MJD7

What if... the White Sox relocated to Tampa Bay? The Sox were minutes away from moving to what is now Tropicana Field, but an after-midnight vote that won by one kept them in Chicago. Leaked t-shirts showed the team considered going with a forest green & orange color palette.

The jerseys themselves are fine for what they are, but the pants & cap pairings really make this about as bad as 2021. It’s sad that it’ll probably never happen, but they really need to save the special jerseys for the Home Run Derby, & go back to regular jerseys for the All-Star Game itself.

What if... the White Sox relocated to New Orleans? Prospective buyer of the team in 1980, Edward DeBartolo Sr., hinted that he might move the team to New Orleans if he got the chance. Gold accents are added to the team's B&W palette to align with the Saints.

I wasn't planning on it, I'm honestly not sure how I would be able to make it much different from this Grays version, other than a different font.

True, I hadn’t noticed that! It was more directly based on this Pirates secondary logo.

What if... the Pirates relocated to Washington (and changed their name)? They considered it twice in the 80's and 90's. This was the perfect opportunity to honor the Homestead Grays, a Negro League team that played home games in both Pittsburgh and Washington in their history.

A couple of "throwbacks" for good measure:

Thanks! I understand that, I felt the same doing the "Carolina Twins." I'm glad it didn't happen. I can confirm that you will see that concept eventually!

Maybe, but keeping the navy & red provided a good opportunity to add gold, like the NBA's Pelicans, in an attempt to rectivy the Twins' try at gold as a tertiary color. Thank you! For the away wordmark, it'd be tough to add any more "flourish," since making the capital letters any bigger would necessitate shrinking an already long wordmark. I'll see what I can do though!

What if... Cleveland's baseball team relocated to New Orleans? In 1971, a report surfaced that the team agreed to play 30 games a season in NOLA for 20 years (!), starting in 1974. I figured if the team ever moved there full-time, they'd snag the "Pelicans" name before the NBA.

Probably, but this is another case where I wanted to take a bit more creative liberty, as green & gold doesn’t fit for Atlanta in my opinion.

Don’t get me wrong, purple & gold is one of my favorite color schemes, the Minnesota Vikings are my NFL team, after all. I just meant that it doesn’t feel right for the Pirates or Colorado. Thanks!

What if... the Athletics relocated to Atlanta? Charlie O. wanted to move the A's to Atlanta in 1964, but was rejected by AL owners due to fears about travel costs. Inspired by the Hawks, green is replaced by red for a more "Atlanta" color scheme.

I tried that, but something about it just didn't feel right: I also really wanted to find a way to get lavender to work, but it didn't fit well with the road gray.

I wondered about that as well, since Pittsburgh isn't necessarily close to the coast itself I don't think it'd be too big of an issue. If they did change the name, though, I think it'd result in a pretty good version of the Rockies: I added pinstripes because, although it's easy to forget, road pins are something the Pirates actually shared with the Rockies during the 90's. I might honestly like this version better than the original.

What if... the Pirates relocated to Denver? Finances, attendance, and quality of play were all down in 1985, so the Pirates owner expressed that he was interested in selling the team to a Denver group. Black & gold is so entrenched in Pittsburgh, so I replaced gold with purple.

That’s understandable. I’ll agree in the sense that I prefer the Nationals’ real-life identity to this Stars one. Although simple red white & blue definitely works better for the city, I’d been wanting to try an Astros-style set that leans a bit more into red, & this was the perfect opportunity to do so.

What if... the Astros relocated to Washington (and changed their name)? This is me trying to make the best of the previously covered "Virginia Fury" move, where the Astros instead move to DC proper. This allows for the space theme to remain but with a more patriotic twist.

Cool! The Braves in KC and the A's in Baltimore both sound intruiging.

Thanks! That’s pretty cool, is there somewhere I can see it, or have you not published it yet? Don’t worry, you’ll see that at some point, hopefully soon! That would indeed make a lot of sense.

I could see them either keeping the navy & sand era look, or I think brown & orange would be different enough, though it’d be interesting to have two brown-primary teams in the league.

The Padres were founded in 1969, so this move would have pre-dated them.

What if... the Browns relocated to Milwaukee? Once the Busch family bought the Cardinals, Browns owner Bill Veeck knew he couldn't keep his team in St. Louis, so he tried to move to Milwaukee in 1954, but it was blocked by AL owners. Brown is paired with gold for this version.

Since this series focuses on near-relocations or lack thereof, I think simple name-changes would be veering a bit too much from the original concept, although the original Baltimore Orioles becoming the Yankees might have a bit of promise.

If those teams can be traced to current MLB teams (I haven ‘t done the research), I might be down!