2013 MLB Logo and Uniform Changes

[8BW14]

Here's the small update on the Cardinals road hats from Post-Dispatch beat writer Derrick Goold.

http://www.stltoday....60ad42c503.html

The Cardinals will continue to wear red hats for the entirety of this road trip as the team’s executives determine what to do with the blue hats, which haven’t been entirely retired and were the fans’ choice in an online poll. Coming from spring training, where they only wear red in games, the team had only red caps and red helmets packed.

This is a good news, bad news situation.

The good is that the Cardinals wearing red this week is a matter of logistics, and not a sign of the final decision. They only had red hats and helmets with them in the spring and only recently decided they'd reconsider their system (originally they announced red would be primary roads), so it would have been tough to get the hats and helmets to the west coast in time. So navy is still very much on the table.

The bad news is that they know navy won the fan vote, they still haven't address that vote (or the many mistakes going on with it), and they're still trying to figure out what to do on the road. If they know navy is preferred by fans, and they told fans they were choosing, what is there to decide?

That is my question too. If the Cardinals don't come through on this I will be very disappointed. Cardinal fans are some of the best in baseball I would think ignoring them on something like this hat situation would be the last thing the team would want to do. Hopefully logistics truly is the reason we have not seen the blue hats yet and the vote is honored by the Cardinals. I hope blue becomes the only road cap again but something tells me all of us who feel that way will have to compromise.

[The_Admiral]

I don't think any team should wear more than one hat. It's not just me picking on the Cardinals. I'm even more against Oakland's road hat.

[Sport]

Here's what I think happened: Word spread around the Cardinals Family that the blue hats were going away and their displeasure got back to the team. The team, a little surprised by this, decided to put it to a fan vote to gauge what the majority really thought. They didn't think the blue hat as the only road option was going to win, let alone win in a landslide, and weren't prepared to make the switch so they had to send the team on the first road trip with the red hats and helmets they had packed from spring training.

[Lights Out]

Yep, I'd love to bring these caps back as an occasional alternate, like they did briefly in... 1997 was it?

Yes they did.

They also briefly wore a white alternate cap around the same time:

[BBTV]

I don't think any team should wear more than one hat. It's not just me picking on the Cardinals. I'm even more against Oakland's road hat.

Totally. Caps should be able to be used as de facto logos, like helmets in NFL. When I was a kid, I remember the pro shop at the batting cages I'd go to would get a poster from New Era every year showing the caps for the upcoming season (this was before Lids and other big sporting goods stores that would stock more than just the local teams and the Yankees.)

I remember that for the longest time, only the Tigers had different hats. Then (IIRC) the Mariners, Cubs, Cardinals, and several other teams started going with home and road caps, and the poster became difficult to look at. Now I'm not even sure how they could make such a poster.

[Sport]

I don't think any team should wear more than one hat. It's not just me picking on the Cardinals. I'm even more against Oakland's road hat.

Totally. Caps should be able to be used as de facto logos, like helmets in NFL. When I was a kid, I remember the pro shop at the batting cages I'd go to would get a poster from New Era every year showing the caps for the upcoming season (this was before Lids and other big sporting goods stores that would stock more than just the local teams and the Yankees.)

I remember that for the longest time, only the Tigers had different hats. Then (IIRC) the Mariners, Cubs, Cardinals, and several other teams started going with home and road caps, and the poster became difficult to look at. Now I'm not even sure how they could make such a poster.

I had a new era poster from 1998, which was the height of the alternate hat fad. Many teams had 3 hats on that poster including some "traditional" teams like the Red Sox. A poster today would look much better than the one from that year.

[STL FANATIC]

That's all well and good, but it's not like teams haven't had multiple hats at all points throughout history. So it's simply not a conclusion I agree with.

I DON'T think the hat functions like a logo the way the helmet does in football. They're not equivalent IMO.

I don't like teams mixing and matching all over the place, but I've always enjoyed differences to the home and road looks if done properly.

Now, I never considered minor changes to be proper. For instance the Cubs adding a red bill on the road seemed odd to me. For one, why be more colorful on the road? And secondly, what a minor change. The crown is the same, so what's the point.

The A's and Tigers are other good examples, although there is some thought behind it. A white letter does have a tendancy to stick out against a road grey uniform without any white (stop it Cardinals!). That's not a hard and fast rule that it can't be done, but there are certainly cases where it would and does look strange.

Nonetheless, with the crown of the A's and the Tigers caps being the same, it still seems sort of silly.

On the contrary, though, I've always like what the Cardinals did. I somewhat liked what the Nationals did when they first started (although I thought they over did it by also making every uniform element be primarily blue on the road). In a way, I even liked when the Reds wore black on the road. Not quite, because it just seemed to deviate too much from what their identity should be, but I still liked the idea of it.

All of this to say, I don't buy into the 1-cap rule. I buy into the smart cap rule. The Cardinals used to fit that (the alternate cap being a fair point of discussion, though), but they seem to be deviating from that.

[OnWis97]

I am OK with multiple hats (especially the red and blue Cards caps). But I think MLB should do the exact opposite of this rumored "one helmet rule." MLB should say that all hats have to have a corresponding helmet. So yeah, the Twins would need a blue helmet, a blue helmet with a red bill, and a "M" helmet; so be it. The helmet should be as close to a copy of the hat as possible...a "hard version" of the hat, if you will. I'd cut 'em slack on Stars and Stripes day, but other than that, the helmet should match the hat. Birds on bats helmet, "O's" helmet, etc.

If this "one helmet" rule is happening, then MLB has decided that the helmet has nothing to do with the hat, which would be too bad.

[TheOldRoman]

I had a new era poster from 1998, which was the height of the alternate hat fad. Many teams had 3 hats on that poster including some "traditional" teams like the Red Sox. A poster today would look much better than the one from that year.

The freaking Diamondbacks had FOUR caps that year. The solid purple at home, black with a teal bill on the road (great hat which only lasted one year), then alternate white and teal caps with purple brims. Ah, the '90s.

I am OK with multiple hats (especially the red and blue Cards caps). But I think MLB should do the exact opposite of this rumored "one helmet rule." MLB should say that all hats have to have a corresponding helmet. So yeah, the Twins would need a blue helmet, a blue helmet with a red bill, and a "M" helmet; so be it. The helmet should be as close to a copy of the hat as possible...a "hard version" of the hat, if you will. I'd cut 'em slack on Stars and Stripes day, but other than that, the helmet should match the hat. Birds on bats helmet, "O's" helmet, etc.

I agree, and I have been harping on this for a long time. Other than the crappy one-offs like S&S caps or even one-time throwbacks, teams should absolutely be forced to have batting helmets that are identical to their caps. The Rockies with their gradient helmet are among the worst offenders, obviously, but even smal differences are bad. It doesn't matter if it's just a different color logo or brim. If a team thinks it's important enough to wear that hat, they should pony up for an additional set of matching helmets. It's terrible that teams have gotten by being lazy and saying "eh, close enough" when their caps look different than their helmets. Maybe the worst is the Cardinals with their crappy BoB cap. You can watch the Cards on Sunday Night Baseball for 20 minutes and not even know they are wearing the navy caps, because when they are batting, they still wear the bright red helmets. It's silly that this alternate look the team puts out is only displayed for half the game.

[STL FANATIC]

Here's a more detailed but no less clear explanation on the Cardinals hats.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/birdland/goold-why-red-hats-rule----for-now/article_3714e3c0-4a93-54c5-8e0c-2ed734c28cf5.html

It's also still a lot of bologna. The scripts that were set up by the Cardinals to track results showed the navy caps with 5815 votes to 2643 for red. So 39% to 38% my foot.

[JonBoy]

Pictures from the Orioles in spring training showed them w/ the road helmet with home uniforms. Not saying there is a new rule about this, but I did notice and find it strange when I saw it. I was actually hoping they ditched the white panel for the home and were going w/ black crown and orange brim, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Lots of teams only take one set of batting helmets to spring training, since most teams wear BP unis anyway and obviously aren't trying to look their best. Before this year, the Cardinals always wore red caps and helmets all spring. It would make sense for the Orioles to choose the black helmets because 1) the white crown looks like hell with the road set, and 2) they would presumably require less cleaning.

Yeah, the only reason it stuck out to me was because they were in their home unis and not BP unis. Like I said, I don't think there is a rule about this, just an observation since Mojo Maniac mentioned the O's helmets as an example.

[The Mojo Maniac]

I must say I'm fully on board with MLB making it a requirement for teams to have helmets to match each of their caps (stars-and-stripes and other one-offs excluded). TheOldRoman hit it right on the button by mentioning the Cards in particular, whose alternate cap I actually find among the best in the game. You would think it's that simple--if you have a nice alt cap to show off, why only show it off for half the game? Quit being lazy and make a "hard hat" version of it to match.

Sidenote: that D-Backs stars and stripes cap does look similar to what was used a few years back, but somebody please tell me why we are suddenly seeing all these color-contrasting eyelets on caps? Tigers home BP (front panel), Mariners BP, Nats new alt, and now this. It's very annoying.

[sportstar1212]

Diamondbacks are giving out this hat on May 27th. It looks a lot like the hat from 2010 - could this be this years Stars and Stripes? We know the camo is only for memorial day, so I'd have to assume this is a possibility.

I don't think that hat will be worn. It's likely just a holiday giveaway. The Blue Jays are giving away this hat on July 1, FWIW:

[tohasbo]

So any word on the "new" National League logo for this season??

[Joshawaggie]

The Twins were back in the throwback alts for the second game as well. If this isn't an indication of the direction they're heading in, then I don't know what they're doing.

[BadSeed84]

Well theres one good thing about the helmets this season, the rockies are wearing SOLID purple helmets, so I guess this means the horrible black to purple gradient helmets are gone!

[dsaline97]

Well theres one good thing about the helmets this season, the rockies are wearing SOLID purple helmets, so I guess this means the horrible black to purple gradient helmets are gone!

While the helmets themselves look cool, the uniform as a whole looks like crap IMO. Its so unbalanced. The only way to fix it is to go away from the White Sox knockoffs.

[ThorSkaagi]

Well theres one good thing about the helmets this season, the rockies are wearing SOLID purple helmets, so I guess this means the horrible black to purple gradient helmets are gone!

While the helmets themselves look cool, the uniform as a whole looks like crap IMO. Its so unbalanced. The only way to fix it is to go away from the White Sox knockoffs.

I love them. Their current road greys are my absolute favorite. My only gripe is that the nameplate and numbers on the white pinstripes need to be purple and not black (like on their old road unis).

[Billy B]

So any word on the "new" National League logo for this season??

The Cubs have worn gray both games so far this season so nothing there. I don't know anywhere else that the logo is actually used.

[STL FANATIC]

Are the logos used on the standings page new or have they been around as alts for a while? I feel like it's the latter, but I don't know.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/standings/index.jsp?tcid=mm_mlb_standings