MLB 2019 Changes

[jn8]

25 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

White vs. grey is what baseball looks like.

 

This does not get boring because there is plenty of variety of colour in the hats, socks, belts, and uniform lettering and trim.

Saying white vs gray for every game gets boring is definitely oversimplifying things and ignores some important details, so that’s on me. 

 

But “all color vs color matchups look bad” is also a major oversimplification that ignores important details as well. 

[Krz]

Classy.

[Olmec]

Well done

[BelfourThibault]

43 minutes ago, jn8 said:

Saying white vs gray for every game gets boring is definitely oversimplifying things and ignores some important details, so that’s on me. 

 

But “all color vs color matchups look bad” is also a major oversimplification that ignores important details as well. 

 

It's not even that they all look bad, it's just that they scream "beer league Tuesday night softball" more than "MLB". To me, anyway. 

[MilSox]

6 hours ago, jn8 said:

There’s definitely a distinction between them. This is a slow-pitch softball jersey:

And these are the jerseys from the Colorado-Baltimore game:

 

 

Colorado and Baltimore stick to traditional jersey designs with simple block numbers and basic wordmarks. The softball jersey... well, it doesn’t, and I’m in no way calling for that to become an MLB trend.

But a traditional jersey style in a color instead of white or gray? No issues with that at all. White vs gray for every game gets boring, so if teams want to mix it up with colored jerseys throughout the year, I’m all for it. Orange vs purple looks great, as well as a couple other color vs color matchups. Just keep the colored pants in the 70s 

Agreed.  I'll even take it a step further and say I don't even have a problem with pullovers as long as they (a.) stick to traditional baseball aesthetics, and (b.) are paired with properly belted pants. 

[Htown1141]

This board and people like this are the reason that there will be no advances in baseball uniform technology for the rest of my life. I'm 100% confident that if most of y'all grew up in the 1890's, y'all would bemoan the death of the shield button-up and the fact that actual ties are no longer required. Or if you grew up whenever polyester was staring to become the jersey fabric of choice, y'all would say something stupid like "wool fabrics are the way that the game is supposed to be played, these poly fabrics are literal clownsuits" or some other bull like that.

[MilSox]

7 hours ago, Htown1141 said:

This board and people like this are the reason that there will be no advances in baseball uniform technology for the rest of my life. I'm 100% confident that if most of y'all grew up in the 1890's, y'all would bemoan the death of the shield button-up and the fact that actual ties are no longer required. Or if you grew up whenever polyester was staring to become the jersey fabric of choice, y'all would say something stupid like "wool fabrics are the way that the game is supposed to be played, these poly fabrics are literal clownsuits" or some other bull like that.

 

Sure... if you're gonna be as un-nuanced about it as the rigid sticks in the mud who you're taking issue with.  But I think there's a good amount of us who may disagree on particulars, yet concede that what works for the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cardinals doesn't necessarily work for the Orioles, A's, and Braves. And what may work for those teams may not be appropriate for the Astros, Padres, or Brewers.

 

There's a lot of gray area and overlap between the tradition of baseball uniform sensibilites and the necessity of 30 teams to be reasonably distinguishable from each other. That's where this forum comes in IMO.

[Andrew_Gamer_NZP]

So yesterday the Rangers decided to where their red alternate hats with their blue alternate jersey. But still wore their blue helmets.

I don't think they've ever worn this combo before.

[MilSox]

This is the most perfect example I've seen of how showing socks can make or break an entire look.

[Htown1141]

4 hours ago, NicDB said:

 

Sure... if you're gonna be as un-nuanced about it as the rigid sticks in the mud who you're taking issue with.  But I think there's a good amount of us who may disagree on particulars, yet concede that what works for the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cardinals doesn't necessarily work for the Orioles, A's, and Braves. And what may work for those teams may not BE appropriate for the Astros, Padres, or Brewers.

 

There's a lot of white and gray area and overlap between the tradition of baseball uniform sensibilites and the necessity of 30 teams to be reasonably distinguishable from each other. That's where this forum comes in IMO.

FIFY

 

Also, I completely agree with your statement. What I was saying was that the people looking to keep classic looks for classic teams are (mostly) the same people looking for classic looks for all teams. At least that's what I've seen. They lament modern classics because they aren't "traditional" enough, and they hate the ideas of alternate uniforms before even seeing them. Granted, everyone has different tastes and that's what this board is here for, but my original point was to say that many (not all) who want only white/gray for home/road are going to push back on change for the sake of it, or that they're so unwilling to change that they're going to state things as objective fact when they really are subjective.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

5 hours ago, NicDB said:

But I think there's a good amount of us who may disagree on particulars, yet concede that what works for the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cardinals doesn't necessarily work for the Orioles, A's, and Braves. And what may work for those teams may not be appropriate for the Astros, Padres, or Brewers.

 

I can agree that each team is its own entity with its own aesthetic needs.

 

I also support the idea that every rule has an exception. For example, while I deplore coloured tops generally, I love the yellow jersey and the green jersey that the A's wore from 1972 to 1980. Indeed, that uniform had coloured jerseys, pullover jerseys, beltless pants, white pants on the road, and yellow sanitaries. All of these things break my "rules"; yet that set is, for me, an all-time classic.

 

Of course, this relativism can be taken too far, such as when people fetishise truly awful design, and even assert that the Tampa Bay Lightning or the Orlando Magic or the Anaheim Ducks or the Toronto Raptors ought to have ugly uniforms instead of nice dignified uniforms because they are not traditional teams.

 

But an opponent of pullover jerseys should be able to acknowledge that the Pirates' and Braves' mid-1970s pullovers looked very nice; and an advocate of standard number fonts must affirm that the Blue Jays' original number font was beautiful (and that the current one is almost as good). This does not undermine the validity of categorical preferences.

 

Recognising the existence of a handful of exceptions to every aesthetic standard is good; advocating the wholesale elimination of those standards is bad.

[leopard88]

On 5/24/2019 at 10:35 PM, Sec19Row53 said:

7 year old me knew that the logo on his Montreal gumball helmet was an M. What the heck else would it be?

 

[shrugs]

 

7 year old me saw elb.  I think 15 year old me may still have seen elb.

 

The logo made no sense when looked at that way, but that's what I saw.  Even now, the M seems forced.

[FiddySicks]

I STILL see elb when looking at that logo. 

[1insaneguy]

I turned four years old the year the Nats came to DC. I was six or seven the first time I saw the Expos logo, and I saw an elb. 

 

EDIT: Yeah, I'm really young. 

[Sec19Row53]

1 hour ago, leopard88 said:

 

7 year old me saw elb.  I think 15 year old me may still have seen elb.

 

The logo made no sense when looked at that way, but that's what I saw.  Even now, the M seems forced.

Yep - I get it. Sword of Damocles says an M is the answer, not elb.

 

I get it - it's a stupid logo that only seems to be defined after the fact. I'm not sure that any of the discussions I've seen explaining it are REALLY contemporary with its unveiling. Oh well, it's what we do around here - argue this sort of minutiae 

[MJWalker45]

On 5/24/2019 at 9:35 PM, Sec19Row53 said:

7 year old me knew that the logo on his Montreal gumball helmet was an M. What the heck else would it be?

 

[shrugs]

7 year old me wondered why a team in Montreal had ELB on their hats?

On 5/24/2019 at 2:04 PM, SFGiants58 said:

 

Those “conversations” usually go in this direction:

 

”This is insulting that the Nats are playing Expos dress-up!”

”The Nats are taking Bryce Harper’s departure hard, look at how they’re trying to scramble for fans.”

”Expos fans roast Nationals for wearing throwbacks.”

“We don’t give a crap about the Expos!”

 

No replacement team, no exact throwbacks. It just feels wrong.

 

Besides, any dedicated or casual fan can look up those stats and photos. It’s not like it’s St. Louis Browns-tier obscure.

 

 

But is is it really necessary to know this history as a fan? The kids can take five seconds on Wikipedia to learn it, then go back to not caring about players who they never watched and have no relevance to their city. They’ll admit that Montréal’s team left due to a variety of factors, feel a tiny bit of regret, and move on. If the history comes up, a quick search can give them all the info they need. It’s not like they were a team that won multiple championships. Heck, all of the big names of the Expos played for many other teams (Gary Cater and Rusty Staub with the Mets, Andre Dawson with the Cubs, Tim Raines with several clubs, Pedro Martinez with the Red Sox, and Vladimir Guerrero with the Angels). The Nats should be free to do what they want with the Expos’ history, as long as the record books don’t change.

 

I’m a fan of a relocated team that prides itself on its history pre-relocation. However, there are factors that allow for it:

 

1. The name didn’t change and plenty of players overlapped both on-field and in the organization.

2. A replacement team arrived in 1962. Therefore, no hard feelings.

3. The Giants spent their first 56 years in San Francisco without a championship. For the sake of honoring titles, they had to acknowledge New York. The Expos don’t have that.

 

 

Again, five seconds on Wikipedia takes care of this. They don’t need this information forced upon them, because it’s not particularly relevant to the Nationals’ current identity and using throwbacks pours plentiful amounts of salt in the wounds of Expos fans.

 

You know what would be best? How about a compromise fauxback, like what the Rangers did in 1994?

 

 

 

It's still the Rangers, but it finds a way to invoke their past (recent past as well, given that they reused the '80s-1993 script) without shoving it in Washington fans' faces. This is how you handle throwbacks when there’s no replacement team. Just say “Expos-inspired” and you’re good.

 

The Winnipeg Whips’ logo would be perfect for a fauxback like this.

 

On 5/24/2019 at 4:40 PM, Brandon9485 said:

 

Wait, what? I’ve never seen these before. 

Same here! Granted in 1994, unless something big happened I wouldn't have seen these in the newspaper back home and the school computer at college would have taken 30 minutes to upload that picture. 

[MJWalker45]

9 hours ago, Andrew_Gamer_NZP said:

So yesterday the Rangers decided to where their red alternate hats with their blue alternate jersey. But still wore their blue helmets.

I don't think they've ever worn this combo before.

I believe they had this combo in spring training only when they changed from the Nolan Ryan-era uniforms in 1994. They usually kept the red and blue separated between home and away uniforms though. Cleveland handled their uniforms in a similar manner minus the home cap which carried over from their Major League II uniforms. And I have to say this,  I hated when they got rid of the team logo on the sleeve for the Texas flag. 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

2 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

I'm not sure that any of the discussions I've seen explaining it are REALLY contemporary with its unveiling.

 

Contemporary reports described the logo as being an M, and containing an E (with no mention of a B).

 

 

 

The team later referred to a B in its official description of the logo. But the lack of any contemporary allusion to a B leads to the conclusion that the logo was not intended to include that letter.

 

Todd Radom wrote the whole matter up on his blog several years ago.

[Gothamite]

Todd’s piece is fantastic.  And he nails the problem with their eMb logo:

 

Quote

The club seemingly gave a definitive explanation starting in the late 80s and early 90s—"The Expos logo is composed of three letters, the largest of which is the overall stylized "M" for Montréal. Represented in the lower left of the logo is a lower case "e" for expos and on the right hand side of the logo, in blue, is the letter "b" for baseball." While this may stand as the final word, it seems unusual that this explanation came some two decades after the logo's debut.

 

The fact that they were still developing a changing explanation after decades of use shows us how lousy it really is. 

[Digby]

Contributing my two cents:

 

I actually really like the classic Expos logo as a curiosity of its time, but I can’t defend it until I hear why there’s a lowercase “l” in white.

 

And my problem with that color-on-color thing is that the Orioles’ orange over gray pants is one of my least favorite combinations in the game. Something about that bright orange over dull gray just looks horribly unbalanced and clashy to me.