Tracking The Unis, Part II

By Phil Hecken

OK. On to day two of the Uni Tracking Extravaganza. If you missed part one — it’s here. Lots to get to today, so we’ll start right in.

We begin today with Mike Styczen (”Mike 2″), who is the Toronto Blue Jays trackmaster.

First off, let me say that I despise the current Blue Jays uniforms. I grew up watching the Expos and then (after 1977) the Jays, my Dad took me to my first game at Exhibition Stadium about a month into the 1977 season, and then through the 80s I lived and died with Moseby, Barfield, Bell, Griffin, Whitt, Stieb, Clancy… To me, the Blue Jays will always be double blue trim on white at Exhibition Stadium, blue and white trim on powder blue (and later, grey) on the road, the old circular logo, and (especially) the split numbers and letters. It was good enough for five AL East titles, two AL pennants and two World Series, its good enough for me.

On to this year’s uniforms. The Jays have worn five combinations this year – white jersey (always with “J” cap), grey jersey (always with “T” cap), black jersey (always with “T” cap), powder blue throwback set, and black jersey / red “Maple Leaf” cap. The Jays were following a regular pattern – greys on the road and whites at home, except for home day games (black jerseys) and Friday home games (powder blue set). They’ve broken that pattern lately by wearing the black jersey twice on the road.

The only trend to emerge so far this season is that they were undefeated wearing black jerseys (9-0, all home day games) until they started wearing them on the road last week in Atlanta. They’re now 9-2 in the black jerseys.

The complete record, by jersey and cap, is here.

I’ve been using a simple excel spreadsheet to track the whole thing. Right now I’m only recording whether games are day or night games; I had been tracking starting pitchers until I figured out the pattern. I’ve also been keeping a picture from each game, just in case I have to go back to refer to it later for some reason. A screenshot of the spreadsheet is here.

Next up is Gregg Girard, who, like myself, is a New York Mets tracker.

Phil, for no reason, I tracked Mets uniform combinations in 1999. Since it was before the so-called “internet age” (or at least at the dawn of it), it was an incredible burden. If I didn’t watch a game, I had to make sure to catch the highlights on local news or Sports Center. When I was on vacation, I set the VCR to record the last 20 minutes of the news, and enlisted the help of a friend (and a Yankees fan at that) to serve as a backup. I was a young lawyer at the time, and the pressure of uni tracking became too much for me to handle. I gave up in the middle of July.

Fast forward to 2006. The idea of beginning the Mets Project as I called it, popped into my head in spring training. I decided it would be much easier this time around, now that the internet was there to back me up. I ended up tracking the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Somehow, I talked myself out of keeping track in 2008, but I’m making a comeback here in ’09. (By the way, if you have the data for 2008 and are willing to forward it to me, I would be very grateful.)

I am a Uni Tracker primarily because I am searching for proof that wearing one uniform combination somehow leads to an increased winning percentage. But there are other, equally important reasons. I’m searching for patterns behind uniform selection. Are uniforms selected by the day of the week? Do they stick with a combination if they have been wearing it on a winning streak? Do certain pitchers never wear a particular color?

Can certain uniform combinations lead to wins? Skeptics would emphatically deny the possibility, but “I want to believe.” Think about it; if you win a few games wearing one uniform, couldn’t there be something in the subconscious that causes you to associate that uniform with victory and cause you to play differently? When you look at the numbers, some weird stuff emerges. For example, in 2006 the Mets were a .580 road team (47-34), but were only a .333 (6-12) dressed in black. Would they have fared better if they had “ditched the black” on the road? Maybe they thought so as well, since they stopped wearing black on the road after August 17 (ironically, a win). Strangely, black had exact the opposite effect at home, where they were .667 (12-6) dressed in black, while going .617 (50-31) overall. Was there an 18 game home and away quota for black?

Turn the clock to 2007 and the Mets rule the road in black, with a .760 winning percentage (19-6) in black versus .580 (47-34) overall (meaning they were exactly .500 in grey), yet they have a losing record 8-11 (.421) wearing black at home. Unfortunately for Paul, the 2007 Mets were 3-7 wearing pinstripes and blue hats. Since they were 7-10 wearing the snow white/blue combination, it means they stunk in blue (.370). Sorry Paul.

As far as patterns, I like that the Mets have stuck with the pinstripes on Sunday theme so far this season, and I hope that continues. For me, the pinstripes are sacred, having grown up in that era. I actually prefer the white uniforms aesthetically when worn with blue hats. Although I am not as averse to the black uniform as others on the site, I would prefer to reserve that uniform—at least at home—exclusively for Friday night games. I am disappointed that the black New York jerseys have been ditched for the road in favor of the black Mets jerseys. That’s a step back in my opinion. I also live for the day the Mets were blue caps on the road, but until they close the new Yankee Stadium, that is probably just a fantasy.

There is some stuff that bugs me. For example, there was a three game road trip to St. Louis this year. The Mets wore black for all three games. That means they (presumably) packed one set of uniforms. Travel light. I get it. But earlier this month, they travel all the way to the west coast with two sets. I know that the uniforms don’t take up that much room, but it strikes me as stupid to travel with two complete sets of batting helmets. Why lug two sets across the country?

I do my uni tracking via Excel (attached). Here’s a screen print.

Note that I’ve added the “error” column since my last e-mail. I’m hoping to get something out of this, but it’s still too early (and the 5 error game isn’t diluted enough to avoid messing up the numbers).

Prediction: Santana will never wear black.

Since we’re tracking the same team, I figured you already have the totals.

Thanks Gregg! I can see you and I (and maybe Paul) will need to collaborate on another column with all of these data you have. Great stuff!

Next up is Jason Werth (”werthj”) who joins the ranks as another Milwaukee Brewer uni-tracker.

Phil-

Here is a screenshot of my Brewers unikeeping.

First things first, the Brewers retro uniforms are relegated to the first Friday of the month for ‘09. Last year they were worn as a ‘Retro Friday’ promotion every home friday. However, the Brewers kept the Home Opener sacred and wore the standard home get-up on Friday April 10th. So the Retro gear has only shown itself once, on Friday May 1.

The most successful of the five Brewer uniforms is the standard home set (white), with a record of 11-6. The away set is 2 games over .500. The alt home is at .500 and the alt away is one game over. One loss in the retro gear.

It appears that uniforms are the decision of the pitcher. Suppan wears standard sets, Gallardo goes alt, Parra likes the alt (but has gone standard in his last two starts), Loope prefers standards, and Bush holds steadfast in wearing the standard sets. Gallardo’s only standard start was on Memorial day, likely mandated by the team with the red hats.

Please keep in mind that sinch I am not confident in using formulas, all data is added by hand and subject to human error!

I post, rarely, as werthj.

Enjoy!

Moving along, we turn to Chicago’s representative, James Huening (”JTH”), who’s been tracking both the Cubbies and the White Sox. Here’s James, who’s breaking them down along team lines:

Cubs: It’s pretty much common knowledge that the Cubs’ starting pitcher decides which jerseys the team will wear for each game. It’s a policy that was in effect when Dusty Baker managed the team and it appears that Lou Piniella has retained the policy, even though the Cubs didn’t wear the blue alternates during his first season as manager.

Carlos Zambrano loves the alts. Every game this season that he has pitched, the Cubs have worn them. On the other hand, Ted Lilly and Ryan Dempster prefer the traditional look. Every game they have pitched, the Cubs have worn their standard pinstriped or gray jerseys. Dempster had the “distinction” of wearing the red stars & stripes cap at home on Memorial Day.

As for the other starters, they’re a little less predictable.

Rich Harden: he’s gone with the alt on the road every time this year. At home, he’s opted for the pinstripes for the three day games he’s pitched (Jackie Robinson Day was one of them) and he’s gone with the alt in the two night games.

Sean Marshall: He’s worn the alt every time except for one home day game, which was his first start of the year.

Randy Wells doesn’t have much of a sample size to go by, but he’s worn each combination one time (pins for a home day game, alt for a home night game and in his two road night games, he went with the alt once and the gray jersey the other time). He’s the only Cubs starter to wear all four standard uniforms. As I mentioned, it’s a small sample size, but it’s possible that he prefers the traditional look for weekend games and the alt for weekdays.

Here’s their record in each combination
Home/Pinstripes: 9-5* (Day: 7-2*, Night: 2-2*)
Home/Alt: 6-4 (Day: 3-2 Night: 3-2)
Road/Gray: 3-9 (Day: 0-2, Night: 3-7)
Road/Alt: 6-5 (Day: 2-2, Night: 4-3)
* Includes losses on Jackie Robinson Day — NNOB, everyone wore #42 and on Memorial Day — red stars & stripes caps.

White Sox: I’ve been trying to make heads or tails of the White Sox’ jersey tendencies. All I know is that the Sox like to wear their black alternates. A lot. In 23 out of 47 games this year, they’ve worn the alt. That’s 10 out of 22 home games and 13 out of 25 road games. In fact, they didn’t even wear their standard “primary” jersey on the road until their eighth road game because the first time they wore their gray jerseys (road game #2), they were the modified Jackie Robinson Day/NNOB/everyone wears #42 versions.

And the number of times the alt was worn could have been as high as 26, except that for three games in Toronto, the Blue Jays decided to wear their black jerseys. This forced the Sox to wear gray. That might have actually been a good move on the Jays’ part, since it guaranteed that at least one team would look good on those days.

Does the starting pitcher choose which jersey to wear? Is it Ozzie Guillen’s decision? Someone else? I dunno, but here’s what the starters have worn so far this year.

Mark Buehrle: The only time this year he’s worn something besides the alt was on opening day when he was in pinstripes.

Gavin Floyd: Pins for every home game so far. On the road, it’s been he alt for his first three starts and the gray jersey for his three most recent.

John Danks: He wore pins for his first three home starts and the alt for his most recent. On the road, he’s worn the alt twice and the gray jersey thrice. He was the starter on Memorial Day; the red stars & stripes caps were worn with the gray jerseys.

Jose Contreras: Pinstripes in his first home start, gray the first time on the road (Jackie Robinson Day) and the alt for his four other starts (2 home, 2 road).

Bartolo Colon: In his four home starts, he’s worn each jersey twice. On the road, it was the alt for the first three and gray for the two most recent.

Clayton Richard: He’s the only Sox starting pitcher who hasn’t worn the alternate jersey in game action. He’s started one home game and three road games in the traditional jerseys.

Here are their records in each combination
Home/Pinstripes: 6-6 (Day: 2-2, Night: 4-4)
Home/Alt: 6-4 (Day: 2-3 Night: 4-1)
Road/Gray: 5-7* (Day: 0-4*, Night: 5-3*)
Road/Alt: 5-8 (Day: 2-1, Night: 3-7)
* Includes a loss on Jackie Robinson Day — NNOB, everyone wore #42 and a win on Memorial Day — red stars & stripes caps.

JTH tracks with (or at least he transmitted to me) Google Spreadsheets. So, I was able to create screen grabs. For the Cubs, we have Cubs-April (1); Cubs-April (2); Cubs-May (1); and Cubs-May (2). For the White Sox, we have White Sox-April (1); White Sox-April (2); White Sox-May (1); and White Sox-May (2). If those are a little hard to follow, I apologize. But trust me, they look really good on the actual spreadsheet (you may need to get an account in order to view that, for whatever reason).

Moving along, we find our Pittsburgh Pirates tracker Doug Keklak (”Kek”). Here’s what he has:

The Pirates are pretty straight-forward in their uniform trends and combinations. They have the home whites, the home pinstripes, the road grays and a black alternate jersey … a softball jersey if you will Phil!!! This season the pins are worn strictly (so far) for home Sunday games. I’m thinking in past seasons they may have worn these during day games during the week too but I could be wrong. The new black alt with matching cap (both with white outline of the “P”) are new this year and the Pirates have somewhat broke with tradition here. In the past, both with the original black alt with red brim and the God-awful red vests, these were home exclusives. This year, the alts are worn on both the home and road Friday games. The one exception to this was the game on 5/8/09 at Citi Field against the Mets. The Mets opted to wear their black tops so the Pirates went road gray and broke out the black alts the next day, for a Saturday appearance.

Therefore, trending is pretty straightforward for the Bucs. The tracking for the pins is for Sunday games and the tracking for the black alts is mostly for Friday games.

Some data:

***** Through 45 games, the team is pretty even in the road grays, going 5-6 in April and 5-6 through 5-25-09

***** The team has not played well, either at home or on the road, in the new black alternate jersey/cap combo. They are 1-5 overall through 5-25-09, winless in three attempts on the road.

***** The team has played well, 2-0, in games where special caps have been worn as they defeated Houston in the special Pittsburgh Bureau of Police caps on 4-13-09 (honoring the three fallen Pittsburgh police officers killed recently) and they beat the Cubs on 5-25-09 in the red stars and stripes caps.

My method of tracking is simply an excel spreadsheet (here’s another page) that I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Ryan “RyCo 40″ Connelly designed.

Total stats through 5-25-09:

The Pirates overall record was 21-24. They were 11-10 in April and 10-14 in May (through 5-25). In April, they were 5-2 in the home whites, 5-6 in the road grays, 1-1 in the black alts (1-0 at home; 0-1 on the road) and 0-1 in the home pins.

In May, again through 5-25-09, the team was 4-3 in the home whites, 5-6 in the road grays, 0-4 in the black alts (0-2 at home and 0-2 on the road) and 1-2 in the home pins.

Overall through 5-25, they are 9-5 in the home whites, 10-12 in the road grays, 1-5 in the black alts (1-2 at home, 0-3 on the road and 1-2 in the home pins.

You can refer to me as Doug “Kek” Keklak for the purposes of the story, most folks I’m sure know that “KEK” is just an abbreviated form of my last name so no semi-anoymity there!

Next up is Michael Jaworski (”mtjaws”), who is a Florida Marlins tracker:

Hello Phil,

Thanks for leading the charge for this report. Just by your emails, I can now see all the behind the scenes work that goes into all of these posts. I know they are detailed, and now I can see it from the writer’s viewpoint. Thanks for the insight.

I’ve included links to example unform pictures. Not sure if you want to use them, or find others, but there are plenty out there and I found these. And here is a picture showing my spreadsheet. The format should look familiar!

—–

The Marlins have been my favorite team since they first arrived, and I am thankful that I get to watch them nearly every day. Over the years, there have been the highest of highs, but too often, the lows hang around and the team is constantly rebuilding.

As for their uniforms in 2009, the team has three jersey options: Home white, Road grey, and Alternate black, which is worn both at home and on the road. All three are paired with the standard black cap. I quite like the color scheme, especially with black and silver as the main colors, instead of the teal of old. The teal trim is fine, and I like the current designs very much.

Since I joined this project only this week, I had to go back thru MLB’s picture gallery to see each game up until now. In cataloging the uniform usage for this season (47 games plus one 4 inning rainout), I did notice a few interesting things. First of all, there appears to be no set pattern for wearing the black alternate. Since it is worn at home and on the road, it sees lots of work, but most of them have been on the road. 15 of the 17 black jersey appearances were on the road, leading to a 8-7 record. Both home black appearances were losses too. Of those 17 black shirt games, the opponent also wore a dark colored uniform for five games, creating a color-on-color matchup. The Marlins won 3 of those. Starter Ricky Nolasco leads the starters in wearing black the most, six times. But the other seven starting pitchers have also worn black at least once, but not more than three times.

With the black alternates appearing many times on the road, the regular road greys have only appeared nine times, for a 4-5 record. Both the black and grey jerseys have been used in the next game following a loss, which was one of the two black home appearances.

The Marlins record in the white jerseys is 9-12, plus the rainout game which they were winning. In the makeup game, the Fish surprised me by wearing white for both games of the doubleheader. Arizona wore grey and red for it, so I expected the Marlins to wear black for one of the games. But maybe they stayed in white since they won game 1, and didn’t want to change for the immediate game 2. No day/night DHs here!

For Memorial Day, the Marlins wore the special red cap, and won too. Maybe it will work next time also.

Other than that, the Marlins seem to mix up the uniform choices, and haven’t found great success in any of them. The black alternates appear often, noticably more frequent than grey on the road. Who knows how the rest of the season will shape up, but I’ll keep a tally on it. Thanks.

—–

Feel free to reply if you need something else, and also edit out stuff if I rambled on too long. My name has appeared in the ticker before, so you can use both it and my username in the writeup. Thanks again, Phil.

Checking in next is Tobin Hodges (”Bizzle”), who is a Texas Rangers trackmaster:

My method is very simple: I watch the games on a pretty regular basis and have attended a couple already. Every morning when I come to work, the first thing I do is update my spreadsheet on the night game before (sad but awesome that UniWatch is first priority over my work). Typically I just use my memory and recollection of the game to fill out the spreadsheet. Here is the pertinent information:

Jersey

Cap

Starting Pitcher

Result

The Rangers have used 6 uni combinations so far this season and, looking at the uniforms, they do not have any more “sensible” possibilities for more (barring throwbacks, specials, etc.) unless they do the unthinkable and wear the Red jersey with the Blue cap and vice versa. It does get pretty hot down here in July and August so I wouldn’t rule out stupidity due to heat exhaustion. The most interesting part of this has been the lack of use for the “traditional” greys and whites. The rangers have worn one of their alternate jerseys for 28 of the 46 games and have only worn the greys 8 out of a possible 23 road games. The blues have been worn 20 TIMES … again … 20 TIMES. I like the blues so it doesn’t bother me so much. You can tell that they feel better in those jerseys because they will switch to those jerseys when they lost a bad game or strung together a couple of losses. The other oddity is that when they wear their new Reds (which was being reported they would only do about 15 times) they wear them for a whole series. I have noticed around here in Arlington that they are promoting promotions with these jerseys i.e. Red Out Weekend or Josh Hamilton Red T-Shirt jersey giveaway. Again, I’m kind of ok with this because I think they look sharp. However, this sort of takes the whole “starting pitchers choose the jersey” theory and there has not really been a trend in that regard. All in all, Rangers are playing better than expected and it’s been fun. Only gripe is put the team name back on the Whites a la Nolan Ryan script era.

My nickname on the off chance I do comment is Bizzle. Unfortunately, funds have been a little tight for me and my family right now and I am not a member but it is actually on the list of things to buy in the next month. So you can refer to me as Tobin Hodges = Bizzle if you like. Let me know if you need anything else and thank you for the opportunity to contribute.

You’re awesome at what you do Phil.

Next up is ChiScott who tracks the ChiSox…

Hi Phil. You can just refer to me by the nickname ChiScott.

I use a basic Excel spreadsheet. I record the game number (with an asterisk if I was in attendance), day, date, home/away, home/away, opponent, win/loss, score, record, division rank, games back, winning/losing pitchers, starting pitcher, and uniform type, which is color coded to best represent the particular uni. I also color-code the rows for wins (green) and losses (red).

For a team that has quite a reputation for experimenting with different uniforms throughout its history (some were…eh…much more successful than others), the modern version of the Sox have been pretty conservative, uni-wise. They’ve worn the same home, road and alternate uniforms since the 1991 season (the exceptions being a vest version of the official home uni which was adopted in the late 90’s and eventually dropped last year, the occasional throwback unis honoring a particular team from the past, and the “Halfway to St. Patricks Day” unis, which are basically the official home white uni but with the color green replacing the black pinstripes, black logo and black cap).

Staff ace Mark Buehrle almost always chooses the black alternate jersey for the team when he is pitching, whether at home or on the road – the main exception being opening day. I’m not aware of any of the other starting pitchers expressing a preference for a particular jersey.

As far as I can tell, the Sox seem to have a rule against wearing the alternate black jerseys for “major” event games. The official home and road uniforms are worn on opening day and during the post season (the home vests made an appearance in the first game of the 2005 ALDS, but throughout the rest of the 2005 and 2008 playoffs and the 2005 World Series, the Sox wore the official home and road unis).

Although, in the past they would wear the black jerseys on Sundays, the current Sox do not wear any particular uniforms for certain days of the week (such as the “Sunday specials”) or for day games in general.

2009 White Sox W-L by Uniform:

Official Home (white pinstriped jersey/white pinstriped pants): 6-6
Alt. Home (black jersey/white pinstriped pants): 6-4
Official Road (gray jersey/gray pants): 4-7
Alt road (black jersey/gray pants): 5-8
Memorial Day (red cap/gray jersey/gray pants): 1-0

[Results are current through Friday, May 29.]

Another Florida Marlins tracker, Dwayne White checks in with this:

I didn’t know when you wanted this, so I sent it in the attachment as an Excel spreadsheet.

But the totals are as of and including the 5/26 game:

Pinstriped home: 9-12

Black Alt: 8-9

Gray road: 3-5

Red cap w/Gray road: 1-0

I am looking forward to seeing how this plays out. Keep up the great work!

Another responder is Mike Vamosi (”vmos”), who is a self-admitted, low-tech Kansas City Royals tracker:

Thanks! My way to track is just being a die-hard Royals fan who knows during day games )that start before 3 the team wears their Powder or Royal Blue tops. Everything else they wear white or gray or traditional uniforms. I just use a piece of paper and put a tally mark next to what the outcome was for the game that day. Low tech but effective.

Mike Vamosi or Vmos

Also checking in is Brandon Davis, who has been keeping dibs on the Oakland A’s:

Keeping track of the Oakland A’s

My method of tracking is simple. After each game, I record the overall win/loss in a text file. I keep track of date, jersey worn, jersey material (although this has been hard to identify so I haven’t broken down W/L that way), the starting pitcher, whether the team won or lost, and whether or not there was anything special about the uniform that day.

The A’s uniform sets are simple: home white uniform with green and gold cap, black home alternate jersey with white pants and black cap, gray road uniform with solid green cap, and green road alternate jersey with gray pants and solid green cap (last season the green alternate became just the road alternate when the new style of black jersey was introduced). Through May 26, the A’s are 11-9 in the home whites, 0-3 in black, 3-6 in gray, 3-7 in green, and 1-0 in the Oakland Oaks throwback. They lost on Jackie Robinson Day and won on Memorial Day.

With the Oakland Oaks throwback, Jackie Robinson Day (42 higher, no nameplates), and the red hats, the A’s have worn seven combinations. They are scheduled for a 1929 throwback game against the White Sox in August so that will be at least 8. If they wear Stars and Stripes caps on July 4 they will be on the road so that would make 9. The A’s also wore the pink ribbons on Mother’s Day and will likely wear blue ribbons on Father’s Day.

The starting pitcher chooses between the regular jersey or the alternate (white or black at home, gray or green on the road) unless there’s a promotion – white on Opening Night, Jackie Robinson Day was at home so they wore white (they wore gray on the road last season), Mother’s Day pink ribbons, etc. Last season this was an issue on June 4 when Justin Duchsherer wanted to wear black but the team made him wear green at home because it was the “Get Your Green On” promotion. The A’s also tend to wear “Sunday Whites” although rookie Trevor Cahill botched that up the first home Sunday of the season – Easter Sunday no less – by wearing black. He was charged with the loss in the 1-0 game. The team has worn white on their other 3 home Sunday games (they’re 2-1 in those games). As for records by pitcher, the A’s have a winning record with just one current starter. It shouldn’t be a surprise to fans of Uni Watch that that pitcher is Josh Outman (2-0), with the A’s going 5-2 in his starts. Outman is 3-1 in the whites, 1-1 in gray, 1-0 in green, and has so far thankfully shunned the black jerseys. In fact, only two pitchers have gone with the black jersey: Cahill twice and Sean Gallagher (sent to AAA after). The rarity of the black jersey is interesting since the A’s chose to add the black helmet and dispense of the all-green road helmet that matches the road cap (instead wearing the gold brimmed helmet on the road).

If I’ve skipped something, let me know. Also, if anybody wants to start up mid-season they can go to the daily MLB wraps and check the photos to make up for lost time.

Wow. I think our work here is done. We’re going to call it a weekend for the Uni Tracking now. Thanks again to everyone who has participated so far. If I missed you, contact me as I’d love to have your tracking when we do this again, sometime after the All Star break, when the real uniform trends (and surely, there will be some) will emerge. Until “Round Two”, then. How about a nice round of applause for all our Uni Trackers, both yesterday and today! We have some incredibly talented and dedicated folks on this board. Kudos to one and all.

Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: Today’s scoreboard is pretty easy. There will be no clues. In fact, this shouldn’t take long at all to figure out. I want the date, the location, and the final score of the game in question. And, if you were yesterday’s winner, you’re automatically banned from guessing again, since you’re obviously too good at this game. Plus, I already owe you a Coke.

Ready? Ready. Guess The Game (and remember: date, location & final score).

The UW Stirrup Club? UW Bobblehead Guru Robert Marshall has a public service announcement (pardon his punctuation, and capitalization, or lackthereof): “the day my coed softball team’s stirrups came in the mail last week, i casually mentioned in the comments, that perhaps we should have a UW stirrup club, and i have gotten more then a few emails on the subject. so let’s try to put something together, we can use the site advertiser, i have used him in the past. we can do this a few ways, but let’s start it like this, i want this stirrup — it would be ordered in an adult size with a 5″ loop, but i like mine to show minimum sani. most of the players honoured on this site wear a 7″ or 9″, i think that is too much sani, but next month someone else chooses the stirrup style and size, and if that person wants to get all george hendick, that’s cool with me, i am still in. as far as cost goes, they run $7 plus shipping(min 12), then i have to turn around and ship them to you, i am setting myself up for a headache, but it is all about the ‘rup, so let’s just say they are $10 this month, and go from there. you want the oriole? send me an email to rpmarshallart.com with “stirrups” in the subject line, say you want in on the old school oriole, and suggest a stirrup for next month, we will work out the payment later if enough people are down. there you have it, a UW stirrup club.

This and That: Game ON … Nice view of the Final’s Patch on Sid the Kid and some Red Wings … Um…ok — seems like that story is missing something … Can anyone make out what those brass knuckles say? … Superman commits regicide … Hey White Sox trackers — be ready to update your “tracking sheets” because, according to this article, the Sox will sport five special uniforms this season in addition to their traditional home and road uniforms … Jeremy has his own cereal? … Well — there is at least one Michigan team that doesn’t wear the ‘flying wing’ design on their helmets — and I like it … Yesterday I told you they would, and today they have: Cavemen unveil new unis (I’d say there’s more cons than pros to them) … If you want to participate in the “Ron Jeremy Lookalike Contest,” please raise your hand … Watching the NHL playoffs this year brought some reminders of when Hartford was a major league sports town — wait, hockey’s a major sport? … It’s aight — you’ll get that ring in 2010 with the Knicks — in the meantime, maybe you and Nike can come up with a new puppet commercial … He’s tall … A Carrollton couple attending a Texas Rangers game for their anniversary was shocked when the Rangers nearly ejected the wife for foul language. It wasn’t what she said. It was a word on what she wore, which she argues was not a cuss word … OK — so the White Sox and the Kansas City Royals did the Negro League throwback thing yesterday, complete with period appropriate helmets and footwear — ok — so they didn’t have batting helmets back the, but c’mon, fellas, ya coulda done better than this (KC was representing the 1924 Kansas City Monarchs and the White Sox wearing the garb of the 1926 Chicago American Giants) … and I’m NO fan of pinstripes on roadies, but this just shows how good a team could look if they wanted to go with a solid dark uniform … You have Cleveland Browns questions, right? Well, if you did, here’s some answers … And, making sure there was at least one softball game on the docket this Saturday, the Braves and D-Bags entertained the picnickers … They gotta wear red socks, right? I mean they’re called the Red Sox, right? Man that looks like shit … and continuing the tradition of not quite winning the big one, the Hawks do Chi Town proud.

And because I’m feeling saucy, I’m giving you a bonus Guess The Game From The Scoreboard. This one is a bit tougher than the one above. Let’s see how you do with this one. Ready? Ready: Guess The Game (date, location and final score, please).

Have a great Sunday folks.

110 comments May 31st, 2009

Tracking The Unis, Part I

By Phil Hecken

Welcome to the first part of the first edition of “Tracking The Unis,” an undertaking of many Uni Watching baseball fans. What began as a “suggestion” in the Comments way back in April, has transpired to well over 20 of you fine folks “tracking” your favorite team by uniform — whether it be by spreadsheet, graphic or pen and paper, many of you have kept diligent records of your team’s performance, based upon wins and losses, and tracked this according to the uniform the team wore for each and every game. Today, we’re here to look at the preliminary results of this tracking, for games (all of them through Memorial Day, some further, some with running counts, etc.) and to see if any “trends” emerge. As most of you know, I’ve been tracking the Mets, who are one of those teams who seem to have a different uniform or combination for each day of the week.

For those who responded to my “call” for uniform tracking, I sent the following (as an example) in my e-mail: “the Mets (rolls eyes) are one of the most egregious ‘offenders’ in their uniform choices. While their “official” home uniform is the pinstripes with blue caps, they have (thus far) chosen ONLY to wear this on Sundays. They have a propensity for wearing all black (cap and jersey) on Fridays, either home or away (although this is not exclusive to Fridays), while they wear the ’snow white’ uniform (either with the black/blue cap or solid blue cap) at home other days. For weekdays, they seem to stick with the black/blue cap (and hence, black socks and sleeves), while on the weekends and a few select weekdays they stick with the snow whites and blue combos (and they are 7-1, as of Thursday) in that particular combo — by far their best record. For the road, they primarily have just two possible outfits — the all grays with the black/blue cap (worn for MOST road games) and the black jersey/black cap (worn for a few games so far). Including the ’stars & stripes’ red caps and Jackie Robinson Day, the Mets have worn EIGHT different uniform combinations thus far and have the possibility of 10 (and maybe even more, depending upon the red cap, as the season progresses). To date, they have not worn the pinstripes with black/blue cap nor the (extremely rare) road grays with blue cap (God is that gorgeous). There doesn’t seem to be any specific reason for going with any particular jersey and cap (other than the Sunday pins), and it’s not chosen by that day’s starter, nor is there any apparent ’slump buster’ outfit.”

In return, I asked each respondant for their particular method of tracking, some kind of “visual aid” (whether it be a link or a screenshot) of this tracking, and to give me a brief description of their impression of their team’s performance in each of the uniform combinations their team has worn this year. Some of you (this is Uni Watch after all) are incredibly detail-oriented, others less so, but still very accomplished in this undertaking. The summaries which follow are long, short, and somewhere in between, but all evoke a spirited undertaking, and will hopefully begin to yield “clues” as to the importance of a certain uniform to a team’s record. Some of you are tracking the same team, but in different ways. Some of you are tracking one team in multiple ways. No matter, each has his/her own style — a style we will now explore below.

In no particular order then, are our first day’s batch of trackers. My great thanks to everyone who is participating in this.

Our first tracker simply wants to be known as Billy. Billy has been tracking the Orioles. Here then, is Billy’s report:

You can refer to me as “Billy” when posting this information. I keep track of the Orioles record by uniform using Excel. The Orioles have 4 combinations: Home Whites, Road Grays, Alternate (Black) jersey at home with home white pants, and Alternate (Black) on the road with road gray pants. They wear their alternate jerseys every Friday (home or road) and standard uniforms all other days. Thus far, they are 11-9 in standard home uniforms, 6-12 in their standard away uniforms, 1-2 wearing their alternate jerseys at home and 1-3 wearing their alternate jerseys on the road. Which makes them 17-21 in their standard garb, and 2-5 in their alternates.

Attached is a screen shot of my spreadsheet.

Billy

Next up is Shaun Tunick who is an Atlanta Braves Tracker. Here’s Shaun’s report:

OK Phil, here’s my spreadsheet … the Braves are pretty consistent, at home they wear white every day except for Sunday, when they wear red with the alternate cap. On the road, the starting pitcher gets to decide between blue or gray. There is nothing to it more than the pitcher’s decision, even the home team’s choice doesn’t matter, as the Braves wore blue earlier this year while the Mets wore black, causing it to look like a spring training game. Blue has been far more popular, maybe because we are 0-2 in gray. Will be interesting to see if this changes come those July/August day games…

Our next tracker is Justine DeCotis, who has been diligently tracking the Boston Red Sox. Quite an amazing tracking she’s been doing, too. Here’s her commentary:

This year, the Red Sox have two alternate uniforms. The red jersey for home and the navy blue for the road. These uniform sets are complete with the “hanging sox” cap. They wear the alternate uniforms on Fridays only. They have only worn the blue jersey once, the only other two Friday road games were played in the regular away jersey since the home teams (Tampa Bay and Seattle) chose to wear their navy blue alternates. The Red Sox have worn eight different uniform sets this season so far: home, alternate home, green home on Earth Day, road with blue socks, road with red socks, alternate road, road with 42 for Jackie Robinson Day, and road with the stars and stripes cap. The sock choices made by the Red Sox sparked some controversy early in the season when they wore blue socks with their road and alternate road uniforms. The switch as made back to red socks on April 27. It still remains to be seen what color socks will be worn with the alternate road uniform, since those have not been worn since the first week of the season. Not surprising the Red Sox went 2-4 while wearing blue socks.

I have a flickr account with some photos. There are two spreadsheets, one for home games and one for road, and two graphics one for the whole uniforms and one just for hats and socks.
Here’s the link.

Moving along, we have Matt Windsor who is a Washington Natinals Nationals tracker:

Hey Phil, I have attached a screen grab. For the writeup/summary (I’ll include a few set-ups for links to their notable uni blunders this season as well):

The Nationals, despite their inability to spell correctly, lack of attention to detail on number direction and failure to follow their own style guide, have a fairly simple uniform set. Lets start on the road, where the Nationals wear their new for 2009 gray top with red Washington script, blue and red trimming, blue socks and blue curly W caps. In the N They have put this combo out on the field more times than any other (20) and it has delivered a 7 game loosing streak, a 3 game skid and the worst road record in the majors. The only change that has occurred with the road uniforms was pairing the gray jerseys with the red Memorial Day stars and stripe cap. Earlier in the year paul mentioned that he would like to see the Nats wear their red caps with the jersey, but the stars and stripe pairing looked awful (in my opinion) with the blue trim and also resulted in a loss. The Nats “official” home uniform is the white Nationals jersey with red caps. The Nats are fairly loyal to this combo and have worn it15 times. The Nats first alternate is the red Curly W jersey with red cap. This is supposed to be worn at all day games at home, however do to an agreement with the city regarding traffic in the district, the Nationals hardly ever play at home unless it is a weekend. So far they have worn this combo six times, five in the day and breaking protocol once to wear it at night against the Orioles. The final jersey is the blue stars and stripe DC alternate with DC stars and stripe blue cap with red brim. The team announced they would wear it no more than 10 times this season and only on holidays or military appreciation days. So far they have worn it twice, once on DC’s emancipation day and once for seemingly no reason at all. They are scheduled to wear it again on July 4 and September 10th, since the team in on the road September 11th. Let’s hope by the 4th, they correct the red sock issue with the blue jersey.

Interesting uni tidbits include the Nats and Phillies being rained out on Jackie Robinson night and making up the game as part of a day night double header, however, the rescheduled game from April 15th was the day game, but both teams wore 42 during the night cap. The Nationals have won in their alternate jerseys three times, but have never worn the alternate the day after winning in it. In fact, they have only worn alternates on back-to-back days once, on a Saturday and Sunday day game against the Marlins where the bullpen blew saves in the ninth on both days and the team lost. Finally, the Nationals and Astros played a game on May 5th that was suspended in extra innings due to rain. Since the Astros don’t come back to DC or close enough to finish the game at home, the teams will resume the contest in Houston on July 9th. Will the Nationals take their white home jerseys on the road for what could turn out to be an inning, or will they be the home team and wear the road gray? How will it affect my stats? Stay tuned to find out.

Our next tracker is Scott Gladin who is another Atlanta Braves tracker. Scott writes:

Here is a screenshot image of the Braves Uniform/Record Splits through May 26, 2009.

Method of Tracking:

I am using Apple iWork Numbers ‘09 to keep track of the Atlanta Braves record splits. I am actually covering a wide range of variables, such as the record depending on weather and television channels, not only uniforms. I enter game information day-to-day on a separate spreadsheet, and it automatically links, formats, and updates charts and graphs to make sense of all the data.

Club Write-Up:

After introducing the Alternate Blue Away Uniform in 2008, it quickly became a favorite of the team. Although still designated as an alternate uniform, it has been worn an overwhelming majority of the time on the road in 2009. The Braves policy on the road is for the starting pitcher of the day to choose the uniform. So far, the Primary Away Gray Uniforms have only been worn twice, once by Jair Jurrjens in an April 17 loss and once more in an April 21 loss by Kenshin Kawakami. It doesn’t look like the Braves much of a reason to move away from the Road Blues, as they are 12-8 and outscore their opponents by an average of a half-run while wearing the alternates. However, if Tom Glavine makes a comeback, look for him to choose the Primary Grays. In two 2008 starts when he wore the Blue uniforms he was injured and placed on the DL.

The Braves home uniforms are not chosen by the starting pitcher, but by the day of week. The Primary Home White Uniforms are worn Monday-Saturday, with the Alternate Home Red Uniforms reserved for Sundays. Despite only wearing the Alternate Red Uniforms three times so far in 2009, they might should consider wearing them more often. The Braves are 2-1 in those games, and outscore their opponents by an average of 3 runs. The only positive thing about the Primary Home Whites is that Turner Field averages 49 more people in the stands while wearing the classic uniforms. In 20 games they are 9-11 and have been outscored by a total of 22 runs, or an average of 1.1 a game. The only starting pitcher with a winning record in the Primary Home Uniform is Derek Lowe, who is 2-1 in 5 starts.

Next up is Andrew Greenwood (”Greenie”), who is one of several Milwaukee Brewer trackers. Here’s Greenie’s report:

Hey Phil, Here’s a screenshot of the pitcher’s choices I worked up instead of the excel sheet.

You’ve probably already seen the link about the Brewers’ pinstripes (someone at Uniwatch found it) but they said they’d only be wearing them for the first Friday of each month. They didn’t bother to wear them in April, but did for the May 1st game. First home Friday game in June is interleague on the 12th against the White Sox.

What I found from the pitcher breakdown (also here was that Gallardo and Parra seem to like the blue alts, but Suppan, Bush and Looper stick with white and gray. Suppy’s pitching in home whites tonight against the Cards. Other details are in the screenshot.

I don’t mind a little notoriety. (Very little).

I do have a question for you though. Are there instances where a teams’ choice of jersey for the day are determined by what the other team wears? Obviously in the NFL, they don’t like two teams wearing white against each other, but can each team pick any jersey at any time in baseball? (Keeping road and home pants consistent of course).

Our next tracker is Jason Hicks (”Hickory”), who’s a Baltimore Orioles tracker. Here’s Hickory’s writeup:

I had always wanted to try my hand at “uni-keeping” but never really wanted to sit down and think up a format – I had some of it written down on a sheet of paper at my desk at work. But after seeing Phil’s post about the Mets and his record keeping system – I decided to completely hi-jack his format (btw – thanks Phil!).

The Orioles are pretty straightforward when it comes to their uniforms. When you consider Memorial Day’s Red Stars & Stripes hat and Jackie Robinson day – they have worn a total of 6 combinations. The Orioles also played the Red Sox during this year’s Patriots Day game (same day as the Boston Marathon) but the O’s wore their traditional road uniforms.

At home, the O’s wear two basic uniform combos – white jerseys/white pants and black jerseys/white pants. They have their best record in the all white uniforms, going 10-8, in fact, this is the only combo where they are over .500. The O’s wear the black jerseys strictly on Fridays whether they are on the home or the road – they change their pants accordingly.

The road jerseys mark a renewed sense of pride in the ballclub because “Baltimore” has retuned to the front of the jerseys – it had been missing since 1973. On the road, the two combinations consist of – gray jerseys/gray pants and black jerseys/gray pants. Again, the black jerseys are specifically reserved for Fridays and they wear the gray jerseys all other times. In recent years, the O’s have been horrendous on the road, so once again, they sport a sub .500 record while wearing gray pants.

The O’s have two options when it comes to hats, the hat that features “O’s” with an orange brim and another new & improved ornithologically correct bird with orange brim. The “O’s” cap goes with the Friday alternate black jerseys. The bird hat, with orange brim, is now worn everyday but Friday (regardless of home/road). The bird has undergone slight changes from last year, from this to this.

I am interested to see what uniforms the O’s show up to Yankee stadium in of 9/11. Since 9/11 is a Friday, they would normally wear the black jerseys – with the red stars & stripes hat – this will no doubt look ridiculous.

I have posted my data on Flickr – here.

Feel free to refer to me as Jason “Hickory” Hicks.

Patrick Campbell is another Atlanta Braves tracker. He checks in with this:

Hey Phil,

Through tonight’s game with the Giants, the Braves are 23-22 overall, 9-11 in the home white, 2-1 in the Sunday home reds, 12-8 in the road blues, and 0-2 in the road grays. Here is a screen shot of the Excel spreadsheet I’m using. The W-L column is updated automatically based on the score, and the records boxes are also updated automatically with formulas.

As for the uniform selection, for the Braves, the home uniform is simple. White is the primary, while Red is used only on Sundays. I can only remember two times that the Braves have worn the reds on a day except Sunday. The year those uniforms were introduced (2005?), they wore them on Memorial day, but with the regular cap (not the Sunday “Tomahawk” cap). They got blown out if I recall and they’ve never done that again. They also wore them for a playoff game that wasn’t on Sunday. Since then, the reds only appear on Sundays.

Now the road unis; for years, the Braves only had the gray uniforms, but that changed last year with the introduction of the blue jersey, which was paired with gray pants and the all blue cap. They still used the regular blue cap with the red bill for the gray unis and they were using blue and red helmets in all games. My understanding is that the starting pitcher for each game got to choose whether they wore the blue or gray jersey, but the choice also depended on whether the home team wore blue (or some other dark color). About midway through the season, however, they complicated things by sometimes pairing the blue and red cap with the blue jersey, and the all blue cap with the gray.

This year, things are simplified. The all blue cap is now the official road cap, and it’s paired with an all blue helmet. The Braves have made their blue jersey the official road jersey as well. So far, they’ve worn the gray only twice, once in Pittsburgh (when the Pirates wore black), and once in Washington (the Nats were wearing white). Since that game in Washington, they have also worn blue in two games where the home team wore black (once against the Marlins, once against the Mets).

Our next tracker is U2Horn, who is a Texas Ranger fan:

Hey Phil, here are my thoughts on the Rangers (Yes, I refuse to call them the Texases).

I mainly use an excel spreadsheet to track the results, but I liked the way you did it with a graphical representation, which made it easier to see the results more quickly.

The Rangers are similar to the Mets in that they’ve only worn their “official” home uni combo of white pants, white jersey, blue cap 3 times out of 20 home games. This should become more prevalent though, since the Rangers came out and said they’d no longer wear the red hats with white jerseys at home. They wore this combo 4 times early on to mostly negative reviews on uniwatch, but I didn’t think it was bad, really. The red cap/red jersey combo was first introduced in January as a Saturday night home game combo, but they’ve taken more liberties with it. Here’s the press release from the uni unveiling.

They wore the all reds on Opening Day, and have now had 2 weekend series that they declared to be “Red-Outs”, where they wear the all reds on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They did this against the Royals and the hated Angels, who apparently like to wear their red alts themselves, so this may have been a sign of some one-upsmanship by the Rangers. Not sure how often the Angels do in fact wear the alts, but I’m sure someone will be passing along that info to you.

On the road, the Rangers have just 2 combos to choose from — blue cap + gray pants with either gray jersey or alt blue jersey. This is where the results are the most striking. The Rangers have been playing unexpectedly well all season, and have posted a .500 or better record in every jersey combo except one–the standard gray road jersey. They’re just 2-7! Ditch the Gray!

They wore this combo for the first 5 road games, going 1-4. They’ve started wearing the blue alts on the road more often than the grays (10 times in their last 12 road games), but there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to which one they wear.

With all this hoopla about the Rangers going back to red, it’s interesting that they’ve actually worn the blue alt jersey twice as often as any of the other 3 jerseys they wear.

I’m also tracking the scores of each game just for kicks, to see if one jersey combo results in an inordinate amount of runs (or lack thereof). The results weren’t too interesting at this point, so I left that info off of my chart. It could make a reappearance later in the year.

Checking in next is Chris M., our Colorado Rockies tracker

Sorry, Paul, but maybe the Rockies should break out the purple tops this year. They can’t manage an above .500 record wearing any other uniform so far in 2009, but I guess you could blame that on the bullpen. Do the Rockies have any rhyme or reason to go with a certain uniform on a certain day? It depends on how they’re playing. You may recall the lucky black vests in late 2007 when the Rockies won 21 of 22 games to advance to the World Series. In all but one of those 22 games, they were wearing the black vests. Why didn’t they wear them one game? In Game 2 of the 2007 NLCS, the Diamondbacks chose to wear their black alternates so the Rockies would be forced to wear their standard gray away uniform in an attempt to snap the Rockies lucky streak. 11 innings and bases loaded walk later, it didn’t work.

So far in 2009, wins have been very sparse, so it’s hard to tell if they still wear the same uniforms based on a winning streak. I don’t have the source, but I read somewhere that the Rockies’ starting pitcher for the day gets to pick which uniforms they wear.

The most successful thus far has been the black vests on the road and their alternate whites at home at an even .500. The Rox have only worn their standard home uniform 6 out of a possible 20 times, winning only one of those contests.

So will we see the Rockies break out the purple alternates later this year? It depends on whether Clint Hurdle’s replacement likes purple or not.

-Chris M

Our penultimate post today comes from Mike Bergan, who is a Chicago Cubs tracker (and slightly “lower-tech” than most):

My method for uni tracking has been no more than marking notes on a schedule. I always try to keep a schedule for marking wins and losses (mostly while bored at work). This season the Cubs have worn 5 uni combos (home pin whites w/ blue hat, road grays w/ blue hat, blue alt w/ pin white pants w/ blue hat, blue alt w/ gray pants w/ blue hat, and home pin whites w/ red stars stripes hat). I have noticed 2 definite patterns. Carlos Zambrano has worn the blue alternate jerseys for all his starts, and conversely Ted Lilly has worn the home white or road gray for each of his starts. I believe the starting pitcher gets to choose the jersey for the day for the Cubs and none of the other starting pitchers seemed to have a favorite combo like Zambrano or Lilly. I have compiled the records for each uni combo.

Home Whites (8-4)
Road Grays (3-8)
Blue w/ white pants (6-3)
Blue w/ gray pants (6-7)
Home Whites w/ red stars and stripes hat (0-1)

We’re going to conclude today with Alex Poterack, who is another Milwaukee Brewers tracker:

Alright, so, first things first, sorry for the redundancy, but I’m going to give you the uni log a few different ways just to make sure. Here’s a screenshot that I uploaded to photobucket. Also, here’s a google docs copy of the spreadsheet I’ve been keeping, just in case anyone wants to see that; if I understand correctly, this link will update as I update the spreadsheet.

Okay, as for the analysis, I included it below; I tried to cut it down as much as I can, and I hope it’s not too long:

The Brewers have a fairly simple uniform palette, with a white home uniform, a gray road uniform, and a blue alternate jersey worn with white pants at home and grey on the road. In addition, the Brewers have a “Retro Friday” uniform, which they wear for the first Friday home game of each month; however, because their first Friday home game in April was their home opener, they wore their home whites, so they’ve only played one game, a loss on May 1st, in the Retro Friday uni. They do not seem to have a clear winning advantage in any uniform; they’re 7-5 in their road grays, 7-6 in their blue alternates with gray pants, 11-6 in their home whites, and 2-2 in their blue alts with white pants (The combined record in home and road blue alts is 9-8). The home whites appear to have an advantage, but it’s probably just a reflection of home field advantage; out of 21 games played at home so far, the Brewers have worn their home whites for 17 of them.

The Brewers let their starting pitchers choose what unis to wear each day (with the exception of retro Fridays). Interestingly, out of 5 starting pitchers, 4 have deviated from their normal choice at least once, and two of them appear to be changing their uni preference. Initially, the three older, more veteran pitchers, David Bush, Braden Looper, and Jeff Suppan, wore the home whites and the road grays, and the two younger pitchers, Yovani Gallardo and Manny Parra, wore the blue alternate both at home and on the road. Only David Bush has remained consistent, completely eschewing the alternate uniform. Yovani Gallardo exclusively wore the blue alt up until this past Monday, when he went for the home whites. This may have been because of the Memorial Day red caps, which still looked horrible with the white uniform, but would have looked even worse with the blue alt. Jeff Suppan has continued to wear the whites and grays, except for his start on April 19th against the Mets, where he went with the blue alt; this may have been because he had lost his two previous starts, but he won that start, and then reverted to his standard white and gray pattern. Most interesting are the cases of Manny Parra and Braden Looper. Manny exclusively wore the blue alt jersey until his start of May 12th against the Marlins, where he wore the home white; he has since worn the road gray for the first time, and wore the home white again for his last start, so he seems to have switched away from the blue alt. Braden Looper, on the other hand, had not worn the blue alt all year until May 18th, and wore it in his next start after that, so he may also have changed preferences. The intriguing thing about these two changes is that they do not seem to be “slumpbuster” choices; both Parra and Looper had won their previous starts before changing up the unis.

As for nicknames, I don’t have one on the board, so you can just credit me as Alex Poterack.

OK. That’s a lot to digest. We’re going to call it a day for the Uni Tracking today. Back tomorrow with even more tracking! Thanks again to everyone who has participated so far. If I missed you, contact me as soon as possible, and if I can, I’ll include you in tomorrow’s post. If not, I’d love to have your tracking when we do this again, sometime after the All Star break, when the real uniform trends (and surely, there will be some) will emerge. Until tomorrow, then.

Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: Today’s scoreboard is actually a “joint” effort between myself and Lance “Squiddie” Smith. Working independently, we both came up with this one almost simultaneously. (I’d insert something about “great minds think alike” but that would be an insult to Lance — he’s the genius at work here — I just work here.)

The degree of difficulty, we have ascertained, would be “Very Difficult”. If no one can solve the game, we’ll begin posting clues throughout the day until we have a “winner”. However, knowing how good you UW readers are at “getting it,” we wouldn’t be surprised to have this one nailed within an hour of posting.

So, without further ado: Guess The Game (and we’re looking for stadium, teams and date). Good luck! I’ll give the winner 1/2 of my salary at UW or a Coke.

The UW Stirrup Club? UW Bobblehead Guru Robert Marshall has a public service announcement (pardon his punctuation, and capitalization, or lackthereof): “the day my coed softball team’s stirrups came in the mail last week, i casually mentioned in the comments, that perhaps we should have a UW stirrup club, and i have gotten more then a few emails on the subject. so let’s try to put something together, we can use the site advertiser, i have used him in the past. we can do this a few ways, but let’s start it like this, i want this stirrup — it would be ordered in an adult size with a 5″ loop, but i like mine to show minimum sani. most of the players honoured on this site wear a 7″ or 9″, i think that is too much sani, but next month someone else chooses the stirrup style and size, and if that person wants to get all george hendick, that’s cool with me, i am still in. as far as cost goes, they run $7 plus shipping(min 12), then i have to turn around and ship them to you, i am setting myself up for a headache, but it is all about the ‘rup, so let’s just say they are $10 this month, and go from there. you want the oriole? send me an email to rpmarshallart.com with “stirrups” in the subject line, say you want in on the old school oriole, and suggest a stirrup for next month, we will work out the payment later if enough people are down. there you have it, a UW stirrup club.

This and That: (from yesterday’s comments) Natron noticed that the Twins have teased some new uni/logo changes for the 50th anniversary next season. Yesterday, they installed a logo above the scoreboard at Target Field, and it has a (very) minor change to the logo they currently use that may be an indicator of what’s to come for 2010. Check out the “s” on the current logo, and compare it to the one on the scoreboard. … I’m not usually a fan of a uniform where names and numbers are of the same color as the uniform itself — but for this I’ll make an exception … Bobble Head master Robert Marshall sends along his love and “uni realted” video — or so he promised me … ALSO from Mr. Marshall comes this: something he calls good grief … Fix the brim, and this is perfect … Hannibal Cavemen to unveil inaugural uniforms Saturday — wait…WHO? … Nice ‘rups? … Seriously…this shit has GOT to stop … If you’re trying to sell a hundred Konawaena football jerseys on eBay, the authorities might like a word with you … HEY POWERS — what kind of shoes is Chris Tucker wearing? and POWERS — isn’t Melo a ‘3 striper’? what’s that wristband? … Pearl Kuorikoski has sewn so many athletics uniforms over 20 years, she claims she could do it with her eyes closed … He ain’t heavy …Sweet — The Halifax Mooseheads announced today that they will be wearing two newly designed uniforms next season to adhere with the CHL mandate to have all junior teams wearing the new RBK Edge style uniforms …The Tigers could look even better if they would just trade in the solid socks for ‘rups … Asian & Pacific Rim Correspondent Jeremy Brahm checks in with this: The Central and Pacific League practice uniforms for the NPB All-Star game are out. The Central (red) are for the Hiroshima Carp who will be one of the hosts, while the Pacific (blue) will be for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters who host the other game … And…a softball game broke out in Texas … This is just a great headline: “SF Approves Three-Year Contract for White Man’s Overbite” … Is that a swoosh? … When really well-intentioned stadium give-aways go horribly wrong: Obama Bobbleheads Can’t Clear Customs — perhaps they should have been MADE IN THE USA???? … Yep, that’s a swoosh … The Wings & Pens are mirror images of each other — except when it comes to the unis, where of course, one team is good and classic and the other is modern and crappy … Yea…BronBron…I still need a ring for this finger … and finally, apologies if this was already posted, but Fred Taylor loves Flying Elvis.

Whew…

Have a great Saturday, and don’t forget to give props to this batch of uni-trackers…that’s some stuff, eh?

108 comments May 30th, 2009

A Catalog of Catalogs

Been a while since I played show-and-tell with my library of vintage uniform and equipment catalogs, and I’ve acquired some interesting new additions to the collection since then. Here’s a breakdown:

• 1964 AALCO Backboard Catalog: This is a bit of an oddball, beause it’s so specific. Like, c’mon, 12 pages devoted to nothing but basketball backboards? But that specificity turns out to be pretty fascinating — who knew there were so many different ways of suspending and folding backboards, or that they had cool names like Cent-R-Strut or forward jacknife model? I vaguely remember my high school gym having something like these contraptions, but nothing as elaborate as this. And look, they even had special tools for hoisting the gear. Way nifty. (Full page-by-page breakdown here.)

• Spalding Sports Show for 1949: A cross between a sporting goods catalog and a comic book, this is one of the most interesting additions to the Uni Watch library in many a moon. Each page features a gallery of cartoons by the great Willard Mullin (more on him here), sort of Ripley’s Believe It or Not-style, and then concludes with an ad for Spalding equipment toward the bottom of the page. Oddly, the gear being pitched usually has nothing to do with the cartoons on that particular page, but whatever. Can you believe I got this awesome artifact for only $10.50? (Full content available here.)

• 1961 Champion Catalog: No surprises here — the usual assortment of jerseys, hose, more jerseys, and so on. The notable thing about this is that the catalog was keyed to Champion’s Rochester operation, which means I think our resident Rochester sporting goods expert, Terry Proctor, will be weighing in with some thoughts. Also worth noting: another appearance of basketball target stirrups, some rather anorexic-looking illustrations of girls, and a fully intact order blank. (Full content available here.)

• Yarrington Mills swatchbook pages: Speaking of Terry Procter, he recently sent me a bunch of vintage swatch pages from Yarrington Mills, and it’s pretty fascinating stuff. There are stripes, braids, patterns, even sparkle fabrics. Swatches are so damn cool. Thanks, Terry! (Full content available here.)

Raffle Reminder: I’m currently raffling off a free T-shirt from SportsCrack.com. Details here.

Something odd that I just noticed: I was checking something on the Uni Watch Membership Roster yesterday when I noticed something odd: Not a single enrollee has chosen No. 70 for his or her membership card. Granted, 70 isn’t the most hallowed number in sports history, but I figured someone would’ve chosen it by now.

Other numbers that have so far gone unclaimed: 62, 64, 85 and 95. So if you want a unique card and a number all to yourself on the roster listing, you’ve got some options.

And now a quick word from Phil: “All uni trackers, if you’ve been keeping track of your favorite baseball team’s record by uniform, please contact me, if you haven’t already done so, as I’ll be posting the first of the tracking results this weekend. Thanks.”

Uni Watch News Ticker: For those who’ve lost track of the Syracuse lacrosse team’s uni changes this season, Chris Drouin has provided a handy overview: “They started the season with home whites jerseys, white shorts, white gloves and white helmets with their numbers on them. Then they switched to white jerseys, orange shorts and gloves, and orange helmets with numbers on the back. Then, for championship weekend, they stuck with the orange shorts/helmets/gloves, but the helmets had player’s name on the back of it instead of their number.” … Uni cameo: Kevin Johnson as a Cav (with thanks to Nick Houser, who has a blog devoted to Ohio sports cards). … Reprinted from yesterday’s comments: Now that’s a bullpen buggy. Note the great usher’s cap, too. … “I was recently in Belgium and went to the museum where they house the costumes/uniforms for the little statue Mannekin Pis (the famous one that is something of a symbol for the city of Brussels),” writes Kelly Phillips. “I was surprised to see that he has actually donned not only a Montreal Canadiens sweater (a gift from the Canadian prime minister in the 1950s) but even a Toronto Blue Jays jersey in the mid-’80s. He has worn more than 700 outfits over the years, and a number of them have been sports uniforms — mostly European football teams, as well Belgian hockey teams, and even the Latvian ice hockey team when they won the Championships in 2006. The uniforms are incredibly well made and done with meticulous care to appear like the real thing. Which is amusing since the statue is only a little over a foot tall.” Additional info on Kelly’s blog. … Lots of old-timey baseball photos from Lincoln, Nebraska here, here, and here (with thanks to Bob Andrews). … Pictorial history of Moroccan volleyball available here (with thanks to Jeremy Brahm). … Awesome little tidbit buried on this page: “Reliever Seth McClung [of the Brewers] altered his warmup apparel Wednesday, when he wore a long-sleeve shirt with ‘Not Coffey’ printed on the back. McClung was trying to help out the fans who sit behind the bullpen, who have been known to mistake McClung for fellow reliever Tim Coffey” (great spot by Harry Bergmann). … Don’t step on that logo (big thanks to Brinke Guthrie). … Stunning news last night out of Chicago, where career low-cuffer Aaron Heilman, of all people, became the latest member of Stirrup Nation. Lots of additional pics here (as first reported by Michael Romero). … Not uni-related, but an interesting article here about pro sports’ losing-est franchises. The 13 “winners” are presented in this slideshow (thanks, Teebz). … The uniforms of all 64 NCAA baseball tourney teams are described and photo-linked here (nice find by Mike Camello). … The AHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins are looking for a third jersey designer (with thanks to Johnny Griswold). … The UC Irvine Anteaters use an interesting shortened version of their name on their jerseys (with thanks to Ben Teaford). … Happy Birthday to Kirsten, a day early. Looking forward to tomorrow’s festivities!

120 comments May 29th, 2009

Daniel Murphy, All Is Forgiven

There were at least five people at last night’s Mets/Nats game wearing “I’m Calling It Shea” T-shirts, and two of them are shown above. And there may soon be many more, because the dude sitting next to me (who also took the photo of us) liked the shirts so much that he wants to do a bulk order for a group outing that he’s planning for a game later this season.

The other three “ICIS” folks were just people I noticed while walking around the concourse. In each case, we exchanged knowing glances (and in one case a high-five), like we’d just engaged in a sort of unspoken secret handshake. It’s growing, my friends, it’s growing.

As for the Comiskey, Joe Robbie, Mile High, and Jake shirts, they’re almost ready. And No Mas impresario Chris Isenberg has come up with the perfect name for our shirt series: Naming Wrongs. Lots more to follow on this front — stay tuned.

Meanwhile, guess what they put up on the Shea scoreboard while the umps are video-reviewing a home run ball? This. After all the flash and razzle-dazzle of the usual scoreboard graphics, the sight of this plain, static thing just sitting there for several minutes was oddly refreshing.

New ESPN column today — here’s the link.

(Thanks to Kirsten for the scoreboard photo, to the guy who called out, “Hey, Uni Watch!” to me in the men’s room, and especially to Phil for jinxing Johan Santana several hours before the game by predicting he’d toss a no-hitter. That scheme lasted all of one-third of an inning.)

WBL Follow-Up: Yesterday’s entry about the short-lived Women’s Professional Basketball League prompted the following report from sporting goods historian Terry Proctor:

I remember the WBL very well. The league began at the same time that girls high school basketball was just beginning to take off, so I used some of the WBL uniforms as templates for high school and college uniforms in the Rochester area. Sand-Knit or Rawlings made most of the uniforms.

The Chicago Hustle uniforms were manufactured in 1978-79 by Athletic Sewing Mfg. Co. of Chicago and then by Betlin Mfg. Co. of Columbus, Ohio, for the last two years. We had a complete set of Betlin-manufactured Hustle uniforms as samples. The Hustle’s Janie Fincher was a knockout blonde-haired blue-eyed looker that wore a uniform probably a size or two too small (for obvious reasons). But at 5′9″, Janie could actually play. They did what they had to do to sell the league.

The New York Stars uniforms were made by Empire Sporting Goods of NYC. Empire is best remembered for making all the baseball uniforms for the 1984 movie ‘The Natural.’

The New Orleans Pride uniforms were “half and half,” with the lower left side and back being a different color from the upper section (another Betlin creation). As to the Iowa Cornets neckline, Iowa high school girls’ hoops uniforms favored that style, so the Cornets used it hoping to build some “cred” with the youngsters (although Iowa was still playing the old six-on-six rules from the early days). Those unis were made by Sand-Knit. Most of the design features were what was then popular with U.S. college women’s teams.

Fascinating, as always. Thanks, Terry.

Raffle Reminder: I’m currently raffling off a free T-shirt from SportsCrack.com. Details here.

Uni Watch News Ticker: Whoa, seizure-inducing! That’s the Moroccan volleyball team (have your neurologist send the bill to Jeremy Brahm). … Mike Hersh sent along photos from this awesome magazine about the Yanks’ 1955 visit to Japan. Check out that sleeve patch! Additional images here. … Corky Miller, who was recently spotted wearing low-cut stirrups, has now switched to a higher cut (with thanks to Steve Johnston). … Logan Light says the Cavs’ starting five have all been wearing the same sneaker design. “It’s the Nike Zoom Soldier 3, LeBron’s signature playoff shoe,” he says. Additional details in the “Shoe dept.” section of this page (thanks, Vince). … The intersection of high fashion and the NBA has finally reached its logical conclusion (with thanks to Benjamin Trattner). … Brian Povio’s mom was cleaning out her kitchen and found these 1980s team cups that he’d collected back in his youth. … It’s hard to see, but the Oregon track and field team now has “OREGON” in big letters down the back of their uniforms (with thanks to Jeremy Brahm). … Matt Powers reports that team-signature college football gloves are now available for last season’s bowl teams. … Reprinted from yesterday’s comments: Duh, should have done this myself (thanks, Phil). … Also from yesterday: Good shot here of the A’s bicentennial patch, which was apparently missing from Vida Blue’s jersey. Anyone know who’s holding the ciggie? … Shocking find by Jeremy Brahm: Ichiro batting — or at least posing — cross-handed! … Breaking news from CNN: Some people out there are really into sneakers. … Good story on mascot naming here (with thanks to Trevor Botting). … Nicely look from the Rock Ridge Bruins of Columbia, Missouri (with thanks to Jack Hittinger). … Don’t those bags look just a tad big? (As spotted by Brinke Guthrie.) … Lots of very unusual uni numbers in this team portrait from the 1952 Crystal Lake Community High School Yearbook. Anyone have any insights as to what might be up? (With thanks to Will Streit.) … Interesting catcher’s gear here. That photo is from the Japanese Masters (i.e., seniors) League, which features some seriously bizarro uni designs (all this courtesy of Jeremy Brahm). … The other day I wondered aloud why Phil Hughes wrote “Jr.” on his cap. Tyler Kepner found the answer. … Speaking of the Yankees, several readers have noticed (and so have I) that Mark Teixeira’s undershirt has the MLB logo on the front collar. Is he wearing the shirt backwards, or is this a new kind of undershirt we haven’t seen before? Tyler, can you see what’s what? … Plan B. Branding, which does lots of uniform work, has started a design blog where they’ll discuss their projects and related issues. … There’s a new book out that catalogs all the deaths that have ever occurred at big league ballparks over the years. Interesting review here (with thanks to longtime Uni Watch supporter Rob Walker).

258 comments May 28th, 2009

A League of Their Own

Got a note the other day from reader Patrick Ryan. “I know you like the old Milwaukee Bucks logo,” he wrote. “But have you ever seen this?”

I most certainly had not. And my initial instinct was that it was that it might be a joke, because c’mon, a team called the Does? That’s just setting yourself up for boatload of “Doesn’t”-oriented wisecracks.

But as I quickly learned, the Does were a very real team that played in the short-lived Women’s Professional Basketball League, which existed from the fall of 1978 through the spring of 1981. I was in high school during that period, so you’d think I’d remember the WBL, but I don’t (I think it’s safe to say they weren’t marketed as aggressively as the WNBA). Lots of other people do, though: There’s a WBL Memories site, lots of information at Hoopedia (which is hosted by NBA.com), and even a book (much of which you can click through at Google Books).

So what about their uniforms? Here’s a rough summary of what I’ve discovered:

• Almost all the teams went untucked (a very conscious choice, as clearly shown in their promotional materials). At least one team, the New Jersey Gems, used the lower portion of the jersey for the team name. Other teams used contrast-piped hemlines, and still others left the lower-jersey area plain. At least one team, the Houston Angels, appears to have been afflicted with an inadvertent team-wide case of Philly tag.

• One team that did not go untucked (but maybe should have): the Iowa Cornets.

• The most interesting uniform was worn by the Chicago Hustle, whose jerseys had these cutaway semi-sleeves and johnny collars. According to that book I mentioned earlier, these uniforms were not popular with the players. (The rest of that page has more info about the league’s uniforms — recommended reading.)

• The aforementioned Does had these contrasting V panels sewn into the lower side areas (not sure what’s going on with the New York player in the center of that photo — almost looks like she’s wearing a zippered sweatshirt).

• The New England Gulls used a baseball-style script insignia.

• Some teams went NNOB, others had NOBs. The Philadelphia Fox (yes, that was really their name) highlight the player names with horizontal rules, and at least one team the Does, used nameplates — unusual for a basketball uniform.

• The San Francisco Pioneers had really nice warm-up outfits, which included little Golden Gate Bridge logos on the pant legs.

• The refs’ uniforms apparently changed during the life of the league — sometimes they’re wearing plain gray, other times zebra stripes (note the WBL chest logo).

• The league had its own ball, courtesy of Wilson.

If you want to see more, I strongly recommend poking around this site — lots of good info and additional photos.

As for the Does logo, which got me started on this little venture, their logo made some of the players uneasy. But look — it’s now become a high-priced collector’s item.

Bonus May Raffle: Our friends at SportsCrack.com have invited me to raffle off one of their shirts — winner’s choice. To enter, send a blank e-mail with your name in the subject line to the raffle address (not to the usual Uni Watch e-mail address, please) by this next Monday, June 1st, at 7pm eastern. One entry per person, except for Uni Watch membership program enrollees, who can send four entries. I’ll announce the winner next Tuesday.

Chat-a-tat-tat: I’ll be doing a live web chat today at 1pm eastern on ESPN.com. Here’s the link, but do us both a favor and don’t start submitting questions now, because I’m going to give preference to questions submitted during the chat. Thanks.

Uni Watch News Ticker: Hmmmm, who do you suppose made the jerseys for Michael Irvin’s new 4th and Long show? (With thanks to Brendon Yarian.) … “Superfund”? Explanation here (with thanks to Brinke Guthrie). … Sierra Leone’s new soccer jersey is, in Donald Wine’s words, “epic.” … Nate Boulton and his family spent the holiday weekend at a Michigan fishing cabin, where they found this jigsaw puzzle. … “We put it together and determined that each team should have to go back to its 1995 helmet design,” he says. … Joshua Edney notes that Jermaine Dye has his initials on his batting gloves. … Reprinted from yesterday’s comments: Alarming news out of Pittsburgh, where Nyjer Morgan abandoned his high cuffs for a game, as a slump-busting maneuver. … Here’s a good view of the shamrock decal that Joe Mullen used to wear (courtesy of Kek). Hey, Teebz, how long did he wear this for? … The NBA is concerned about counterfeiting. … They Might Be Giants are sponsoring a Little League game (with thanks to James Huening). … Here’s something new: Braille jerseys (with thanks to Bryan Collings). … You know how the dolphin on the Dolphins’ logo wears a helmet? How would other NFL logo animals look if they were helmeted? Here’s how one guy envisions it (with thanks to Scott Marcusky). … What do you get when you mix the smell of watermelon with the smell of a sweatband? I don’t know, but we may soon find out. … Yesterday I wrote that Juan Pierre wore a blue cap under his batting helmet on Monday, rather than the red cap he wore in the field. But as pointed out in yesterday’s comments, he actually did red the red cap for his first at-bat before switching to blue. … Several readers have sent along these photos of James Worthy wearing mismatched shades of purple. … Lengthy uniform discussion on SNY during last night’s Mets/Nats game. Mostly boilerplate stuff, but at one point Ron Darling said (I’m paraphrasing here), “One year during the 1980s, for some reason our uniforms were really tight. And the most important piece of equipment in the clubhouse that season was this big garbage can, which we used to stretch out our uniforms.” … From that same game: Maybe this has been going on for a while and I just never noticed, but I was surprised to see plate ump Dan Iassogna wearing a mock turtleneck with the MLB logo on the side. Probably the most casual shirt I’ve ever seen an ump wear. … Good NBA gossip from Justin Kerr, who writes: “I was talking to a local sporting goods store manager and asking where his Sixers merchandise was. He mentioned all he had was some black road jerseys with Elton Brand on them and that he originally thought he’d have to wait until next year for them to sell given Brand’s injury. But then he said, ‘Now, that ain’t gonna happen ’cause they’re getting new uniforms. They’re ditching the black.’ Not sure if that means just the black jersey or what, but the NBAstore.com site seems to back this up to some degree. Every team’s draft cap is available for purchase — except the Philadelphia 76ers.” … The Twins insignia being installed at the team’s new stadium doesn’t quite match their current logo, suggesting that some rebranding is in the works. Further details here (with thanks to Owen Kinsky). … Gorgeous old baseball jersey available, pretty cheap, here. … Other eBay finds: a really nice full baseball uni set and an awesome police department baseball team uni.

173 comments May 27th, 2009

Save the Gifts Until We Hit the Precious Metals

Ten years ago today, the very first Uni Watch column was published in The Village Voice (if you want to read it, here’s a larger version). It was essentially the first installment of what we now think of as the annual MLB season-preview column, except it appeared in late May. That would be unconscionably late in the season by today’s standards, but there had never been anything like Uni Watch up until that time, so the whole idea of chronicling the season’s uniform changes seemed novel and interesting, even if the season was already nearly two months old.

One reason that column didn’t appear until late May was that I had originally written it (or maybe a shorter version of it, or possibly a longer version of it — I no longer remember) for Sports Illustrated. They paid me for it, but they never ran it. It kept getting bumped for “more important” articles, and I could see that Uni Watch wasn’t going to be a priority for them. ESPN had already passed on the project, so instead I approached the Voice, which at the time had a very, very cool sports section. Fortunately for me, the sports editor liked and admired some other work I’d done in the 1990s, so it was an easy sell.

Looking back on that first column, there are three main things I remember:

• The bit at the very end, where I wrote, “Uni Watch asks: Can the postgame interview cap be far behind?” was a complete afterthought, something I threw in on a whim right before delivering the piece. I didn’t realize at the time that I was creating the template for a third-person voice I’d later be using for phrases like “Uni Watch has issues with that cap” and “Fortunately, Uni Watch has provided a handy breakdown” (which I never use on this site but continue to use over on ESPN).

• The Mets/Yanks comparison chart that was included in that first column had to be written by hand and faxed to the Voice offices, because I didn’t know how to format or e-mail a chart on my computer.

• My agreement with the Voice was to deliver a new column every four weeks, but my editor was a little uneasy about this. “Are you sure you can write about uniforms that frequently? Like, is there really enough to say?” I reassured him that it would be no problem. Deep inside, though, I had my doubts.

If someone had suggested to me at that time that Uni Watch would be durable enough to last a decade, or that I’d be publishing uni-related material on a daily basis, I would have laughed. And yet here we are.

Why am I telling you all this? In part because I’m proud of what we have accomplished here. And when I say “we,” I’m not just referring to Phil, Johnny Ek, and Scott Turner. I mean all of us, all of you — there’s no way I could produce Uni Watch without all the contributions, research assistance, stories, emotional support, and, in many cases, friendship that so many of you provide on a near-constant basis. Together, we’ve essentially created a new genre of research, and a new category of design history. So yes, I’m proud, but you should be proud too. You’re all my partners here.

And that leads me to something I’m not proud of: I haven’t always been on my best behavior with you, my partners, over the past several months. There have been too many occasions in the comments section when I’ve been belligerent or had to have the last word or even picked fights, and I can think of a coupla passages in the text that I now regret too.

I could provide explanations for most of these instances, especially the most recent ones, but they’d just be explanations, not adequate excuses. Because really, there’s no good excuse.

This doesn’t mean I won’t sometimes try to poke you in the ribs, or that I won’t disagree with you if I think you’re wrong, or that I won’t defend my own position if I think I’m right, or that I won’t roll my eyes if you say, “I don’t come here to read about bowling [or DIYing, or childhood uni illustrations, or whatever doesn't quite ring your chimes on a given day],” or that I won’t sometimes end a discussion by pulling rank and saying, “Sorry, but it’s ultimately my web site, and what I say goes.” But I’ll try to do all of these things with more of the generosity of spirit that so many of you show me every day. And if you feel I’m not living up to this ideal, feel free to call me on it.

Thanks again for everything, really. I won’t say, “Now let’s make the next decade even better than the first one,” because I can’t really imagine myself still doing this 10 years from now. But I do think there’s still quite a bit that Uni Watch can accomplish in the years to come. Thanks in advance for your help in that venture.

How a ’Bot That: As many of you know, we were hit by another spambot over the weekend, which set off alarms on many (but not all) of your browsers. Johnny Ek fixed the problem this morning, so we’re good to go. If you’re still getting the warning, reboot your browser or computer — that should take care of it.

Just so you know, Google automatically stops indexing a site if it’s carrying anything dangerous, and at no point in this process did they stop indexing us (I was checking constantly), so we’re fairly certain that the rogue code was annoying but not harmful. John’s increasing our site security at this very moment, which we hope will keep this from happening again.

Sorry for any hassle or stress. Believe me, nobody was more stressed about this than I was!

Live Chat (as opposed to, y’know, dead chat): I’ll be doing a web chat on ESPN.com tomorrow, 1pm eastern. I’ll provide the link for it in tomorrow’s post.

Uni Watch News Ticker: Well, I hope they’re satisfied. … “C’mon, blue red!” … While looking for something else, I found a bunch of interesting team portraits in the 1908 Spalding Base Ball Guide. Examples: Check out the logo for the Colorado Iron Works team; not sure if “Orphans” refers to an orphanage or if it was just a fanciful name; love the “E Third” jerseys; not sure what’s going on here — caption says the team is from Oxford, Michigan, but the insignia looks like “OJ”; looks like these guys were way ahead of their time, at least judging by the fallout shelter symbol. … Ben Traxel has been imagining how baseball logos and colors might function on hockey jerseys. … The Astros usually put a player’s uni number on the back of his helmet but not on the brim — except for Ivan Rodriguez, who has his number in both spots (good catch by Paul Fontenot). … Reprinted from Friday’s comments: Yikes! … What’s with the blue sleeve ribbon? Details here (with thanks to Sean Clancy). … Discuss (as forwarded by Rob Leavell). … New football helmet for New Mexico State (with thanks to Sam Wasson). … For the many of you who’ve been complaining about the 12-pair minimum order on the Socks Rock site, Robert Marshall has an idea. … Sorry, I don’t mean to dwell on this, but come on, it’s crazy! … So much going on here: purple laces, exposed laundry tags, and, of course, very nice stirrups (with thanks to Greg Riffenburgh). … This video clip from a Bears practice session has a brief shot of Lovie Smith in a Decatur Staleys tee, plus a cap of uncertain provenance (at least to me) — anyone? (As spotted by Rachel Bicicchi.) … Check this out: Japan had a women’s baseball league back in the day — and Jeremy Brahm didn’t even know about it until just now! … Tim Adams notes that Pirates catcher Jason Jaramillo wore white nail polish on Saturday (a phenomenon we’ve seen before). … The NFL has green-lighted the use of team logos on lottery tickets (with thanks to Brinke Guthrie). … Check out this futuristic glove, designed in 2000 by Mizuno. … As noted last week, Robinson Cano’s cap hasn’t had the Yankee Stadium logo on the back, and now Tim Burke has finally provided visual evidence. … Chris Bieniek was watching a 1992 Bears/Packers game and noticed that Chris Zorich was missing a letter from his NOB. … Hmmm, Devils or Dewils? That’s Arizona State’s baseball team (as spotted by Mike Camello). … Maybe Tom Glavine should’ve just retired. Would have spared him the indignity of this (with thanks to Chris Wheeler). … Lots of the Diamondbacks have been inscribing “60″ on their caps as a gesture of solidarity with teammate Scott Schoeneweis, whose wife died last week (with thanks to Bryan J. Boltik). … Okay, is it just me or were there more ump arguments than usual yesterday, just to highlight the silliness of the red caps? … Here’s the 1949 Buffalo Bills (AAFC version, not the AFL version). “They were the only AAFC team to go through an entire season without losing to the Cleveland Browns,” says Terry Proctor. “The Bills tied the Browns twice in ’49.” Terry also sent along this awesome program cover. … Sad. … Memorial Stadium in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, is being sold off, piece by piece (with thanks to Bob Gassel). … Rafael Nadal is doing that thing with the French Open title signifiers on his sneakers (with thanks to Brinke Guthrie). … Has any Indy 500 winner ever been lactose-intolerant? … Lots of nice old pro football photos here (nice find by Mako Mameli). … Here’s something I’ve never seen before: tartan plaid softball uniforms, as worn by Greenville High near Dayton. Additional pics here (with thanks to Mike Miller). … Someone over on the Chris Creamer board posted some photos of the Utah Utes baseball team, and lemme tell ya, it ain’t pretty. Under Armour foisted this same design template on Pepperdine, but not on all UA teams. … Here’s an early photo of Mike Ditka, not wearing his familiar No. 89 (with thanks to Aaron Bell) … Anyone know why Phil Hughes had “Jr.” written on the side of his cap yesterday? … The Portland Beavers went solid blue yesterday (with thanks to Nate Becker). … “Hiroshima Sanfrecce defender Tomoaki Makino just got a new haircut,” says Jeremy Brahm. “The red is for playing on the Japanese national soccer team, and the three lines are for Adidas, his sponsor.” … Hey, you know how Juan Pierre wears his cap under his batting helmet? Yesterday he wore a regular blue cap under the helmet, not the red cap that he wore in the field. Not sure if this means he always uses separate caps for hitting and fielding (good catch by David Williamson). … Some very cool vintage Calgary Stampeders images here (with thanks to Defo Maitland). … Rollie Fingers redux! (With thanks to Kevin Rood.) … “You probably heard about the whole WWE/Nuggets scheduling controversy,” writes Mike Miller. “Well, the main event of the WWE show, which was moved to LA’s Staples Center, was a 10-man tag match featuring the ‘Lakers’ vs. the ‘Nuggets.’ But the WWE apparently couldn’t get the right numbers or NOB font for the Nuggets jerseys, so they used Clippers typography.” … The Brewers used a stars/stripes logo on the Miller Park mound yesterday. … “Visited the Tampa Bay History Center over the weekend and wandered across a display celebrating the area’s sports teams,” writes Bob Rios. “Noticed an old Buccaneers jersey with a small but noticeable flaw on its NOB.”

234 comments May 26th, 2009

In Case You’re Wondering…

Some of you have been e-mailing me to say that you’re getting “malware warning” messages when you visit the site today.

The first and most important thing to know is that your computer will NOT be harmed by visiting the site. We are under attack by a spambot that has inserted blind ad links into some of our scripts. This is so the ’bot’s owners can piggyback on our traffic and increase its Google rankings. Annoying but harmless.

How do you know the site is safe? Here’s a good way: Google automatically stops indexing a site if they think it’s infected with anything harmful (we had this problem last year when we were attacked by a different kind of ’bot). But if you Google “Uni Watch” right now our site still comes up fine.

Webmaster John Ekdahl managed to fix the problem last week without too much trouble, and I’m sure he’ll be able to do it again this time. I’ve left him a message, but of course today’s a holiday, so he probably won’t be able to work on it right away.

Honestly, though, the site is okay, your computer is okay, we’re all okay. Carry on, and my apologies for the hassle. Scroll down to the next entry for today’s regular content. — Paul

12 comments May 25th, 2009

Jordan Reveals Longstanding Dream of Playing Hockey

Tired of those unsightly Reebok logos on NHL jerseys? So is Michael Jordan! In fact, we could probably eliminate the Reebok mark from the NHL altogether if we just cloned a few hundred Jordans and used them to replace all the players currently on NHL rosters, because MJ ain’t wearin’ no vector.

What’s the deal? According to this column (helpfully sent my way by reader Rachel Bicicchi), Jordan happily donned a Blackhawks jersey at Friday’s ’Hawks/Wings game, “but only after team officials sewed a red patch over the maker’s company logo.”

This isn’t the first time Jordan has engaged in some impromptu uniform modification in order to please the Masters of Swoosh, and I think it’s safe to say it won’t be the last.

Enjoy your Decoration Day, don’t forget the sunscreen, etc., etc. — Paul

85 comments May 25th, 2009