MLB 2024 Uniform/Logo Changes

[infrared41]

7 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

Says the guy who's too young to know better.

 

When I started watching baseball and became a Yankee fan, it was the early 1970s, and being a Yankee fan was definitely not cool. The glow of the Mets' 1969 World Championship was still everywhere; and this was only exacerbated by the team's late-season comeback in 1973 to win the division and win another pennant, before taking the mighty Oakland A's to seven games in that year's World Series.

 

At that time, the Yankees were strictly passé. They were the team best known for hyping guys who turned out to be disappointments, guys such as Rusty Torres and Frank Tepedino. Even the supposed superstar, Bobby Murcer, who was indeed a quality player, was not the generational talent that the team had been touting, and would never equal his one great season.

 

The lone actual star on that team, Thurman Munson, had yet to blossom, while the consistent and underrated Roy White was most often overlooked.

 

The Mets were dazzling with their stellar starting rotation of Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and later Jon Matlack; by contrast, the Yankees were trudging along with a fading Mel Stottlemyre, together with an inconsistent Fritz Peterson and the occasionally brilliant Mike Kekich (the latter two of whom were involved in a phony "scandal" when aspects of their private lives were reported on and unjustly mocked).

 

In this environment, the Met fans were the know-nothing trend-followers, and we Yankee fans were, yes, the scholars. We were the ones who were actually familiar with the players and the teams from both leagues. When the Mets would acquire a new player, the Met fans at my school would have to ask us — the Yankee fans, and therefore the serious baseball fans — about that player. When a Met fan was about to go to a game, that Met fan would ask us for a rundown of the opposition. For we were the Yankee fans, the keepers of the knowledge.

 

Then the Lean Years ended, and we Yankee fans got our championship teams. Still, immediately thereafter, we were knocked down again by having no World Championships in the entire 1980s, during which time the Mets once again became the media darlings — and, therefore, once again became the go-to team for the empty-headed know-nothings. And so for a second time, now as an adult, I had the experience of my Met-fan friends asking me for information on new acquisitions, on call-ups, and on opposing players.

 

I retired from following current baseball after 1996, when the Yankees were nice enough to play me out with a championship. So I watched the Yankees' resurgence after that as an outsider. And what became clear to me was that the nature of Yankee fans had altered radically. While Yankee fans of my generation were arrogantly haughty, the Yankee fans of the latter generation were just loutish.

 

In the 1970s, Yankee fans would cheer for many great opposing players. Amongst the opposing players who always got great receptions at Yankee Stadium were Brooks Robinson, Andre Thornton, and Rod Carew.  This recalls the stories of Dodger fans at Ebbets Field always cheering for Stan Musial. 

 

The character of Yankee fans of my generation can be illustrated by two events involving Tom Seaver. First, after Seaver was traded from the Mets in June of 1977, his first appearance in New York came a few weeks later at the All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium. His introduction before the game elicited the biggest ovation of the night, bigger than that for the several Yankee players in the game, or for Yankee manager Billy Martin, who was managing the American League.

 

The second event came in August of 1985, when Seaver faced the Yankees at the Stadium going for his 300th career victory. During that game, something remarkable happened: the crowd turned. This had happened for individual moments, for instance, when Reggie Jackson made his first appearance back at the Stadium after signing with the Angels, and was cheered for homering against Ron Guidry. But for the first and only time in history, an entire packed Yankee Stadium turned for the whole game, rooting against the Yankees as they cheered for Seaver. After Seaver got his complete-game victory, the capacity crowd stood and roared, and demanded a curtain call.

 

This is what my kind of Yankee fandom had been about. Seaver, unlike Jackson, was not a former Yankee. Rather, he was a former Met. Yet Yankee fans, being at that time the epitome of great and knowledgeable baseball fans, ignored petty partisanship to pay appropriate respect to greatness.

 

There is a profound difference between the Yankee fans of my day and those of the current day. If the Seaver scenarios had played out at any time after 2000, the Yankee fans of today would certainly have booed a longtime Met, rather than cheer a baseball hero.

 

This post would have been way more entertaining in Esperanto.

 

With regard to Kekich and Peterson, were the kids "willing participants" as well? What say the "scholars of baseball" on that part of the "phony scandal?" 

 

I'm not "too young to know better" and the whole family swap thing was pretty ed up. Even for the swinging 70s.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

39 minutes ago, infrared41 said:

This post would have been way more entertaining in Esperanto.

 

With regard to Kekich and Peterson, were the kids "willing participants" as well? What say the "scholars of baseball" on that part of the "phony scandal?" 

 

I'm not "too young to know better" and the whole family swap thing was pretty ed up. Even for the swinging 70s.

 

Note that kids are never willing participants when their parents break up. But that certainly doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with divorcing. If Kekich's and Peterson's marriages had ended, and then each of those guys went on to be with other people, no one would have said anything about it, as that's the result of most marriages. The fact that each one ended up with the former wife of the other makes the situation no different.

 

What's more, while Kekich's relationship with Peterson's former wife lasted only a few years, Peterson and Kekich's former wife Susanne are (as far as I know) still together. And I believe that they had more kids together, so the kids that Susanne had had with Kekich had a nice big family to grow up with. It's a happy story ultimately.

 

Kaj ĉio pli distras en Esperanto.

[MJD7]

23 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

I grew up a Yankee fan, but I no longer identify as one, because Yankee fans in my day had a  scholarly bent, while today's Yankee fans tend toward the stupid and goonish. 

 

7 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

In this environment, the Met fans were the know-nothing trend-followers, and we Yankee fans were, yes, the scholars. We were the ones who were actually familiar with the players and the teams from both leagues. When the Mets would acquire a new player, the Met fans at my school would have to ask us — the Yankee fans, and therefore the serious baseball fans — about that player. When a Met fan was about to go to a game, that Met fan would ask us for a rundown of the opposition. For we were the Yankee fans, the keepers of the knowledge.

 

Then the Lean Years ended, and we Yankee fans got our championship teams. Still, immediately thereafter, we were knocked down again by having no World Championships in the entire 1980s, during which time the Mets once again became the media darlings — and, therefore, once again became the go-to team for the empty-headed know-nothings. And so for a second time, now as an adult, I had the experience of my Met-fan friends asking me for information on new acquisitions, on call-ups, and on opposing players.

 

I retired from following current baseball after 1996, when the Yankees were nice enough to play me out with a championship. So I watched the Yankees' resurgence after that as an outsider. And what became clear to me was that the nature of Yankee fans had altered radically. While Yankee fans of my generation were arrogantly haughty, the Yankee fans of the latter generation were just loutish.

 

There is a profound difference between the Yankee fans of my day and those of the current day. If the Seaver scenarios had played out at any time after 2000, the Yankee fans of today would certainly have booed a longtime Met, rather than cheer a baseball hero.

Feel free to disagree, but in my experience any generalization about a group of people seems bound to be inaccurate for at least a decent amount of people in that group.
 

There are plenty of good and bad Yankees fans out there, just as there are good and bad Red Sox fans. I don’t like the Yankees myself, but I don’t hold any illusions about all of their fans, or even a majority of them, being terrible. I honestly can’t fathom ditching my team allegiance because of a perception of how other fans behave, even if I perceived them to be the majority.

 

Now, if the team themselves did something to warrant criticism, such as a serious scandal or something, I could see how that could be grounds for deserting fandom of the team, even if only for a temporary time.

 

General attitudes of fans can even be shown to change, as evidenced by Phillies fans’ eventual re-embrace of Trea Turner, even when the results weren’t showing early this past season (although, if you say you haven’t been following baseball since ‘96, I guess you may be unaware of that situation). 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

54 minutes ago, MJD7 said:

Feel free to disagree, but in my experience any generalization about a group of people seems bound to be inaccurate for at least a decent amount of people in that group.

 

I don't disagree. You are correct that any generalisation is bound not to apply to some. I hedged as much as I could with words like "tend to be". Still, I can only give my experience and my impression, which are as I expressed. During the Yankees' run of championships in the late 90s and early 00s, there were so many Yankee fans who said that a season that doesn't end with a championship is a failure. The word "joyless" was mentioned earlier; someone who believes what those Yankee fans asserted is bound to be joyless, and is overlooking so much of what's fun about a season.  (One of my favourite seasons was 1985, when the Yankees didn't win. But the Yankees and the Mets were in tight pennant races all season, with both teams not eliminated until the final weekend, and the City was gripped all season by excitement over a possible Subway Series.)

 

 

54 minutes ago, MJD7 said:

There are plenty of good and bad Yankees fans out there, just as there are good and bad Red Sox fans.

 

I will admit that my dislike of the Red Sox has oulived my allegiance to the Yankeees. But I acknowledge that the Fenway Park crowd did a very honourable thing twice, when they gave big ovations to Reggie Jackson and to Derek Jeter in each player's final at-bat at that park. I am all for partisanship; but knowledgable fans must be willing to look past that sometimes. (And I am aware that the Yankee Stadium crowd cheered David Ortiz in his last appearance there; but I still doubt that they'd do that during a player's career the way the Yankee fans of the past did for Seaver.)

 

 

54 minutes ago, MJD7 said:

I honestly can’t fathom ditching my team allegiance because of a perception of how other fans behave, even if I perceived them to be the majority.

 

I should be clear that I didn't really do that.  I retired from following current baseball (except for the uniforms) after 1996, becoming a purely historical fan, so I wasn't rooting for anyone anymore.  I still love my 1970s and 1980s Yankees, and will always consider 1976 to 1981 to be the pinnacle of baseball.  But I found that I had less and less in common with the Yankee fans around me, and I didn't want to be associated with what I percieved as an ugly turn (and this was well before the racial abuse that the Yankee fans directed at that guy from the White Sox last year).  I think if I had been a kid in 2002 instead of 1972, I would not have been drawn to being a Yankee fan.

 

 

54 minutes ago, MJD7 said:

General attitudes of fans can even be shown to change, as evidenced by Phillies fans’ eventual re-embrace of Trea Turner, even when the results weren’t showing early this past season (although, if you say you haven’t been following baseball since ‘96, I guess you may be unaware of that situation). 

 

I am indeed unaware of that.  But I do know that Phillies fans for the longest time gave Mike Schmidt a terrible time, even as he was highly respected around the National League.  It wasn't until very late in Schmidt's career that he became accepted by Phillies fans.  This parallels the experience of Mickey Mantle with Yankee fans; up until the big home run chase with Mantle and Roger Maris during the 1961 season, Mantle was just as likely to be booed as cheered by Yankee fans.  (This was before my time, so I can't really explain it, apart from people being irrationally resentful of the player who replaced Joe DiMaggio. However, Bobby Murcer fell far shorter in replacing Mantle than Mantle did in replacing DiMaggio; yet Murcer was one of the most beloved players for the Yankee fans of my era.)

[McCall]

6 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Anyway, Peterson and Kekich made their arrangment public only because they knew that it was going to be written about.  And it deserves no mocking, as everyone involved was doing it willingly.

 

  

 

First of all, the Yankee fans of my era were far from "joyless".  We took great pleasure in our vast knowledge; even better, we used it to educate anyone who asked (and sometimes people who didn't ask).

 

Secondly, the Francesa-type fan is representative of the latter-day boor, not of the 1970s-era erudite baseball scholar.

 

Don't call Yankees fans "baseball scholars" while defending that Jerry Springer-level wife swap saga.

[infrared41]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Note that kids are never willing participants when their parents break up. But that certainly doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with divorcing. If Kekich's and Peterson's marriages had ended, and then each of those guys went on to be with other people, no one would have said anything about it, as that's the result of most marriages. The fact that each one ended up with the former wife of the other makes the situation no different.

 

What a crock of . But I'm glad you're OK with a situation that probably ed those kids up pretty good.

[Kramerica Industries]

9 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

I retired from following current baseball after 1996, when the Yankees were nice enough to play me out with a championship. So I watched the Yankees' resurgence after that as an outsider. And what became clear to me was that the nature of Yankee fans had altered radically. While Yankee fans of my generation were arrogantly haughty, the Yankee fans of the latter generation were just loutish.

 

 

 

Definitely the reaction of cultured students of baseball to storm the field and make running the bases to finish a pennant-winning walk off home run completely impossible.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

30 minutes ago, Kramerica Industries said:

Definitely the reaction of cultured students of baseball to storm the field and make running the bases to finish a pennant-winning walk off home run completely impossible.

 

That goes to show you how "joyless" we were.

 

That moment ranks as the absolute top one for me in my life as a fan.  It's the only sports moment that can reliably move me to tears, particularly the Phil Rizzuto call.

 

 

 

 

As I type this, I am sitting under a mounted photo of that precious moment.

 

 

 

 

By the way, in case you didn't know it, I'll mention that fans storming the field after a championship was the norm at that time.

 

 

 

 

 

[MJD7]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

During the Yankees' run of championships in the late 90s and early 00s, there were so many Yankee fans who said that a season that doesn't end with a championship is a failure. The word "joyless" was mentioned earlier; someone who believes what those Yankee fans asserted is bound to be joyless, and is overlooking so much of what's fun about a season.

This I can agree with, I think that’s just a symptom of consistent winning though, as you tend to hear similar sentiments from fans of the Patriots or Lakers, for example, where winning became expected, as opposed to enjoyable. If only fans of other teams could be so lucky.

 

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

(And I am aware that the Yankee Stadium crowd cheered David Ortiz in his last appearance there; but I still doubt that they'd do that during a player's career the way the Yankee fans of the past did for Seaver.)

This seems to me to be more of a contradiction to your point than you may realize. Was it still while Ortiz was playing? It seems like a pretty analogous situation to Seaver, since a 300th win is also towards the end of one’s career.

 

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

I am indeed unaware of that.  But I do know that Phillies fans for the longest time gave Mike Schmidt a terrible time, even as he was highly respected around the National League.  It wasn't until very late in Schmidt's career that he became accepted by Phillies fans.  This parallels the experience of Mickey Mantle with Yankee fans; up until the big home run chase with Mantle and Roger Maris during the 1961 season, Mantle was just as likely to be booed as cheered by Yankee fans.  (This was before my time, so I can't really explain it, apart from people being irrationally resentful of the player who replaced Joe DiMaggio. However, Bobby Murcer fell far shorter in replacing Mantle than Mantle did in replacing DiMaggio; yet Murcer was one of the most beloved players for the Yankee fans of my era.)

I’ve seen a similar thing online lately of some Twins fans trashing Joe Mauer, since he is up for Hall of Fame induction this year. I personally think and hope he will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and I can’t understand Twins fans who are unappreciative of a literal hometown hero, who always did things the right way on & off the field.

 

This is getting way off-topic of uniform discussion, though, so to get back on track: the Giants look fine on the new template, their design translates pretty well, as will the Pirates, although I suspect the perforated numbers are going to bug me.

[Kramerica Industries]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

By the way, in case you didn't know it, I'll mention that fans storming the field after a championship was the norm at that time.

 

[1969 World Series clinching video]

 

[1973 NLCS clinching video]

 

I've seen the Mets 1969 World Series winning video before, but if you're gonna do a compare and contrast of Yankees and Mets fans, the argument would be a little bit stronger if we didn't have videos of Yankees and Mets fans doing the exact same thing in response to a championship (World Series or LCS). It's not lost on me that, for Yankee fans of that generation, a 12-year stretch of no success at all could culminate with that kind of ecstasy after winning a back-and-forth series in the 9th inning of the decisive game...you don't need to explain Yankee history to me, I'm extremely familiar with it...but if you lament the Yankee fanbase as having more loutish people today compared to in the '60s and '70s..."norm at the time" to describe massive field storming doesn't really cut it for me. It's one thing you never see today, probably due to far more advanced security measures but I'm also going to assume "security measures" existed in 1976 too.

[FiddySicks]

11 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Because I am comfortable with being a blowhard, I am not bothered if someone thinks my account is wanky. The important thing is that it is completely accurate.

I definitely don’t agree with the second part of all that, but I do appreciate that you have some self awareness about it

[The_Admiral]

We could use a good field-level crowd for a World Series win again. If the Cubs had done it at Wrigley, I think we could have gotten away with it. It'd be iconic. Every win now is just guys hopping up and down in a circle. 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

12 hours ago, Kramerica Industries said:

It's one thing you never see today, probably due to far more advanced security measures but I'm also going to assume "security measures" existed in 1976 too.

 

Not really. There were nowhere near the amount of police that would be necessary to prevent fans from storming the field.

 

This changed in the 1980 World Series in Philadelphia, when police on horseback surrounded the field before the final out, so that no one from the stands could enter the field.

 

I can sort of understand it, as the risk of injury to players and fans is significant, not to mention the threat of damage to a field. But it's still unfortunate to have lost this tradition.

 

 

17 minutes ago, the admiral said:

We could use a good field-level crowd for a World Series win again. If the Cubs had done it at Wrigley, I think we could have gotten away with it. It'd be iconic.

It would indeed be nice to see the occasional return of this type of thing. Alas, it's hard to imagine nowadays.

[adsarebad]

15 hours ago, Kramerica Industries said:

 

 

Definitely the reaction of cultured students of baseball to storm the field and make running the bases to finish a pennant-winning walk off home run completely impossible.

holy crap.

never seen that before. 

they even tried to steal his helmet

[adsarebad]

56 minutes ago, the admiral said:

We could use a good field-level crowd for a World Series win again. If the Cubs had done it at Wrigley, I think we could have gotten away with it. It'd be iconic. Every win now is just guys hopping up and down in a circle. 

Still better than seeing players getting stripped naked because "fans" are ripping their jerseys and hats off!

 

 

[The_Admiral]

That sounds cool, like lowbrow British comedy. Would there be slide whistles and fast-motion?

[The_Admiral]

 

In this picture, you can hear the vague WUH WUH WUH WUH WUH WUH WUH

[Kramerica Industries]

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

We could use a good field-level crowd for a World Series win again. If the Cubs had done it at Wrigley, I think we could have gotten away with it. It'd be iconic. Every win now is just guys hopping up and down in a circle. 

 

In the same way...sometime after the 2021 NHL season ended, NHL Network had something of a "Lightning day" where they aired the broadcasts of all three Cup-winning games they've played in, and one thing struck me immediately looking at how they celebrated in 2004...the process of hoisting the Cup, who got it in what order, how long they held it, etc. looked so much more spontaneous than what we see today. It seems so much more choreographed these days. Captain gets the Cup (obviously this part of standard), does a lap around the ice, then usually a highly respected veteran in the locker room gets 2nd lift (bonus points if they were Cup-less), does a lap around the ice, so on and so forth...like, it just looks like the same thing over and over again. There was something I appreciated more about watching the celebrations where it was more like each player couldn't wait to rip the Cup out of another player's arms...captured the organic ecstasy much better.

[spartacat_12]

On 12/15/2023 at 11:20 PM, coco1997 said:

Like I said, the Yankees could easily do something that’s different than anything they currently wear but still fits within the parameters of their identity. Reverse pinstripes or monochrome navy would both hearken back to the team’s history, and a “Yankees” script or block wordmark on the front would look really nice. I mean, would anyone really be opposed to the Yanks wearing a jersey that actually said “Yankees” on it?

 

I've always thought that if the Yankees had to have an alternate, it would make sense to use the Yankees script that's been frequently used on their dugout jackets. I don't know if it would make sense as a CC, since it doesn't say New York, but it wouldn't look out of place alongside the pinstripes.

 

[coco1997]

51 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

I've always thought that if the Yankees had to have an alternate, it would make sense to use the Yankees script that's been frequently used on their dugout jackets. I don't know if it would make sense as a CC, since it doesn't say New York, but it wouldn't look out of place alongside the pinstripes.

 

Not a problem. Keep in mind the Angels ones just say “Angels” on them.