MLB: The Defunct Saga - Bibliography Added

[BJ Sands]

Wow. This is gorgeous. And thank you!

[KittSmith_95]

The Knights almost feel very Detroit Tiger-y to me.... I do wonder if going pinstripes would've fixed that. Love the NY cap. 

Also, even though everyone else has already said it, happy to see you back in the concept game. 

[Guest darkpiranha]

Whenever you get done with the current teams on your list, I'd love to see you tackle this fictional league from one of my favorite books about pretend sports leagues,.
https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Baseball-Association-Robert-Coover/dp/1590203119

 

Here's a discussion of the team names from the book.

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/showthread.php?t=227210

[Topherlee2]

Love the New York Knights! Can't to see more!

[TrueYankee26]

Knights look sweet, and I am glad this is branching out to fictional clubs

[PowderedWater]

On 6/7/2018 at 11:17 PM, SFGiants58 said:

The only one out of order is the last one since the short lifespan of the said team leaves their visual history up for more speculation.

Potentially stupid question: did we already reach this point?

[jbird669]

On 1/24/2021 at 1:54 PM, SFGiants58 said:

<snip>

 

I absolutely love it!

 

[kb105]

On 1/22/2021 at 2:47 PM, SFGiants58 said:

 

I would wonder how replacing the apostrophe with a fleur-de-leis for either identity would look. I also think adding a horse racing design to Louisville's elephants would be a cool local tie-in.

[mrcubfan415]

I looked up “fictional sports teams” on Wikipedia and managed to find this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_sports_teams#Baseball_teams

 

Hopefully it will be of some use to you

[Frylock]

On 10/14/2018 at 1:58 PM, SFGiants58 said:

 

 

 

 

 

Addendum: I've used this screencap from the documentary What If: The Unlikely Story of Toronto's Baseball Giants and assorted images (liked in my explanation/mini-report above) to trace the prototype logo, complete with estimate Pantone values:

 

 

Click the image for a high-resolution version. I wanted to get the logo out there in the digital space, so it's a bit less rabbit hole-y to find it. Also, I can't recommend the What If documentary enough. It's got some fantastic interviews with a lot of the figures involved in the attempted relocation/founding of the Blue Jays. You can find it on Vimeo to rent/buy.

Welp... I sure hope HatClub sends you a freebie as a thank you.

 

 

[Dalcowboyfan92]

The Knights set looks real nice and clean. Very heavy Detroit Tigers looking, but that's a minor nitpick. Also, got a little bit of Auburn University in there. Like you put the Detroit Tigers and Auburn in a blender.

 

Echoing the sentiment; great to see this series back.

[coco1997]

I was trolling around Instagram and came upon this design for a Tampa Bay Pteordactyls identity, allegedly one of the proposed names when MLB expanded to St. Petersburg in 1998. Would love to see your take on this. A dinosaur-themed MLB team would be awesome! 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKVLOsWFwGm/?igshid=8puvpdfijios

[DukeofChutney]

15 hours ago, coco1997 said:

I was trolling around Instagram and came upon this design for a Tampa Bay Pteordactyls identity, allegedly one of the proposed names when MLB expanded to St. Petersburg in 1998. Would love to see your take on this. A dinosaur-themed MLB team would be awesome! 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKVLOsWFwGm/?igshid=8puvpdfijios

Thats a decent take on an iteresting identity.

 

Give our penchant to shorten team nicknames, I wonder how that name would have faired? "Pters swoop in on the playoffs" or "Tyls streak continues"

[SFGiants58]

On 1/24/2021 at 3:52 PM, coco1997 said:

Oh damn, you’re doing fictional teams now! The Knights look wonderful. I always thought they had a timeless, MLB-caliber look.

 

Man, I hope you tackle the Springfield Isotopes.

On 1/24/2021 at 4:20 PM, mrcubfan415 said:

Great stuff as always!

 

Thanks!

 

On 1/24/2021 at 5:34 PM, BJ Sands said:

Wow. This is gorgeous. And thank you!

 

Thanks and you're very welcome.

 

On 1/24/2021 at 7:54 PM, darkpiranha said:

Whenever you get done with the current teams on your list, I'd love to see you tackle this fictional league from one of my favorite books about pretend sports leagues,.
https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Baseball-Association-Robert-Coover/dp/1590203119

 

Here's a discussion of the team names from the book.

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/showthread.php?t=227210

 

Thanks, I'll look into it at some point.

 

On 1/25/2021 at 6:56 PM, Topherlee2 said:

Love the New York Knights! Can't to see more!

On 1/25/2021 at 7:44 PM, TrueYankee26 said:

Knights look sweet, and I am glad this is branching out to fictional clubs

On 1/26/2021 at 10:32 AM, jbird669 said:

I absolutely love it!

 

Thanks, guys!

 

On 1/25/2021 at 8:09 PM, PowderedWater said:

Potentially stupid question: did we already reach this point?

 

I'm wrapping the series up with the missing defunct team. 

 

On 1/27/2021 at 3:21 PM, kb105 said:

I would wonder how replacing the apostrophe with a fleur-de-leis for either identity would look. I also think adding a horse racing design to Louisville's elephants would be a cool local tie-in.

 

Eh, I think it'd be too cute by half.

 

On 1/27/2021 at 5:01 PM, mrcubfan415 said:

I looked up “fictional sports teams” on Wikipedia and managed to find this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_sports_teams#Baseball_teams

 

Hopefully it will be of some use to you

 

Thank you. I don't think I'll do many, I'll limit myself to either "defunct" teams or teams that share names with main-line concpets.

 

On 1/24/2021 at 6:33 PM, KittSmith_95 said:

The Knights almost feel very Detroit Tiger-y to me.... I do wonder if going pinstripes would've fixed that. Love the NY cap. 

Also, even though everyone else has already said it, happy to see you back in the concept game. 

On 1/30/2021 at 12:41 PM, Dalcowboyfan92 said:

The Knights set looks real nice and clean. Very heavy Detroit Tigers looking, but that's a minor nitpick. Also, got a little bit of Auburn University in there. Like you put the Detroit Tigers and Auburn in a blender.

 

Echoing the sentiment; great to see this series back.

 

Thanks! Yeah, I noted the heavy Tigers influence, which would probably be fine for an NL East club. Both royal and black do make it more distinct.

 

 

On 1/30/2021 at 11:51 AM, Frylock said:

Welp... I sure hope HatClub sends you a freebie as a thank you.

 

 

 

Thanks for the heads-up, I bought myself the white front-panel hat!

 

On 1/30/2021 at 12:58 PM, coco1997 said:

I was trolling around Instagram and came upon this design for a Tampa Bay Pteordactyls identity, allegedly one of the proposed names when MLB expanded to St. Petersburg in 1998. Would love to see your take on this. A dinosaur-themed MLB team would be awesome! 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKVLOsWFwGm/?igshid=8puvpdfijios

On 1/31/2021 at 4:18 AM, DukeofChutney said:

Thats a decent take on an iteresting identity.

 

Give our penchant to shorten team nicknames, I wonder how that name would have faired? "Pters swoop in on the playoffs" or "Tyls streak continues"

 

I'm not sure if I'll use the rejected names, if only because it's not really a defunct team.

[SFGiants58]

NOTE: This is an update of this post on the Carolina Twins, but with a significant name change. I have copied over all of the research, but have swapped out the names and some explanations.

 

CAROLINA TRIPLETS - Triad Troubles in Triplicate

 

We’ve reached the mid-1990s. The Tampa Bay Sweepstakes have played out, with both St. Petersburg and Phoenix getting expansion teams. However, relocation remained an option for many of the cities left out (as we’ve seen with the Virginia Fury and Sacramento).

 

One of these regions was North Carolina. From 1996-1998, businessmen and politicians in the Piedmont Triad area of NC (Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and High Point) made a big gamble: instead of building new minor-league stadiums, why not try to lure a major-league club with a new stadium? They came up with a plan for a $210 million stadium, one situated at the Interstate 40-Interstate 40 Business interchange in between Guilford and Forsyth County. This site was under dispute leading up to the referendum, but the general area of the site would have been in the area highlight below. ¹

 

 

Don Beaver, a North Carolina businessman (and then-owner of the Charlotte Knights), would have paid for a third of the stadium, with the other two-thirds coming from taxpayers in Guilford and Forsyth County through a $0.50 tax on baseball tickets and a 1% tax on prepared foods. Of course, this tax proved unpopular, with restaurateurs and citizens organizing Citizens Against Unfair Taxes (spending $33,000 on their campaign, compared to the $899,000 spent by the “Say Yes Baseball” campaign).²

 

Beaver also entered into negotiations to buy the Twins from Carl Pohlad, who was having financial problems with the Twins. He reported that he’d lost roughly $26 million since 1994 (over half of his reported losses since 1984), while team revenue was 40% below league average ($70 million) at $42 million. He had been trying for some time to extort the Minnesota Legislature to buy him a new venue to replace the barely 15-year-old Metrodome (I get that it was a crummy stadium, but still!), to no avail. However, he saw an opportunity with Don Beaver to put pressure on the state government. Pohlad signed a letter of intent on October 3, 1997, to sell the team to Beaver for $150 million, contingent on the Twins failing to get a stadium deal in Minnesota and the stadium tax measure passing.³

 

Unfortunately for Beaver, the Guilford and Forsyth County voters had different ideas. The May 5, 1998 referendum for the taxes failed hard. The two-county election ended with “no” defeating “yes” by 96,433 to 55,262 votes. The votes were 59% to 41% in Forsyth and 67% to 33% in Guilford. While Beaver investigated a stadium opportunity in Charlotte, talks stalled out. The North Carolina effort was so defeated, Beaver admitted that Charlotte had no interest in the Expos’ relocation.⁴

 

Pohlad and his successors, who reportedly had little interest in North Carolina, continued in their pursuit of a Minnesota stadium (which included failed public ventures and a threat to contract the team that fell flat), eventually getting Target Field in 2010.⁵

 

Of course, this plan was a horrible idea. Quotes from the period showed concern from residents about traffic near the exurban complex. I’d say that @sc49erfan15 summed up the problem here:

 

Quote

I live in Greensboro, and yes, that would've been a horrendous idea. That particular site is just outside of Kernersville, a suburb of just under 25,000, between Winston-Salem and Greensboro. It's a 20-25 minute drive from both downtown Winston-Salem and downtown Greensboro.

 

The Piedmont Triad (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point) is home to upwards of 1.5 million residents, which isn't anything to sneeze at, but it's entirely too spread out to get the daily type of attendance you'd need for an MLB team. And, as we've seen, rural/suburban baseball stadiums aren't exactly optimal for attendance. There would be absolute minimal draw from Charlotte (~90 minutes), Durham (~1 hour), and Raleigh (~90 minutes), especially for weekday/weeknight games.

 

Quote

It's not quite that rural, but it's suburban at best.

 

Put it this way - the airport is closer to Greensboro's city center than that stadium would've been. The Twins would've been trying to leave within 5 seasons.

 

Even if the vote went the other way, the results would still be terrible. You can best sum up what happened with this over-referenced moment from Fred Ottman’s wrestling career:

 

 

The voters should be commended for refusing to pay for two-thirds of Beaver’s stadium.

 

However, what if the Guilford and Forsyth County voters went the other way and Pohlad wasn’t bluffing?

 

I figured that the name should stay, with the identifier of “Carolina.” However, a recommendation from @NicDB:

 

On 3/22/2019 at 2:29 AM, NicDB said:

It's not like a team called the Triplets is completely unheard of. But I also didn't think about the possibility of having Twins to mean the "twin" Carolinas.

Maybe I just don't like this because I'm having such a hard time wrapping my head around how this was even supposed to work in the first place.  This has to be the most random spot anyone has ever tried to put a major pro franchise.

 

...convinced me to update the team to the Triplets, with the Minne and Paul designs representing the three cities of the Triad (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point). Navy and red would also remain with the addition of flesh/tan for outlines and the men (taken from the Twins’ 1972 roundel alternate).

 

Part One - Dome-style Design

 

The first approach is an attempt to merge the Metrodome era look with the new setting, while incorporating pieces of the 2010 typeface cleanup. The primary is a direct riff on the ‘87-’09 design, while the secondary incorporates the triplets representing their respective cities and the cap logo. The insignia is a “C," while Rockwell Bold is the lettering font.

 

EDIT: I have updated the wordmark to fit with @raysox's suggestions about the wordmark. Here are the original logo sheets, home & road, alternates, and jacket.

 

 

The uniforms feature "Triplets" and “Carolina” wordmarks, with the secondary on the home uniform and the primary on the road. The big change from the Twins’ 1987-2009 uniforms is that the NoB’s are direct-sewn and red with navy outlines. The “C” is on the socks. 

 

 

The alternates include a navy top and a red-billed cap, along with a fauxback. This one uses a “Triplets” script with a vintage-style "C" on the cap.

 

 

The jacket features the home wordmark, the “C” on the back, and white and red stripes on the trim.

 

 

Part Two - A 1960s Revival, with contrast!

 

The second approach modernizes the 1960s Twins set (what the 2010 Twins should have done) with a contrasting color style (inspired by the first secondary logo). The primary is a roundel, featuring the team script (which I debuted in the current MLB thread on the Sports Logos section - using the 1959-60 Washington Senators’ tail design). The secondary/insignia features the “C” from my custom “TC.” An adjustment of the first set's "triange" is the tertiary.

 

 

The uniforms follow my updated Twins concept, except without any Minnesota imagery. Additionally, the home uniform uses a white base instead of creme. The primary is a sleeve patch for the road, while the secondary is on the home.

 

 

The alternates also develop the co-dominance approach by alternating each Friday. The red jersey includes a matching cap, while the navy jersey features white front numbers (for contrast as a lighter element).

 

 

The jacket now has red sleeves and the “Carolina” script.

 

 

This move would have been an utter boondoggle had the voters and team gone through with it. While the Twins/future Triplets could have had some fantastic looks there, it’s for the best that it didn’t happen. C+C is appreciated, as always!

 

Up next, we dive into a strange merger of fictional clubs!

 

¹ Justin Catanoso, “Architects Present Ballpark Options,” News & Record, April 2, 1998, sec. Triad/State; Meghann Mollerus, “MLB in NC? It Struck Out 19 Years Ago | Wfmynews2.Com,” WFMY News 2, July 17, 2017, https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/mlb-in-nc-it-struck-out-19-years-ago/455758206; John A. Nagy, “The Baseball Question,” News & Record, May 5, 1998, sec. General News; Eric Okurowski, “StadiumPage.Com - North Carolina 1999,” accessed March 16, 2019, http://www.stadiumpage.com/concepts/NC1999_R.html.

 

² Mollerus, “MLB in NC?;" Nagy, “The Baseball Question;" Jim Schlosser, “One Year Later, Opinions Remain Firm on Stadium - Land Set aside for a Triad Big-League Baseball Park Remains Vacant, and - Proponents of Big-League Ball for the Area Remain Convinced an Opportunity Was - Missed.,” News & Record, May 4, 1999, sec. General News.

 

³ Compiled from reports by staff writers Stan Olson and Michael Whitmer, Associated Press and Knight Ridder/Tribune., “Twins Sale Was Never Intended, Book Says,” Charlotte Observer, April 3, 2000, sec. Business Monday; Justin Catanoso, “Was Baseball Deal Charade? `Well, Sort of’ - Triad Business Journal,” Triad Business Journal, May 3, 1999, https://www.bizjournals.com/triad/stories/1999/05/03/tidbits.html; Nagy, “The Baseball Question.”

 

⁴ Dana Damico, “Stadium Site, Not Tax, Was Key in Kernersville,” Winston-Salem Journal, May 6, 1998, sec. A; Scott Dodd, “Charlotte and Baseball: Nothing Major League yet - City’s Sports Promoters Quite Happy with the Minor-League Knights,” Charlotte Observer, September 22, 2002, sec. Metro; David Rice, “Triad Says No to Baseball Decisive: Voters in Forsyth, Guilford Reject Food Tax,” Winston-Salem Journal, May 6, 1998, sec. A; Schlosser, “One Year Later, Opinions Remain Firm on Stadium;” Patrick Sweeney, “N. Carolina Voters Vote down Stadium Tax//as Triad Area Says No, Charlotte Group Makes Move to Lure Twins,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 6, 1998, sec. Main; Jay Weiner, “N.C. Voters Reject Taxes to Help Build Twins Ballpark - Now the Attention Falls to Charlotte,” Star Tribune: Newspaper of the Twin Cities, May 6, 1998, sec. News.

 

⁵ Catanoso, “Was Baseball Deal Charade? `Well, Sort of’ - Triad Business Journal;” Compiled from reports by staff writers Stan Olson and Michael Whitmer, Associated Press and Knight Ridder/Tribune., “Twins Sale Was Never Intended, Book Says;” Foon Rhee, “Twins Tentatively Agree to Deal Keeping Them in Minnesota,” Charlotte Observer, July 23, 1998, sec. Metro.

[sportsfan7]

Any ideas on what the names of the Triplets' Minny and Paul would be? I'm thinking Winston for one, but can't seem to come up with anything for the other two (Greeny? High-ssac?).

[sky1324]

13 hours ago, sportsfan7 said:

Any ideas on what the names of the Triplets' Minny and Paul would be? I'm thinking Winston for one, but can't seem to come up with anything for the other two (Greeny? High-ssac?).

One would definitely be Winston, it's possible that the one for High Point would be Tom (Thomasville is right by HP) but I've got nothing for Greensboro.

 

The design looks nice, it's adapted well, just not for me. A little too bland in my opinion, there's not a lot of character there (not really through any fault of your own). I do really like the C and Triplets script, however.

[teeray01]

The second option is the best one. I like the script.  I'm not a fan of the Tertiary logo though.  Maybe a North Carolina silhouette with stars marking the three locations.  Not sure what else would work.

[raysox]

I got such a kick out of this, naming the Twins the Triplets is so funny to me. I think the only gripe I really have is the negative space between the letters in Triplets that is much bigger than the ones on the Twins. I think this comes down to the not-exactly-vertical lines on the  i p and l, and the wavy line on the lowercase t. I'd tighten those up and think it'd look a little better. Also I wonder what an NC lockup would look like!

[TrueYankee26]

LMAO he went with my idea of a Carolina Triplets.