Birmingham Barons' new logo and unis

[Blackjack76]

http://www.barons.com/

Not bad. I always like it when a team celebrates its past. The away unis are rather boring, though.

[Blackjack76]

Umm...obviously my computer exploded while uploading this. Please delete the extras, por favor.

My apologies.

[CubsFanBudMan]

Pillbox caps?

EDIT: Ok, no on that. Side note: They need to tone down the Flash on that site. I haven't run into a site that slow for years -- or since I had dial-up. Anyway, the pics finally came up and I saw that there was no pillbox alt cap. Would have been a nice risk to take... oh, well. Someone will do it.

[Korkie]

The olde time Base Ball player logo rules as does the home unis.

[Gothamite]

Not bad. I'm not sold on the script, but I love the alt cap.

Reminds me of this - one of my favorite defunct team logos:

[DDR]

That logo kicks ass...and I love the alternate cap, so now we'll get the awesomeness of a ballplayer wearing a cap with a ballplayer wearing a cap on it. I only wish they went with the infinite regression, or that the teams cap had a red bill.

[powersurge]

I'll probably get a bunch of crap for this.... but I've always disliked when a white male face is used as a logo for a sports team. I just don't like it. Baseball is becoming much more diverse with more and more Hispanics playing baseball, many of them are men of color, as well as the fact that there are also a large number of black players in the game. How can you have a logo, which will be the symbol of your organization portraying one race? Especially one that represents the majority?

I personally don't think that I'm overthinking this...but am I? If my cousin Kevin was playing for the Barons would he feel like the logo represents him? He is a man of color. I'm just bringing this up because many people don't think of this because it doesn't occur to them.

Any thoughts on this?

[RollWolfpack]

I personally don't think that I'm overthinking this...but am I?

Yes.

Seriously though, I look at the logo and see a man. Not a white man.

[Gothamite]

I don't necessarily disagree with you in principle, but the logo is obviously intended to refer back to the early days of the franchise, when baseball was (shamefully) segregated.

[CubsFanBudMan]

I don't necessarily disagree with you in principle, but the logo is obviously intended to refer back to the early days of the franchise, when baseball was (shamefully) segregated.

And if there is true shame in it, then maybe powersurge has a point that attention shouldn't be called to it.

You're not alone, powersurge, I went through a period of that when the Clinton LumberKings and then CBA Quad-City Thunder adopted big burly white men as logos. I didn't think of it with this, but I don't think you were overthinking it.

[Gothamite]

I disagree - I don't think we should pretend that the past actually happened.

And now I'm starting to think that he was really right about one thing - this is way overthinking the logo.

[powersurge]

I don't necessarily disagree with you in principle, but the logo is obviously intended to refer back to the early days of the franchise, when baseball was (shamefully) segregated.

And if there is true shame in it, then maybe powersurge has a point that attention shouldn't be called to it.

You're not alone, powersurge, I went through a period of that when the Clinton LumberKings and then CBA Quad-City Thunder adopted big burly white men as logos. I didn't think of it with this, but I don't think you were overthinking it.

I think there still is a very big problem with racism in baseball. I just think its neatly covered up and hidden as opposed to being blatantly obvious like in the earlier days of the game. But thats a topic for another thread.

I don't know if a direct association can or should be made between racism and a handle bar moustached logo guy. But, I don't think its too far off to think that the logo is easily associated with that time period in of baseball and American history, which many people of color don't look upon as very favorable.

I guess in the end how one reacts to this logo and all logos of this nature all depends on which perspective they are looking from.

[themightyspitz]

I don't necessarily disagree with you in principle, but the logo is obviously intended to refer back to the early days of the franchise, when baseball was (shamefully) segregated.

And if there is true shame in it, then maybe powersurge has a point that attention shouldn't be called to it.

You're not alone, powersurge, I went through a period of that when the Clinton LumberKings and then CBA Quad-City Thunder adopted big burly white men as logos. I didn't think of it with this, but I don't think you were overthinking it.

I think there still is a very big problem with racism in baseball. I just think its neatly covered up and hidden as opposed to being blatantly obvious like in the earlier days of the game. But thats a topic for another thread.

I don't know if a direct association can or should be made between racism and a handle bar moustached logo guy. But, I don't think its too far off to think that the logo is easily associated with that time period in of baseball and American history, which many people of color don't look upon as very favorable.

I guess in the end how one reacts to this logo and all logos of this nature all depends on which perspective they are looking from.

Let me be honest. As a dude of mixed race, when I see hear the team name "Barons" and see the handle bar mustache dude with the pillbox cap, I think it works very well for two reasons. One, it reminds me of the Mighty Casey at the bat, which in turn reminds me of my childhood and invokes memories of the past. Second, since the team name is Barons, I think of The Red Baron as in the WWI German fighter pilot. That style mustache was undoubtedly popular around the turn of the century. (It also reminds me of Snoopy and his endless dogfights with the Red Baron, but that's an aside.)

I dunno, I think you might be looking into it too much, man. If I wanted to play for a team named "The Barons", I'd kinda like there to be some specific tie to WWI/turn of the century stuff, Monopoly or corporate executives, or that damn SAT/GRE study guide (I burned mine when I finished the GRE). And since the last two do not tie in so well, I'd opt for the first one. I don't know how much sense it would make to change that man with the handlebar mustache into, say, a Hispanic, African-American, or Asian-American/Pacific Islander guy and still keep the name "Barons". It's like in that movie "Thank You For Smoking" where that one Senator took old films with celebrities smoking or holding cigarettes and altered them so they were holding like a birthday party blower or a hot cup of coffee. Stuff like that is just silly, in my opinion.

Logo-wise, for me one of the big tragedies of political correctness on sports team names was changing Stanford's mascot from Indians to Cardinal. Bears vs. Cardinal doesn't invoke the same kind of vivid imagery as Bears vs. Indians, not to mention Cardinal is too often confused with the bird. Not that Stanfurd's team isn't already bird-brained. =P

[DDR]

I personally don't think that I'm overthinking this...but am I?

Yes.

Seriously though, I look at the logo and see a man. Not a white man.

I see a man, too. But, then again, I don't see skin color. I'm pretty sure I'm white, because I can't dance and I just bought a Dire Straits album, but I can't be certain.

[JQK]

I personally don't think that I'm overthinking this...but am I?

Yes.

Seriously though, I look at the logo and see a man. Not a white man.

I see a man, too. But, then again, I don't see skin color. I'm pretty sure I'm white, because I can't dance and I just bought a Dire Straits album, but I can't be certain.

I want my MTV too, brother.

Dire Straits = seriously underrated.

[BBTV]

I'll probably get a bunch of crap for this.... but I've always disliked when a white male face is used as a logo for a sports team. I just don't like it. Baseball is becoming much more diverse with more and more Hispanics playing baseball, many of them are men of color, as well as the fact that there are also a large number of black players in the game. How can you have a logo, which will be the symbol of your organization portraying one race? Especially one that represents the majority?

I personally don't think that I'm overthinking this...but am I? If my cousin Kevin was playing for the Barons would he feel like the logo represents him? He is a man of color. I'm just bringing this up because many people don't think of this because it doesn't occur to them.

Any thoughts on this?

You're not alone - I've brought this up before too.

[See Red]

I personally don't think that I'm overthinking this...but am I?

Yes.

Seriously though, I look at the logo and see a man. Not a white man.

I see a man, too. But, then again, I don't see skin color. I'm pretty sure I'm white, because I can't dance and I just bought a Dire Straits album, but I can't be certain.

I want my MTV too, brother.

Dire Straits = seriously underrated.

I love me some "Walk of Life" -- Shooter Jennings has a great version of it too.

[sacker12]

I see that they made the logo look like the Milwakee Brewers. It's going to be different with the having red in the scheme. However, I believe that it is a nod to tradition because they wore black and red when the first Barons team played at Rickwood. I believe that the current Barons went to the black and silver scheme after they moved from Montgomery.

[Billy B]

On the topic of skin color in logos, there is a school in our conference that has a black logo. The school is predominantly African-American and on the tunnel that they ran out of before the football game, the pirate was black. A pirate can be any race, but it is interesting to see how they changed the logo to reflect the majority of the students.

[illwauk]

I'll probably get a bunch of crap for this.... but I've always disliked when a white male face is used as a logo for a sports team. I just don't like it. Baseball is becoming much more diverse with more and more Hispanics playing baseball, many of them are men of color, as well as the fact that there are also a large number of black players in the game. How can you have a logo, which will be the symbol of your organization portraying one race? Especially one that represents the majority?

I personally don't think that I'm overthinking this...but am I? If my cousin Kevin was playing for the Barons would he feel like the logo represents him? He is a man of color. I'm just bringing this up because many people don't think of this because it doesn't occur to them.

Any thoughts on this?

I don't have a problem with this particular logo since (correct me if I'm wrong) "Barons" is a reference to German fighter pilots in WWI and folks of German descent tend to be fair-skinned.

That said, I think you definitely have a point. Taking for granted that I think using a person as a logo is a crutch, unless you're working with a nickname that's connected to a certain ethnicity (Vikings, Fightin' Irish, etc.), I've always thought it's best to make them racially ambiguous (i.e. the faceless And1 man). Most sports teams either have (or at least will have in some point in their existence) players of more than one race on their team and they all deserve to be represented.

On the topic of skin color in logos, there is a school in our conference that has a black logo. The school is predominantly African-American and on the tunnel that they ran out of before the football game, the pirate was black. A pirate can be any race, but it is interesting to see how they changed the logo to reflect the majority of the students.

For that reason, I always thought Vincent HS here in Milwaukee should change its name to something other than Vikings.

Sure, they could just use a black viking, but there'd be waaay too many jokes there. Case in point: