MilSox

ULL has one of my favorite collegiate brands and this logo is a huge reason why.

Oh I get it. In Wisconsin, the traditional garbage meat is braunschweiger.

Isn't scrapple just the Mid-Atlantic's version of Spam?

Might that have had to do with the ballpark being brand spankin' new? A lot of Midwest League teams got new facilities in the 90s and experienced explosions of interest because of it.

The J on the bat script is wonky as hell.

I kinda suspected Grand Rapids/West Michigan had little motivation to move up, and now it's confirmed. At the AAA level, they most likely wouldn't be a Tigers affiliate, which is probably their biggest selling point right now.

Admittedly, my experience of West Michigan is limited to Kalamazoo, Muskegon, and Benton Harbor. So I'll have to take your word on that. But if the park really is that close to the central city of Grand Rapids, they really hurt themselves in naming the team regionally. Most people have no idea that the Whitecaps are from a Top 40 media market. If Grand Rapids has enough cache for the AAA level of hockey, certainly it could stand for itself in the Midwest League. But no city will ever match the sheer influence on not only the art of brewing, but tavern culture in general that Milwaukee has had dating back to the 19th century. I'm not saying that to take away from Founders or any of the other quality craft breweries that have emerged in placed like Grand Rapids, or Denver, or Portland. But there's only so much influence they can exert being smaller and (for the most part) regionally distributed. I would also argue that Milwaukee's lack of well-known craft breweries is because Lakefront (31 years old, which is ancient in the world of craft brewing) and New Glarus are so entrenched here. It's like how the Yankees have only won one World Series since 2000. But love them or hate them, they're still the gold standard by which every other major pro sports enterprise is measured.

Toledo is less than an hour's drive from Detroit, and they've been affiliated since 1987. Not sure I see them ending that affiliation even if it is for another Michigan city. The Indians just affiliated with Columbus a few years ago. Not sure they'd end a relationship with a team in their own backyard to affiliate somewhere further away where the fans like their divisional rivals. The White Sox could definitely work. New Comiskey is the closest MLB park to Grand Rapids. But I really feel like Indianapolis would be a better fit for them. If they have to play little brother everywhere in Chicagoland that's not the city's southside, why not try to drum up a fanbase in Indiana? The ideal home for a Brewers AAA club is Madison or the Fox Valley, though I'm not sure I see either building a new park anytime soon. But because they're an NL club, the fans in Grand Rapids wouldn't have too feel conflicted about their loyalty to the Tigers. Besides, if they really want to go all in on this "Beer City" stuff, who better to affiliate with?

As an outsider, I'm really not seeing what makes Grand Rapids so different from any different from all the other cities of consequential size that all have their own assortment of craft breweries and brewpubs. Besides, with the real Brew City right across Lake Michigan, it just comes off as poor taste. Milwaukee never tried to step on Detroit's toes and call itself something like "Engine City" despite being home to Harley Davidson and AMC. Technically, the Whitecaps are in a suburb a good 10 miles outside of Grand Rapids, but that was news to me fairly recently too. I wonder who a Grand Rapids/West Michigan AAA club would affiliate with though since I doubt the Tigers would ever leave Toledo. Selfishly, it'd be nice to have Brewers prospects within driving distance again.

Beer City... seriously?

I could tolerate those colors for the Wizards. It was the name I didn't care for. The Caps always felt like change for the sake of change, though. I prefer what they wear now.

Found this at my local Five Below. Couldn't resist picking it up. There's better quality pinball-style baseball games if you're willing to spend some money on one, but this is incredibly good for $5. The swing mechanic is even better than some of the more expensive versions I've played.

Fun fact. This is based on an arcade game manufactured by Service Games (Sega) in the 1960s.

Fort Myers?

I've said for awhile, this uniform on a modern (traditional?) template would not be a bad look. Though they could probably use some piping.

I don't blame you. On its own, it's a good looking hat. Not its fault that the uniforms its worn with are a well polished turd. ?

I like the Rangers entire identity. I wouldn't be upset if they changed the cap logo to be more consistent with the scripts, but it's a good look overall. I can even deal with the colors since they're the colors of the Texas flag and the Rangers have incorporated it into their uniforms.

Just Miller Park. The Selig family was the team's only owner until 2004 when Mark Attanasio bought it.

Yeah, if it were to be brought back, I'd prefer to see it with the current "SOX" monogram.

Take away the disco collar and this isn't a bad uniform. I wouldn't mind seeing a fauxback version of this on a modern template.

We are. I'm just using your point as a jumpoff point to make mine to the BiG detractors... that there was no reason for the Brewers to rebrand so close to the club's first major overhaul which yielded some pretty nice uniforms in their own right. It was just a cynical cash grab to tie in with the move to Miller Park. Now, with the success of the Blue Jays and Astros rebrands, on top of the Brewers fauxbacks, most fans have it set in stone what they want.

They had a potentially timeless rebrand. But they didn't give it enough of a chance to establish itself, and now it's associated only with the worst era of Brewers baseball. You can't blame fans for wanting to return to the BiG when their retro fauxback easily outclasses every other uniform that's currently at their disposal. Which also happens to be their best option at this point. Because you can only rebrand so many times before you become a team with no discernible identity... for which that "other" Milwaukee team is a perfect example.

Not in the Texas League. The Burlington Bees and Salt Lake Bees don't seem to have any problems co-existing. And they have the same parent club.

Long Haulers... I guess. But wouldn't a better name for a Route 66-based identity be, I dunno... 66ers? I miss when MiLB clubs had dignified identities.

I dig all of the Germanic looks. Perhaps if the BiG hadn't been immortalized by the greatest moments in franchise history, I'd be advocating for a return to those. But SFGiants58 hit the nail on the head, and I don't think that's something people understand unless you've spent some time here. When you're more over than Bucky Badger in Wisconsin's biggest city, it's just plain foolish to not embrace it and run with it. I would put the Brewers fauxbacks in that category. They may not be as historically significant as the NYC-rooted clubs, but you can put them in any era and they wouldn't look out of place.