Gothamite

1 hour ago, FinsUp1214 said:

The Bees will be throwing back to the old Buzz on the 10th. I hope to catch this game for the childhood nostalgia rush! Hopefully they'll sell some merch as well.

 

Gus Cantrell doesn't look too excited.

It's as we said way back at the beginning of this thread; Vegas baseball is in dire need of a new facility.  So much so that no MLB club wants to partner with them. 

What did the Diamondbacks do to deserve Vegas?

Kinda ironic that the "Chicago Dogs" logo doesn't actually depict a Chicago-style hot dog.

On 7/25/2017 at 2:20 PM, SJAnfield said:

I LOVE that Las Vegas look!

Yeah, this is an incredible upgrade over the 51s.

I'd buy a 59fifty if they sold them.

I also think Visalia Toros is worlds better than "Visalia Rawhide".  Hell, each of those would be an improvement over what the teams are currently wearing.  Except I think that's actually the regular Kane County cap.

11 hours ago, the admiral said:

That was Winston-Salem/Greensboro that was gunning for the Twins, I believe. That probably would have been a small disaster.

1 hour ago, Brian in Boston said:

 

Correct. The Twins played "footsie" with the Triad, as opposed to the Triangle.

 Thanks for the correction, guys.

I'm not sure either of those cities have been a serious contender for a franchise.   The Triangle could have made a play for the Twins back when, but didn't. 

True, but the Hillsboro Hops came along years after the Beavers moved, and weren't part of the decision to convert Civic Stadium to soccer.  

They average about 3500 per game, okay for the low-level minors but not exactly screaming out for a major-league club.  This year they're right about on par with the Eugene Emeralds.

18 hours ago, bosrs1 said:

To be fair, PGE Park was never going to host MLB. So what's happened with it today has little bearing on Portland's ability to host or not host MLB. They'd have needed an MLB sized ballpark regardless.

True, but in converting it to a soccer stadium, Portland was shipping its minor-league baseball team out of town.  Tougher to build support for major league baseball when you don't even have minor-league ball in the city.

14 hours ago, rams80 said:

They rebuilt the local AAA baseball stadium into a Soccer Specific Stadium, so no, it isn't.

Yeah, Portland is only a viable option if they come up with a stadium plan, but they don't even have the fallback of a AAA stadium to either serve as a temporary stadium or to be expanded.

Portland chose soccer over baseball years ago.  If they want to pursue baseball now, they'll have to start from absolute scratch.

27 minutes ago, HedleyLamarr said:

Montreal is not a good baseball market.  Dispute that as much as you'd like.  Fans didn't show up.  Tampa Bay may be drawing flies, but that's nearly double what Montreal drew.  If you're willing to say that Montreal wasn't given a fair shake, you have to also admit that the Rays have never been in an ideal attendance situation, either.  Can't just pick-and-choose when you use the martyr defense.

Montreal was drawing poorly for a terrible team that was in the process of moving.   Tampa Bay was drawing poorly with the best young team in baseball winning a pennant and which was guaranteed to stick around for decades. Hardly analogous. 

As for New Jersey, I don't see it.  Where would you put them?  The Devils and Red Bulls struggle, and  the latter with one of the best clubs in its sport.  I agree that metro NYC could definitely support another team, but it would have to be a part of area with sterling public transportation, enough corporate sponsors and a baked-in cultural identity more marketable than New Jersey's. 

There's no way the AL would have abandoned Chicago.  They would have blocked the move just as they blocked the White Sox' move to Milwaukee in 1969. 

I'm not sure there is another market. Portland seems to have passed it by, quite happily choosing soccer over baseball. Vegas? I dunno. Wrong sport for a tourism town. It's one thing to say you'll get fans of other teams to fly out for eight Sunday afternoon games a year, but 81 mostly-weeknights is another thing altogether. 

The only thing keeping the Rays in town is the lack of an obvious place to move to. But that may be enough. 

Just for the record, I never said Montreal was a great baseball market.  But Tampa Bay certainly isn't. 

26 minutes ago, HedleyLamarr said:

Montreal would have killed to see 16,000 come to every game.

Montreal would also have killed for a 97-win season. 

Besides, different times.  You can't compare eras to eras, only how a team performs in relation to its contemporaries.  And the Rays have always performed terribly, even when the team was among the best in baseball. 

8 hours ago, HedleyLamarr said:

I don't get why folks see Montreal as this answer.  Blame whomever you want, but that fan base quit on baseball.  They would show up for Opening Day and the series against Toronto, and when you only have two games a season...sure, sell out a Spring Training game....but they don't care about baseball 81 times a year.

Still better than the fans in Tampa Bay, who didn't care about baseball even when their club was in first place the entire year.  Even when their club went to the World Series.  Put that team in any other baseball city, and they'd be at the top of the attendance charts.  But in Tampa Bay, barely a blip. 

Make all the excuses you want, but the Tampa Bay fan base gave up on baseball.  If they were ever interested in the first place.   

Really not sure that's your best argument, there. 

13 hours ago, goalieboy82 said:

and the next thing that MLB should do if there is a team in Las Vegas is to reinstate Pete Rose.  

The two things have nothing to do with one another.  

Even if MLB instituted official betting lines and in-seat gambling opportunities, that won't change the fact that Rose broke the rules in place at the time.  And worse yet, Rose lied and lied and lied for decades, to the point where we can't even believe we know the truth now. Did he deliberately throw games?  I don't know.  And neither do you. Not to mention that Rose spent all that time slandering the honest people whose only fault was to tell the truth about him.

Man, if he had to do that much work to turn your Nashville Blues to Knoxville Blue Coats, why couldn't he just create his own design from scratch?

Yeah, we talked about that upthread.  

RIP, Helena Brewers. You had a great run.  And you actually managed to make the big club's logos look good.

Wayyy too much going on there.  The star, the wave, the lighthouse, the carousing duck, the cloud, the floating ball, pick any two elements and you could build a solid logo.  All of them is just a mess. 

That's very nice, although the colors seem a bit dour.  Are those stars a dark gold or is it just my phone?  If they're a standard gold, it'll look pretty good. 

I think I prefer the first runner-up to the winner, with its green abstracted Vermont shape.  I know the designer is going for a Green Mountain Boys thing with those white stars, but they just look like clutter to me.  I'd drop them entirely and just use the green and blue fields with gold star.  

Edit: holy cow, I just looked at a map and realized that the gold star is marking the city's location.

That's clever.  Almost a Madison, Wisconsin level of clever.  Shame they went a different direction. 

Thanks for the recommendation.  I'll check him out this week. 

18 hours ago, WissX said:

I like 12 and 16

 

Milwaukee may have a new flag!

 

Its been over a year since the People's Flag was introduced - have you heard anything about the city itself taking steps to make it official?

20 minutes ago, JerseyJosh said:

 

Were those official prototypes?  Where did the graphic come from?

20 hours ago, goalieboy82 said:

this should be the Flag of Earth:

Now that's a flag an Earthican can fly proudly.