ, and allow them to advertise within San Francisco and the SF peninsula as well. Meanwhile, the Giants would simply get rights to advertise in two counties on the East Bay, which is way, way, way less valuable. The A's would have to pay through the nose in order to make that exchange viable (or fair). But why are the Giants entitled to compensation? Because regardless of whether the territories should be coterminous, the fact is that they're not. Both teams have the value of their territories (including exclusive rights to market there, establish stores there, and ability to prevent other teams from moving in) priced into their fair market value. Territorial rights are valuable assets on the books of each team. Just as a team wouldn't give up a player under contract to another team without compensation, or give up TV revenue without compensation, nor should they give up territorial rights without compensation. They're intangible assets, but assets nonetheless. Just like intellectual property, proprietary software, or goodwill. Just saying "combine your territories without paying indemnities, even though your respective territories have vastly different values" doesn't make any sense from an economic perspective.
  15. I don't think it's fair to say to Larry Baer "you essentially paid for the rights to SJ and Santa Clara when you bought the Giants, you've aggressively marketed there and have a significant proportion of your revenue from there, and you have a minor league team there, but we're taking away those rights based on a nonexistent imagined clause a 1988 agreement involving previous ownership." FWIW, I don't believe the A's ever held the rights to SJ. I believe it was neutral territory, and the Giants asked to receive rights "in relation to another major league team" (i.e. not in relation to MiL teams) in order to build there. Unfortunately for the A's, they agreed to give the Giants rights without a.) insisting on partial compensation for lost future revenue in SJ based on no longer being able to market their team there, and b.) insisting on it reverting to neutral or shared territory if the Giants' move fell through. Their oversight. It's a shame too, because I think an A's move to SJ makes so much sense, and I'd like to see it happen. But the Giants deserve some compensation.
  16. I do wonder if some sort of territory swap could occur in which the A's would give the Giants territorial rights on the East Bay (including Oakland) in exchange for a reduction of the price of territorial rights in San Jose. Granted, I'm not sure the Giants would be terribly interested in the rights to the East Bay, but they could try and move the San Jose Giants to the East Bay (and capture some disaffected A's fans there in the process). It's probably a non-starter, though. It would be tough for the A's to get out of this without either paying market value for the rights, given that the presence of SJ rights was priced into the latest sale of the Giants, and the lack of SJ rights absolutely depressed the price of the latest sale of the A's. The A's absolutely got hosed on the SJ rights transfer in 1988 (which was a terrible business decision by Walter Haas, and one that the Giants obviously aren't keen on repeating), but fact of the matter is that both franchises have been sold since then, and priced into their respective values were their territorial rights. Larry Baer paid market value for those rights; Lew Wolff did not. (Of course, the A's would be smart to come close to a tentative stadium deal in or around Oakland, to make clear that the Giants can't push them out of the Bay Area vis a vis blocking a move to SJ. That would knock the asking price on SJ rights down quite a bit, though I bet the Giants would still prefer the A's in a new park in Oakland to being in a new park in SJ.)
  17. Other than the gray facemask, this? That's probably their absolute best look, IMO. Though I've always wondered how a recolored version of their current road jersey would look - blue numbers and stripes, rather than red. Wouldn't have a historical precedence, but would probably look really good.
  18. I much prefer the current blue uniform, without any red trim, to the one pictured there. But that white uniform is pretty damn sharp. We're going to basically get that with white socks during color rush, so I'm looking forward to that. To me, though, this is the perfect look for the Giants (well, I could leave the gray stripes in the pants behind, but not a big deal):
  19. I don't mind referencing the Packers on the city flag at all, but actually putting their logo on the flag seems a little far to me. A well-designed green and gold flag would represent an obvious nod to the Packers, without going as far as having the team logo displayed.
  20. That thing violates about about 20 different vexillological principals. Tons of text on a flag, seal on a bedsheet, illustration of a building, etc. And it reduces the City of Green Bay to its football team. Granted, it's why 99% of America has heard of Green Bay, but the flag would be an opportunity to say to visitors and residents alike "hey, we're a real city, and not just Lambeau Field"!
  21. Completely agree. The Giants look so much better with white pants, and they match the rest of the jersey far more. The greys just look drab, and don't match any other uniform elements, to boot.
  22. The Hawks might have both the best home jersey and the best road jersey in the league. (Gun to my head, I'd say Montreal has the absolute best home jersey in the league, but I can't argue with anyone who prefers the Hawks' red duds.)
  23. Out of curiosity, what teams would you put above the Rangers, Canadiens, and Leafs? Personally, I do think the Devils, Islanders, and Oilers can give Detroit a run for their money (I'd personally put the other O6 teams head-and-shoulders above everyone else). I'd take each of their home sweaters above the Red Wings' actually - I suppose that may be an unpopular opinion itself. Though I don't think any of them can match Detroit's superb white sweater, which is probably neck-and-neck with the Hawks for best road uniform in the NHL.
  24. I don't think it's at immediate risk, as it's bringing in some revenue for baseball. I'm personally not a fan of having a one game playoff in baseball (a sport in which a single game is so dependent on one's starting pitcher), but I don't see it going away any time soon. My realignment plan would be compatible with the one-game playoff though - either have 4 Wild Cards per league and two one game playoffs, or have the first Wild Card advance to the LDS automatically, with the next 2 teams facing off in a one game playoff.
  25. I hate the one-game Wild Card playoff in baseball, and also think a 2 division-per-league format would be an interesting idea, so here goes nothing: American League: East (8 teams): Baltimore Orioles Boston Red Sox Chicago White Sox Cleveland Indians Detroit Tigers New York Yankees Tampa Bay Rays Toronto Blue Jays West (7 teams): Houston Astros Kansas City Royals Los Angeles Angels Minnesota Twins Oakland Athletics Seattle Mariners Texas Rangers National League: East (7 teams): Atlanta Braves Cincinnati Reds Miami Marlins New York Mets Philadelphia Phillies Pittsburgh Pirates Washington Nationals West (8 teams): Arizona Diamondbacks Chicago Cubs Colorado Rockies Los Angeles Dodgers Milwaukee Brewers San Diego Padres San Francisco Giants St. Louis Cardinals The two division winners and two wild card winners in each league make the playoffs. In the LDS, the division winners would face the wild card winners, with each division winner receiving home field advantage. A 7-game LDS would be played. Interleague play would still be required year-round, though I would have the overwhelming majority of games in September be intradivisional.
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