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Posts filed under 'Pants'
By Phil Hecken
You guys will recall several weeks ago I ran a “Design-A-Cap” contest, for Coach Jerome Nemanich and his Sartell Sabres, and the results were outstanding. Reader Marc Walls saw the original contest, and thought our fantastic readers could do the “Design-A-Cap” one better — to wit: Design A Whole Uniform!
Here’s Marc’s original e-mail to me explaining his idea:
Love the work you’ve been doing on the website. I really enjoyed the design a cap idea for today’s column. I saw that you had proposed a design a uni option. I think that’s a great idea, and if you’re interested I’d like to offer the school I coach to be the team you choose.
I am one of the baseball coach’s at Clarksville High School in Clarksville, Tennessee. We are looking to undergo a complete redesign, including possibly a new logo.
Here’s the catch, which I think will make it fun for uniwatchers. Our colors are purple and gold! I’ve tried with no hope to come up with uniform designs that use the purple in a way that isn’t awful, and I could really use everyone’s creativity. Our current hat is solid purple with the Chicago Cubs “C” in gold.
Intrigued, but semi-swamped with weekend entries, I did respond to Marc, who then got back to me with more of the guts of the idea, as well as a few pictures from which to base the uniform redesigns:
Our high school is planning to undergo a complete redesign of our uniforms over the next year. I’m going to make some requests, and attach some pictures to show what the team has had in years’ past.
The school has been using the same hat design for the last 20 years, the Chicago Cubs “c” logo in yellow on a white outline. The hat is solid purple. We are probably going to keep that logo, but are looking to add a few alternate logos. I’m hoping the savvy guys at UW can create some great logos for us to use. Here’s what we’re looking for:
* A logo incorporating the letters “CHS” … any font or format. Looking for something unique, even outside the box. We would love a hat design featuring the CHS logo.
* A ferocious looking “wildcat”. Any logo involving a wildcat or paw logo would be outstanding. Our football program has been using the Kansas State Wildcat, and we want something a little better.
* Uniform designs. We are looking for a white, grey, purple, yellow or black (yeah, I know). Our head coach loves black so any black jerseys or hat designs would be outstanding.
If we decide to use any of these designs in the future, we will definitely work out some kind of payment for all of your hard work.
* The parameters: colors are purple and gold, which I know is hard enough, without including the black.
Marc included four photographs to emphasize his points above:
“Purplemesh” … “Purplemesh 2″ … “Grays” … and “Yellowmesh”.
I got one last e-mail from Marc this week, with one or two points he wants to stress:
While we are looking for uniform ideas, we would also really appreciate any logo redesigns and cap designs. That’s almost as important as the uniform designs. And like I said, we will gladly contribute some goodies to everyone who works so hard on those mock-ups.
Well there you guys have it. Another reader has thrown down the gauntlet, challenging you to come up with not just a new cap and logo redesign, but a whole uniform redesign as well. I’m not sure what “goodies” Marc will be able to provide to the contest winner(s), but we’ll worry about that when we get there.
So, anyone who is interested, the “rules” are basically the same as the “Design-A-Cap” contest: Take Marc’s ideas and put them into cyber-reality. Just remember the “guidelines”:
* A logo incorporating the letters “CHS” … any font or format. Looking for something unique, even outside the box. We would love a hat design featuring the CHS logo.
* A ferocious looking “wildcat”. Any logo involving a wildcat or paw logo would be outstanding. Our football program has been using the Kansas State Wildcat, and we want something a little better.
* Uniform designs. We are looking for a white, grey, purple, yellow or black (yeah, I know). Our head coach loves black so any black jerseys or hat designs would be outstanding.
*The parameters: colors are purple and gold.
As with the Design-A-Cap contest, I would ask that when you have your design(s) ready, please send them to me and put as your “SUBJECT” line: Design A Uniform Contest. You can also E-mail me at that address if you have any questions. I won’t set a hard and fast deadline, but I’d expect the contest to be open for at least two weeks — so try to have your submissions to me by the weekend of November 14-15.
If you don’t have any “blank” templates, a few designs can be found here, here, here, and here, or you can simply google “baseball uniform builder”, which will provide ample ways to customize a baseball uniform. There are probably a bunch of other blank uni templates out there too.
OK? OK. Don’t disappoint us Uni Watchers! After seeing those Sartell Sabres Cap designs, I know how great your entire uniforms, caps and logo designs will be.
~~~~~~~~~~ Well, folks, in case you missed it yesterday, Uni Watch Prexy and ESPN Page 2 columnist Paul Lukas had a great piece on World Series Rings. Paul didn’t get to upload the column to the main article yesterday, since by the time it was released, he was on his way to Cooperstown. I hope there’s some stuff for him to do up there. Check it out if you didn’t get to read it yesterday — really great, and timely article.
~~~~~~~~~~ Dipping into the E-mail bag again, got one this week from Dave Magruder, who has done some fascinating research regarding NFL alternate and throwback uniforms, and the frequency with which they have been worn. Obviously, with the “Legacy” uniforms, and the tremendous number of alternates out there (as well as several teams throwing back this year), Dave wondered which teams were the least guilty of this. Here’s what he found:
~~~“Last night as I was thinking about the widespread use of throwback and alternate uniforms in the NFL recently. It made me wonder: How many teams have NOT redesigned their uniforms, or worn alternate/throwback uniforms since 1995? In other words, how many teams have retained the exact same look and uniform set for every game?
“(Obviously, I thought 1995 was a good starting point since it is still recent history, and most NFL teams wore throwbacks to celebrate the league’s 75th Anniversary in 1994).
“You may be surprised by the answer. From 1995-2009 there is not a single team that has retained the same uniform set for literally every game. All 32 teams in the league have either redesigned their uniforms, worn alternates, or worn throwbacks at some point since 1995. There were four teams that came close to retaining the same look throughout this period, though. I have outlined them below:”
Packers: Green Bay has diverted from their traditional uniform set only twice since 1995. This occurred in 2001 and 2003 when they wore throwbacks as mandated by the league for Thanksgiving Day games.
Colts: Indianapolis donned league-mandated Thanksgiving throwback uniforms in 2004. (Note: Colts have also changed their look in a couple minor ways. The team wore blue pants for several games in 1995–no longer a part of the team’s wardrobe– and permanently switched from a blue to a gray facemask).
Chiefs: Kansas City sported the same uniform until this year’s AFL Legacy celebration.
Raiders: Like the Chiefs, Oakland’s steak of uniform consistency was broken by league-mandated AFL Legacy celebration.
“As you can see, these teams were mostly eliminated for use of throwbacks that were mandated by the league, instead of issued by the team itself. Nonetheless, I was surprised to find that there is literally not a single team in the NFL that has survived the alternate/throwback/redesign craze.
“Thought this may interest readers. Thanks for all your hard work on this blog.”
~~~Thanks Dave! That’s very interesting. Only four teams (and even they are not immune) seem to have escaped the alternate/throwback craze. Not surprisingly, those four also ranked very highly on our recent home and road uniform surveys (results of the road poll here). Obviously, when you have a uniform that works, you don’t mess with it. Wish a few other teams would take a page from their books. Great stuff there.
~~~~~~~~~~ Teepee for your bunghole? Oh…wait — that’s Cornholio, not cornhole. Good thing Milwaukee’s finest David Frost (”Frosty”) has some schweet cornhole game boards he’s designed. I’ll let Frosty explain:
Very sexy…not trying to be a whore or anything, but I gotta tell ya – I got done with them last Thursday, took them to my kids’ baseball tourney in Charleston this past weekend…the compliments and inquiries – wow! There’s Packer fans everywhere!
So what exactly did Frosty design? Check ‘em out: here, here and here.
I’m guessing those are supposed to be Packers boards? Probably no significance to the numbers either.
Thanks Frosty!
~~~~~~~~~~ Cleaning out the cupboards today, I wanted to feature a Mets Uniform Redesign (is it me, or do we seem to have a lot of folks clamoring for the Mets to redo their unis? Don’t worry, we won’t be having any “Fixin’ the Mets” full entries this year — that’s what Spring is for, no?.) Anyway, reader Laurence Holland missed the last batch of uni-tweaks, but wanted to send along his Mets redesign concept, so without further ado, here’s Larry:
Hi Phil,
I know the moment may have passed, but with all the buzz about a possible Mets redesign for 2010, I thought I’d pass along my two-cent contribution. I first mocked up a cream-and-pinstripes combo over the summer, when the Mets rocked the oversized-NY throwbacks, so I was very happy to see that it might come to pass. I also tweaked the rest of their uniforms, the idea being to make them simple, classy, traditional, and black-less.
A couple of notes: the racing stripe on the away grays is supposed to be a little more subtle than the original ’80s version, though my ham-handed photoshop skills couldn’t really convey it. And the all-blue alternate with the blue-and-white trucker-style cap isn’t my favorite, but it’s the best I could come up with. Consider it a concession to merchandising reality.
Anyway, please do with this what you will. From my lips to Jeff Wilpon’s ears, eh?
Thanks Laurence. Next up is Bill Jones, who also missed the last “uni tweaks” but had a “Rays” tweak he wanted to share. Here’s Bill:
Hey Phil,
I love the uni tweaks! I know I’m late, but I did this almost 2 years ago had some trouble finding the MS paint file. I thought it was pretty good though, so I wanted to send it to you.
PL has mentioned that he liked the TB Devil Rays unis that featured green as a primary color. I too liked this design, and although I don’t completely hate it, I think the newer Rays unis are too sterile and flat out boring. I did, however, like the introduction of light blue, so I combined that with the deep green. I think it’s a handsome combination, one that is original and nicely captures the tropical feel without the use of aqua/teal (Does the world need more aqua? I think not!)
A couple notes…
For the logo, I kept the actual Ray that the team currently features as a sleeve patch. I also took the liberty of changing the team’s name to the St. Petersburg Rays (maybe it’s just me, but I think calling teams “Tampa Bay” is lame…the cities are Tampa and St. Pete, “Tampa Bay” is the body of water between them, and the Rays play in St. Pete). Besides, how can you argue with that two-tone interlocking S-P (for the hat), and the sweet “St. Pete” sleeve patch? I like the idea of calling the team the “St. Pete Rays”. Also, for that jersey, you may be thinking “what is going on with that that neck trim?” Well, think of the early 90’s Royals jerseys…
I’m proud of this one … and I never got around to it, but I totally envisioned a powder blue road uni (with the dark green hat…it would be killer!). Thanks a lot and keep up the good work!
–Bill Jones (not the gumball helmet guy)
Good stuff Bill. Thanks again to all who have sent me their uni concepts. I expect some time in the near future to begin running your Football Uni Tweaks, so if you’ve sent me something, it’s-a-comin’ — and if you want to send me some NFL tweaks, drop me a line.
~~~~~~~~~~ Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: OK, another “apropos” scoreboard today. Shouldn’t pose any difficulty at all. But we’re winding down the major league baseball season so today’s game should reflect the timeliness of the year, no? Of course it should. Most of you, if you’ve been paying attention to events on the national stage, should be able to “name the game” (although, probably not the date) just from site. The rest of you may need to hit Baseball Almanac or Retrosheet. You gotta hit them anyway, in order to provide the link to the game. So, here we go: Guess The Game From The Scoreboard.
~~~~~~~~~~ The boys are back for a little football today, (could Mick possibly wear more sweatbands, btw?), and Mick is about to make the acquaintance of one of Mike’s relatives. The things you learn about your friends when you meet a member of their family. So…enjoy the beginnings of a serial benchies:
Meet Mongo
More Mongo
~~~~~~~~~~That’ll do it for today. Hope you guys, especially all you designers (and wanna-be designers) out there really go to bat, no pun intended, for the Wildcats and Coach Marc Walls. If the ‘design a cap’ nominees were any indication of the incredible talent in UW-land, then I’m sure we’ll get some amazing entries for the full-blown “Design A Uniform” contest. Remember, send me your submissions to me, or email me if you have any questions about the contest. Take the last train to Clarksville — I’ll be waiting at the station.
Game 3 of the Fall Classic and lots of college football today — and surely there’ll be some interesting uni-matchups for Jim to choose from. Don’t forget to post some of your suggestions in the comments. There will be at least ONE color-on-color matchup (and maybe more) — with those colors to be black and orange. How fitting.
Hey — how does a monster score a touchdown?
Easy, he crosses the ghoul line.
Have a safe and Happy Hallowe’en everyone.
October 31st, 2009
There was some discussion of this in the comments yesterday afternoon and, especially, last night. But as I often have to remind myself, many (most?) of the site’s readers don’t actually pore through the comments every day, so…
At first glance, you might think the Broncos really blew it last night by wearing yellow-striped throwback pants on the road. According to Football Uniforms Past and Present, they wore white-striped pants on the road back in the day, which makes sense — if you’re wearing a white-striped helmet, a white jersey, and white-striped socks, yellow trim on your pants looks way out of place. It’s like watching something in black-and-white, except one element is in color. Why couldn’t they spring for a set of road pants as part of this season’s throwback program?
But if you look at some old photos, it turns out that Denver never had white-striped road pants in 1960 and ’61. I haven’t been able to find any color pics, but even black-and-white images make it clear that the pants striping had to have been yellow. I’ve compiled a bunch of additional examples here.
So here’s what we can conclude from this episode:
1) The Broncos had only one set of pants in 1960 and ’61, and it had yellow stripes. If they ever had a white-striped set, I haven’t seen visual evidence of it (and Ricko, who was there, confirms the yellow-only theory).
2) Judging by last night’s game — the first time most of us have ever seen the road uni in color — this means the Broncos’ early uniforms were even more poorly designed than we originally thought.
3) The Broncos deserve credit for getting this detail right and being true to their history, warts and all.
4) Football Uniforms Past and Present is wrong. And not for the first time, either. It’s a great site, but there are lots of errors floating about in there. I believe Ricko and Phil will be bringing more of them to light shortly.
All of which is just reinforces something I seem to find myself saying every month or two: Don’t treat uni history web sites as gospel truth. Yes, they’re useful, they’re great starting points for historical discussion, etc., but they’re far from perfect.
Unfortunately, some people haven’t yet gotten this message. Last night, someone on the Creamer boards started a thread entitled “broncos in wrong pants vs. chargers mnf.” As of this morning, the thread had 16 posts, and nobody had bothered to point out that the pants were actually correct.
November Happenings: Two items of note for NYC-area folks:
• As some of you may recall, two winters ago I wrote this article about the once-proud New York tradition of the beefsteak (in this context, “beefsteak” refers to an event, not a particular cut of meat). On November 8th, that tradition will return to Brooklyn after an absence of too many decades. I will definitely be attending, plus I may also be giving a short presentation of some sort — not sure about that last part yet. Either way, it’s gonna be a blast.
• After taking a week to recover from the beefsteak, we should be ready for a Uni Watch party the following Sunday, November 15th. Let’s pencil it in for 2pm at Sheep Station, with official confirmation to follow shortly-ish.
Uni Watch News Ticker: The Grizzlies have unveiled an alternate uniform. Additional details (and a misleading headline) here. … Yesterday I noted that Kendry Morales’s left-sleeve piping has been frayed during the postseason. But Alex Rocklein says it’s been that way at least since August 2nd. … There’s a school called “Bojo”? Nope — that’s Bowie High in Texas, and “Bojo” stands for — get this — “Boost our Jackrabbits onward.” They even have a jackrabbit logo (or at least that’s what Andy McNeel says). … Interesting marketing partnership between the Red Sox and a UK soccer team. … Just what the world needs: a replica throwback in a box (thanks, Kek). … Bit of a T-shirt controversy involving Nick Swisher. Further details here (thanks, Phil). … Ronald Covert has a friend who makes custom-painted sports-themed cornhole boards. Very cool. … Last year I linked to some artwork by Brian Jungen, who at the time was making Native American-themed art out of Air Jordans. Now Kirsten informs me that he has a show at the National Museum of the American Indian in DC, and some of the material is amazing. In addition to Air Jordans, he’s also working with baseball gloves, golf bags (I think that’s what those are, right?), and jerseys. … We all know various high school teams have pinched NFL team logos. Until now, though, I’d never seen a school using Bucco Bruce (with thanks to Tris Wykes). … UConn will be adding a “JH” helmet decal in memory of Jasper Howard (as reported by Matt O’Brien). … Teebz’s excellent Hockey Blog in Canada has a new entry about the Preston Rivulettes, and it’s chock-full of amazing old photos of women’s hockey and softball teams. Great historical info, too — highly recommended reading. … According to the last four grafs of this article, Clemson and Coastal Carolina will go color-on-color on Halloween (with thanks to Mike Miller). … In a related item, Tennessee wanted to go color-on-color for this Saturday’s game against Alabama, but the Crimson Tide said no (big thanks to Andrew Dockery).
October 20th, 2009
By Phil Hecken
Well, MLB has finally begun the League Championship Series, so as the second season begins to build towards the matchup FOX would kill for a possible Yankees-Dodgers World Series (and a uni classic of epic proportions), lets take another look at what you, the readers, have dreamed up to fix your favorite teams. We tweaked the White Sox, the Brewers and the Blue Jays, plus a whole bunch of others — so let’s empty the baseball tank today and see who else needs fixin’.
~~~
First up is Hungry Hungry Hipster, who has an unique take on the Bronx Bombers. Here’s HHH:
Hi Phil!
Attached is my Yankees jersey “uni tweak.” Since the Yankees are so traditional and probably wouldn’t want a major redesign of their classic uniforms, I decided to give them a subtle update. I was inspired by the treatment the NFL ref jersey stripes got in their update several years ago. I widened the pinstripes at the top of the jersey, and they mirror the flared ends (serifs?) of the Yankee logo. :)
~~~
Next up is Matthew Mark Sajna, who has some ideas for the Indians. Here’s Matt:
Here is my idea of how to improve the Uniforms of the Indians. The first set include the home and away jerseys. These are fauxback uniform combinations, and they feature my idea for a new logo the team could intorduce as a sort of compromise for the protestors against the iconic Chief Wahoo. The second set features alternate unis for both home and away games. I brought back the red jersey as a harken back to the 70’s. Hope you like them. Thanks.
~~~
Our next submission comes to us from Jordan Fleck, who has some thoughts on the Houston Astros. Here’s Jordan (who apparently likes all capital letters):
SINCE EVERYONE SEEMS TO BE IN THE MODDE TO REINVIGORATE THEIR CURRENT TEAMS DESIGN, I THOUGHT THAT IT’D BE A GOOD IDEA TO GIVE THE ASTROS FAITHFULL A MAKEOVER. THE FIRST IS MY ATTEMPT AT USING THE CURRENT COLORS WITH A NEW SCRIPT FONT ON THE JERSEY AND A TWO TONE CAP. THE BLACK ALTERNATE WOULD BE USED FOR BATTING PRACTICE AND I DECIDED TO CREATE A BIT OF A FAUX-BACK FOR A COLT .45S JERSEY TO BE WORN ON SUNDAY GAMES.
IN THE SECOND ATTEMPT, I WENT BACK TO THE MIDNIGHT BLUE AND SUNSET ORANGE COLOR SCHEME WITH THE NEW SCRIPT FONT AND AN ORANGE AND BLUE ALTERNATE. I LIKE THE ORANGE AND BLUE TONES BUT THEY DON’T LOOK GOOD IN GREY.
Jordan also included this cool Chinese motif with his submission — not sure if that’s supposed to go with the Astros mocks, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
~~~
Moving along, we have Doug Peltz, who has graced his with his concepts for the Detroit Tigers and Oakland A’s. Here’s Doug:
I saw your column today about making changes to MLB jerseys. I have a couple that I came up with a while ago and though I’d pass them along. I have a away alternate and an Oakland A’s home alternate. I’ve also included a new Tiger’s logo which is a combination of the old 80’s logo and the more recent Tiger crawling through the Olde English D logo. Hope you like them.
~~~
Our next submission comes from Matt McCutchan, who tweaked the Marlins. Here’s Matt:
Going for a more classic look and most importantly away from the black. If the mgmt wants to get away from the “90s teal,” I thought a UNC blue with navy highlights and just a touch of orange, the way, say, the STL Cardinals have a touch of yellow, would look nice..along with the navy piping..i hope you dig it.
~~~
Another Mets concept — a tweak on a previous concept — comes to us from Adam Wood. Here’s Adam:
Let me just start by saying that I’m a little pumped that I’m sending my first uniform design to you. Whether or not anyone gets to see it doesn’t concern me too much. Alex Rocklein made an excellent design for the Mets. However, there are a few things that I thought would be better. You will notice in the attached picture all my proposed revisions.
1) Replaced that orange button on the hats with a much more subtle blue one.
2) Got rid of the funky orange drop shadows and just gave the blue numbers an orange outline.
3) Added a number to the front of the home jersey as well as enlarged the one on the front of the roadies.
4) Took Alex’s idea for the road’s arm bands and applied the blue-orange-blue pattern to the whites.
5) On the home uniforms only, I removed the mets logo and replaced it with a Mr. Met patch.
If you want to get really detailed
6) I took the traditional “Mr. Met at bat” patch and cleaned it up by making all the cream colors to white, and changing the blue hat with an orange brim to all blue in order to better match the team.
Thanks for taking the time to check my ideas out.
~~~
Although our next submitter, Andrew Dixon missed the article containing all the Blue Jays tweaks, he sent the following along for your consideration. Here’s Andrew:
Hi Phil,
I am sending along a Blue Jays concept I came up with about six months ago. At the time, I didn’t have an email address for you, but I sent it along to Paul and asked him to forward it to you. I don’t know if that never happened or whether it did and it was so long ago it was forgotten, but I’d love to share my concept with UniWatch readers! I know I missed the day dedicated to Blue Jays posts, but hopefully you can work it in when you present the other re-design concepts!
I drew up home, away, home alternate, and road alternate concepts. I must admit I have an inexplicable affinity for the whole sans serif/no capitalization “mod” look in fonts which has recently become popular again (think the Pepsi font). The funny thing is, I always thought I hated this style – especially the trend toward not capitalizing things that ought to be capitalized – and I think part of me still does, and yet I also must admit to being weirdly drawn to it. I know it is very reminiscent of that old Padres font from 1978-1984, but what can I say? I like it, even as I know it has that kind of dated look (but that sort of font is very in right now – again, Pepsi, photobucket, etc.).
The other idea I had was to alternate shades of blue in the lettering: Blue Jays, after all, exhibit more than one shade of blue in their feathers, so, between the lettering and the use of powder blue for the road alternate, I’ve employed three shades of blue in this design.
One final note: had I had the expertise, I would have tried to mimic the original Blue Jays font by having a white line pass through the middle of all the letters in the word “blue jays,” just like it does/did in their original wordmark. However, I couldn’t get that to work in MS Paint, which is what I used, without making it look bad/unprofessional, so I gave up. If someone can do that to this design, I’d love to see what it looks like.
~~~
Winding down, our next submitter is Dwayne White, who has some Cincinnati Reds concepts. Here’s Dwayne:
Phil:
I love the articles about the MLB uniform updates.
I decided to tackle the Cincinnati Reds. I am not much of a fan of the “faux old-timer” look that the Reds are currently sporting. I grew up following the Reds in the late-’60’s and ’70’s of The Big Red Machine era. I always loved their traditional look, but the pullovers went on to long.
On the jerseys, I “ditched the black” drop shadows and went with the MLB Block font that the Reds used from the 1960’s until 2007. I felt it was a more traditional look with an updated style. I am not a fan of the current font that the Reds are currently using. The guys at The Clink Room did a good job, but it is not my cup of tea.
The road jersey is a button-down version of The Big Red Machine uniform. The home alternate jersey is a cream-colored vest look from the mid-’60’s. I like the cream colored jersey of the Giants and I went with that look for the vests. In my opinion, not every team can wear vests. Much like every team can’t wear pinstripes like the Yankees do. The Reds and Pirates vests have a deep tradition and I thought I’d incorporate that look. I also included a pinstriped cap to go with the vests, but a red cap can also be worn.
The home jersey is a crisp, bright snow white color with the contrast of red. The Sunday alternate jersey is my favorite. The bright red with the contrast of white, devoid of any black or drop shadows, is an upgrade without too many bumperstickers. Plus, it can be worn with the white, gray or the pinstriped pants.
I also went with the 4 inch player names on the back instead of the traditional 3 inch letters. That also harkens back to the mid-’60’s up until 2007. I like the name under the numbers, but not in an arch like the Reds have used, but no trim was used.
I hope you enjoy my concepts.
~~~
Our next submission also comes from a reader, Christopher Parke, who missed the Blue Jays fixin. But that’s OK, he’s got a uni concept anyway. Here’s Chris:
Your recent blog post about revamping the blue jays awful uniforms got me in a creative mood. I used the ideas and designs of the contributors in your post (including yours)and some of my own ideas. The MS Paint file is attached. What do you think?
~~~
The penultimate tweak comes from Geoffrey Waterman, who has conceptualized the Seattle Mariners. Here’s Geoffrey:
Hi!
I don’t really think the Seattle Mariners need to much to change their uniforms, but with the Sonics gone and a new soccer team that incorporates very similar colors that the Mariners use, plus the Seahawks, I thought they could use some color change.
I decided to go with a combination of the M-trident logo from the olden days and colors similar to then as well as from the baseball-M’s logo era. I chose to use a different font (partly because the one they use now is difficult to find) because I wanted to find something that reflected the metropolitan aspect of Seattle while not being hoity-toity. And for the numbers I wanted to use something similar to the ones used in their current alternate, a little more curvy and visually appealing.
With the home uniform I didn’t want to add much except for the change in font, number and color scheme (enough damage already), so I kept the blue piping, blue belt and the blue hat on white, with a similar arch to the team name and player name. I liked the non-capital “seattle” of the powder-blue Pilots unis, so I took that idea but with the “Mariners” for home, keeping the capital M to match the capital S on the hat. I also introduced a side stripe for the pants (followed down into the stirrups) and the sleeve stripes that made the Pilots uniforms so sexy.
With the away uniform, the changes were much the same as with the home, including the pants stripes, but I kept a straight blue stirrup for simplicity’s sake. It is the away uni, after all.
The alternate uniform is a few ideas mixed together. it has the sleeve and pants stripes from the home uniform, with stirrup stripes that match the sleeves. I did the jersey in the blue but with yellow sleeves (not a vest!), and did just the trident logo and a number on the front—it is supposed to be a home alternate.
Thanks! Hopefully someone else did some Mariners mock-ups to compare. Like I said, though, not that they need it.
~~~
Next up is Ben Traxel, one of our Sartell Sabres “Design A Cap” contest participants. Ben has seemingly way too much time on his hands, as I think he’s tweaked every MLB team (or is on his way to so doing). However, they’re really outstanding efforts, and you’ll wanna check each one out. So, take a deep breath, and enjoy the creativity that is Ben:
Phil,
As you can see, I’ve been working waaaay too long on this and not enough at my job lately. Part of the sickness I guess. At least I’ve been having fun along the way! I’ve got some more started but these are the ones I have finished. I really liked the Brewers changes the other day and wanted to tweak my tweaks after seeing the awsome designs posted, but alas, I left them alone. I’ve been e-mailing back and forth with Frosty and RPM in the process too. Well, here’s an explaination of each of the ones I’ve gotten to so far (I will do them all but it might take till next season!).
Process: I generally tried to look at the past of each team (that has a past) and use what is already available instead of completely redoing scripts, logos, colors, etc. In some cases I’ve gone all the way though. I prefer the city letter on the hat, mascot on the homies, and city on the roadies. I started doing this before all the tweaking began on the blog, with my versions of 70s alt unis. This was inspired by the Royals powder blues this year. Had to do sansabelts to make it “complete” but I suppose they could be used with belts as well. After you started posting the White Sox, I took it to another level and began adding the dailies to go with my alts. I never really liked having alts but now I’ve kind of changed my tune and am okay with one worn occasionally. Stirrups with stripes are a must. I am tired of boring grays and boilerplate designs that seem to be the same on each team so I tried to make something unique for the whites and grays for everybody. I am not afraid of bright colors as you will see…….here goes.
Brewers: home … road … alt. Current design looks to be off the shelf by people who have no sense of history or passion for baseball. Definately needs a redsign. Put the old M back on the hat. Go with colors from the originals. I recycled the BREWERS which could be this design or the block font. Either one works, but I chose this one. Could do without the lower case e, but none the less, looks okay. Barrel man needs a comeback so I put him on the state map for the sleeve. Added the hops to get something from the current set. Colored sanis need to make a comeback here also.
White Sox: home … road … alt. I put the alt together before you even had your White Sox tweak post. I always dug the collars from the late 70s so I had to include them. This is the only team that doesn’t have stirrups but the stripes certainly add to the overall getup. I created a new hat logo with a C that I think turned out pretty good. Never liked the big S and smallish O and X on the current logo so I combined them to make it work better for the alt. I know the three concepts don’t match each other but since they are never worn together I never thought that really mattered.
Cubs: home … road … alt. Obviously the pinstripes didn’t need much help as they have become a classic even though they really didn’t come around until later in the franchise existance. I just modified the logo a little, going back to an older version. The bear sleeve patch was always cool and needs to be a fixture. The roads is where the Cubs always seem to have had touble as they tend to change quite regularly. I went with a powder blue that is not quite as electric as some and it looks to work quite well. The horsecollar and red CHICAGO made the whole design come together. I tried some combos of blue lettering/numbering but the red by far stood out. I hope they never bring back the red cap bill. I know a lot of people don’t like pins on dark jerseys but the white ones from the 70s look mighty fine with the white pants in my opinion on the alts. Added the powder sanis to make it complete.
Pirates: home … road … alt. This is one team that vests work on. Either a team is a vest team or they are not. Hint Rockies? Not much to tweak here, but add the colored sanis and make all letters in PIRATES the same size. The Roadies are one of my favorites. The horsecollar being contrasted with the gray really came to life with the double yellow stripe. Hasn’t been done in decades and I fell in love once I started messing with it. The yellow alt with the red trim is of course taken from the late 70s. Kind of fun and should be a big seller for the fans….IMO don’cha know.
Rays: home … road … alt. Here is one team with no history to go off of. To me this means no horsecollar which has ties to the ancient past. Being in Florida, they definately need to brighten their look and do away with their drab getup they have. The sunburst is cool, stick with that. Kept the Devil Ray logo on the sleeve as well. The colors though are brighter, happier, beachier, Floridaier. Created a “watertable” on the whites and made their version of power blue more acqua for obvious reasons. They definately need to have more fun. Maybe they were a little gunshy during their latest overhaul after that first disaster!
Orioles: home … road … alt. Like the Pirates, not much to tweak here. My biggest beef is that damn bird they keep sticking on the hat. It didn’t work before, it didn’t work when it was a cartoon, and it doesn’t work now. Nothing more wimpy than that birdmark. So. In the beginning they had a B on the hat. There is still nothing more classic than a basic letter as the hat logo. Stick the old block B back up there an don’t worry about the Red Sox claiming it is a copied B idea from them. It was their once, do it again. The cartoon duck thing, older style that looks much classier, works well on the sleeve. Other than that, These guys are good, keeping the city name on the grays of course.
Padres: home … road … alt. Similar to the Rays, this team needs color. They had it once and I think they need it again. I always liked the brown/yellow scheme but it does lead to a bid of a toilet bowl conotation so I stayed away. Electric powder is the way to go for these guys. The alts obviously play off the past and I chose the best remaining wordmarks for the dailies. The sleeve patch is also a classic and should be kept but the hat has always had issues. They never seem to be satisfied with the interlocking SD, how it should be connected, the exact font, etc. I created a new hat logo with the setting sun SD. This is another beachy team and colors need to be used to make this statement.
One more thing, I created my own template in Autocad where I do all my work. It is what I know best so I just stay with that. Well, there you have it. For now. I will be doing more, and will get them to you when I get another good batch. We might not be in baseball season at that time, but oh well. Always enjoy your weekenders.
Wow, Ben, those were awesome. But wait … He isn’t done yet — Ben also sent me mock ups (without descriptions) for the following — and I’m sure if he’s reading this post, he’ll tell us all about the following in the comments:
Oakland A’s: home … road … alt.
Arizona Diamondbacks: home … road … alt.
Florida Marlins: home … road … alt.
Texas Rangers: home … road … alt.
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Whew…that’s some work by the avid (or is it rabid?) UW readership. Great stuff one and all. I apologize for the length of this post, but I had so many great uni tweaks I wanted to put them all into one post — didn’t realize it was gonna be this long, but hey — more for you to enjoy. Thanks to all the submitters. Let them know how you feel about their tweaks!
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 Our man on the street, Jim Vilk, is back from the boonies for his “NC2A matchups”. He is gonna have a tough time with his uni matchups today — there are some outstanding potential ones, and a possible bunch of clunkers. Now, I don’t always agree with his choices, but he’s pretty discerning in his picks. How bout some nominees from you guys today? Scan the wires, check out the obscure games, find the doozies. You don’t want him to put USC/ND or The Red River Rivalry in the one spot, right? Post picks of your top (best and worst) games for his consideration down below. Thanks!
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Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: Aight…as the season winds down, we’re gonna get a little tricky with this scoreboard. Not all that tricky, but it might give you pause. Teams are pretty obvious, but that’s where the ease ends. Or maybe not. You guys are too good at this game to be stumped, especially with this one. But I’ll give it a shot anyway. As always, and if possible, please do NOT post the date of the game but link to Baseball Almanac or Retrosheet and post a link to the answer. If that’s not possible, but I believe it is, link to a newspaper story or something similar which details the game. OK? OK. Ready. Guess The Game.
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 ATTENTION UNI TRACKERS — If you’re on of those insane lunatics, like me, who has kept track of your teams’ uniform combinations for all 162 (or, if you track the Twins, all 163) games this season, think about gathering all of your data, plus a final writeup, for your tracking. I may post my Mets tracking tomorrow, depending upon the size of the post. I’m hoping to gather everyone’s tracking and (if Paul gives me the OK), possibly place them into one big file for inclusion in the archives. When you have your stuff ready, send them to me with the subject line “UNI TRACKING – (your team)”. If you made it this far, I thank you for all your efforts. You don’t need to be terribly brief in your write-up, but please don’t compose a novel either. Make sure you list any particular trends or unique factors. I can tell you this: The Mets sucked this year, but not surprisingly, they had better records in certain combinations — now, had they worn those combinations more or less often, would their record have been any different? Who is to say. All I know is, when all was said and done, the Mets wore TWELVE different combinations this season, sporting (shockingly) winning records in six of them. Stay tuned (if you care) for the full writeup.
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Ah…don’t ya hate it when those young whippersnappers think they’re faster and smarter and better lookin’ than you are? Pretty sure Mick does. Unfortunately, he’s wrong. But does this mean that Mick is only half-fast? Enjoy your Saturday Benchies. And remember, any resemblance between Mick and Rick is, well, purely coincidental.
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This and That: Did we ever get a linkie to the new UNLV basketball unis? I don’t remember. Forgive me if we did … I know this was posted (at least in the comments), but worth another look-see: SI takes a look at the AFL legacy unis … Speaking of AFL throwbacks, the Patriots and Titans Oilers will be wearing them this Sunday … Big game at Big Bend today, when the Irish meet the Trojans, and will the Irish break out the green like they did before the ‘77 matchup? … This is a few days old, but the Huff Post has a nice breakdown of Broncos Unis through the years … In one of those moments where “you remember exactly where you were,” it was 20 years ago today (don’t you feel old now?) … It’s gotta be the unis, right? Nope. Both football teams from Mizzou are winless in 2009, despite both wearing throwbacks last weekend … Fresh on the heels of Paul’s post yesterday on the Winter Olympics melted records medals, the London Olympics of 2012 has unveiled it’s logos — yawn … Wanna own one of them game-used, unwashed Bronco uniforms from last weekend’s Legacy game? Here’s your chance … If you’re not a baseball fan, or don’t live in the northeast, or reside in my condo (which has no heat, thank you very little), you might not know it was cold at Yankee Stadium last night — like really cold — Lots of Fudd’s and hoodies on the participants … “Bullpen? What Bullpen?” … For every king, a crown … Apparently the porthole was closed, but the velcro wasn’t … Looks like the seventh inning stretch at Yankee Stadium will be a little shorter now, but let’s hope the Steinbrenner’s don’t hire this guy to replace this guy … Rafa, dude, what’s up with the shorts? Did they belong to A-Rod’s outfit? … Does this remind anyone of this? … And finally, what happens when you go to an adidas school, but you’d rather wear Jordans? Well, if you’re Marcus Jordan, what do you think? (thanks to James Huening for the tip.)
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Alrighty then, that’s a wrap for this fine Saturday. Enjoy the football, because it looks like mother nature may deprive you of baseball. Oh, right, I guess there’s hockey and some other stuff too. Unitrackers, start your engines, and lets see some of them gridiron matchups you hope Jim will pick as his top 5 (or worst). Have a great Saturday
October 17th, 2009
Okay, let’s get right to it: the Broncos/Pats game. I saw most of the game and have pored over a buttload of photos from various sources. After all of that, my thoughts are as follows:
• First and foremost, whether the Broncos looked “good” or “bad” (I think there was some of both) is not the point. The point is that they were revisiting a chapter from their history — a chapter most of us had never seen, and that almost nobody had seen in color, a chapter that has become semi-legendary and is therefore worthy of further study, even if only as a re-enactment. That’s the value of a project like this, even if the uniforms in question look like shit. And I’m not saying they did look like shit, mind you — I’m just saying that’s not the real issue at hand.
• The vertically striped socks were fun, but where were the whites? The early-’60s Broncos (like every other pro team of that era) wore mid-level whites with their hose, and NFL rules still require mid-level whites today. True, many players nowadays have reduced the white component to just a sliver, but the Broncos didn’t even try yesterday — they just went with full-length stripes, which took things from sublime to ridiculous and, more importantly, was historically inaccurate.
It’s easy to blame the players and the equipment staff for this, but I also say, “J’accuse!” to Reebok, because they could easily have made the socks half-white and half striped (like these, only striped instead of solid). Hell, they gave the socks a white foot –why not bring the white up to the proper level? A major botch by everyone involved.
• The white-free hose led to some tomfoolery on the field, as Jabar Gaffney went candy-striped, plus I noticed a few players wearing two pairs of socks with the stripes misaligned, creating a sort of harlequin effect.
• Also worth noting that the short pants worn by so many of today’s players resulted in the stripes extending above the knee, which is not a good look. Not quite as bad as this, but getting there.
• In the olden days, Denver’s pants stripes were much thinner than the sock stripes, so there was always a clear distinction between sock stripe and pant stripe. But the pants piping on the throwback pants is much heavier, so it sometimes looked like the two sets of stripes were bleeding into each other (that photo doesn’t capture it so well, but I saw it a lot on TV).
• Temperatures in Denver were below freezing but the officials stuck with their throwback attire, including the white knickers, instead of going for the cold-weather slacks. Good for them.
• Y’know, helmets with TV numbers on the side always look so damn cool. I realize teams would rather have a logo on the side, and it’s hard to argue with that, but I wish more teams could find a way to marry the two approaches, like the Chargers used to do.
• Looks like Brandon Marshall used one of the socks as a towel. Here’s another view.
• Okay, so you wouldn’t want to see that Denver uni every week, and probably ditto for the color scheme, but someone on the Chris Creamer board created this — not bad!
• Very cool that they had this flying at the stadium.
• Oh, the Pats. Yeah, they looked swell. And Julian Edelman was doing the double sock stripe thing.
Amazing but true: I know this is gonna be hard to believe, but apparently there were also some other games in the NFL yesterday. Here are some of the visual highlights:
• Rare event in KC, as the Chiefs and Cowboys played a throwback game with no white jerseys. And since nobody has a black-and-white TV anymore, I see nothing wrong with it — let’s see more color-on-color matchups. Lots of additional pics here and here. (This game was uni-notable for another reason, as I’ll get to in a minute.)
• Chad Ochocinco finally broke out the pink chinstrap (or was it black strap a pink cup?). Meanwhile, his teammate Dan Skuta, who wears No. 51, had a No. 46 helmet. (Screen shot courtesy of Michael Kinney.)
• Love those Rams throwbacks (additional photos here). Interestingly, they didn’t spring for new helmets — they just swapped out the ram horn decals, as described in the opening graf of this story.
• Joe Skiba had told me that the Giants’ ghosted Reebok logos would no longer be a problem, but apparently he was mistaken. Naturally, I think it’s great. Too bad every team can’t have this “problem.”
• Owen Schmitt of the Seahawks had blood on his uni number yesterday. And how did that happen? He smashed his helmet into his forehead during pregame intros, with predictable results. Bright fella. (Screen shots courtesy of Chad Todd.)
• In that same game, David Garrard’s NOB was stretched into an arc (probably because the jersey had been glued or Velcroed to his pads). Not sure if the last “R” in his name was backwards or just stretched into a new shape, but it looked bad either way. (Thanks to Matt Takimoto for the screen shot.)
• Just what the world’s been waiting for: pink spats.
I hear there were some baseball games yesterday too, but none of those games featured vertically striped socks, so the hell with ’em.
End of an Era: The color-on-color aspect wasn’t the only unusual aspect of that Cowboys/Chiefs game. Reader J.J. Lauderdale explains:
The Chiefs’ wearing of their Dallas Texans throwback helmet snapped a 548-game streak of the Chiefs wearing nothing but their red shell, arrowhead logo, and white facemask — a streak that began on September 15, 1974, against the Jets. The Chiefs had worn gray facemasks in 1973 before changing to white in ’74.
This is the longest streak in NFL history for a team continuously wearing one helmet with no throwback, no change of logo, no change of facemask color, etc. If you ask people who had the longest streak, most people guess the Cowboys, Steelers, or Raiders and never get to the Chiefs. But many of the teams with the more classic helmets had their streaks broken during the 1994 throwback season (the Steelers, Raiders, and Cardinals, for example), when they wore throwbacks or blank shells. The Chiefs, however, wore their regular lids in 1994, keeping their streak intact.
The four next longest streaks in history are:
• Cardinals, 1960-1994: They wore that bird head logo on a white helmet for 499 straight games before using the blank shell for a throwback game against the Browns in 1994.
• Raiders, 1964-1994: Wore their current helmet for 446 straight games before going retro for the 1994 75th-anniversary season.
• Browns, 1975-2005: 434 straight games for the white-facemask version of their helmet. Then they switched to a gray mask.
• Cowboys, 1977-2004: 432 straight games between the 1976 bicentennial helmet (the one with the red stripe) and the first time they donned the white throwbacks.
Now that the Chiefs’ streak has been broken, the longest current streak belongs to the Bengals. They’re at about 238 games, dating back to 1994 (not sure exactly which week they last wore the 1994 throwback helmet, so it may be off a week or two).
Stellar research there by J.J. — thanks, buddy.
New Sponsor: As you may have noticed, we have a new advertiser at the top of the page: Homage Clothing, which produces some nifty T-shirts, many of them Ohio-themed. Check out their stuff, and thanks for continuing to support all our advertisers.
Singles Going Steady Fast: Today’s the last day for this batch of indie singles that I’m selling on eBay. I’ll put another batch up for sale later this week.
Uni Watch News Ticker: You know, uniforms are cool and all, but I’ve recently felt like my life was missing something, sort of an undefined emptiness that I didn’t know how to fill. Then Kirsten turned me on to this, and life is much, much better now. … New mask for Jason LaBarbera, continuing his Metallica theme (as spotted by John Muir). … You know what’s great about pink? Everyone loves it (with thanks to Mark Tang). … Also from Mark: Some great old photos from the Northeastern photo archive, including fantastic team portraits of the football and hockey squads, plus a spectacular Bruins photo. … Reprinted from Friday’s comments: Someone has created a very cool New Jersey Devils maize maze. … Yup, no question, Rush Limbaugh is gonna be great for the Rams. … Fascinating chapter in college football history is described in this video clip — highly recommended (big thanks to Brian Willette). … Jim Ransdell, who does the excellent Sports Design Blog, was recently interviewed on NPR’s Studio 360 program on the subject of this year’s NFL throwbacks. … Bears’ dark-blue pants are discussed in the last entry on this Q&A page (with thanks to Chad Todd). … Hmmm, didn’t MLB retire No. 42? (As spotted by Doug Steffenson.) … Jordan Farmar has changed his uni number from 5 to 1, which is the number he wore in college (with thanks to Matthew Wolfram). … “This is the most confusing uniform confrontation ever,” says Bill Blewett. “That’s the Lyman Raiders vs. the Phillip Scotties out here in South Dakota. It was a home game for Lyman (I think).” … Jeremy Brahm reports that the Rakuten Golden Eagles gave their rookie pitcher Hiromichi Fujiwara a necktie for being the “Promising Newcomer (rookie).” … Nice collection of cages from old catchers’ masks (thanks, Kirsten). … The Colorado Eagles of the CHL did the pink thing the other night, but the real news is that the ref got in on the act. “The linesmen were in the normal zebra stripes, though,” says Michael Putlack. … Nothing enhances the view of a football field like a nearby power plant. That’s from a bunch of power/energy-related photos by the great photographer Mitch Epstein. … Reprinted from Saturday’s comments: Big Klu as an Angel. … Some interesting info and photos regarding the Twins’ new ballpark here (with thanks to Brad Lappin). … Harvard goalie Ryan Carroll’s backplate reads “In fide et in bello fortes,” which translates to “Strong in faith and war” (with thanks to Tris Wykes). … Dan Hastings came across a Seahawks logo he’d never seen before, and neither had I. Looks like it was modeled on this old Eagles logo. Anyone ever seen the Seahawks version before? … Not sure I’ve ever seen baseball pants with the team name printed down the side. … Complete President’s Cup apparel wrap-up here. … Happy Thanksgiving to Teebz and all our other Canadian readers.
October 12th, 2009
The most obvious answer is sometimes the one we most easily miss
By Phil Hecken
Lots more uni tweaks/redesigns/overhauls from you guys today. Good stuff. Interesting Stuff. Fun Stuff. It turned out there were so many people who wanted to tweak the Blue Jays, they’re getting their own column. Lets get started.
In the first set of tweaks, I mentioned there were numerous submissions for the Toronto Blue Jays. While there seems to be much love for the powder blues (although they really need to realize that is 1-NOT a home uniform and 2-NOT a pair of pajamas), there seems to be some universal disdain for the lack of actual blue in the Blue Jays these days. And of course, there is always great admiration for the back-to-back World Series champion uni worn in the Blue Jays heydays. So, not surprisingly, many of the readers would like to ditch the black (I mean, c’mon — this is the best they could do) and would like to return to something along these lines (the one Joe Carter is wearing, not Gene Tenace). Some fans have really had enough, expressing their distaste for the black in interesting ways
So, with the Blue Jays in need of an obvious change, what do the readers offer? There are some really interesting ones to follow. So, let’s take a look-see:
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You may remember last time out we had a submission for the Twins from Matt Keller. He also provided me with one for the Jays:
I’m not legally eligible for a prize being 16, but I mess around in photoshop on occasion. (Here’s) a plain, but I think a clean looking Blue Jays uniform. It was made before the Twins uni, and if I could do it again, I’d like to change the numbers to something a little more retro.
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Our next submission comes from Ben Sibley, a man of few words, but great suggestions:
A modern twist to a classic uniform
Thanks
Blue Jays Logo
Blue Jays Home
Blue Jays Road
Blue Jays Alternate
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Next up is UW Stalwart and a gentleman who aided me with a column a ways back, our Calgary lawyer, Mike Styczen “Mike 2″ (who is also a Blue Jays tracker). I’m not sure if Mike wasn’t being tongue-in-cheek with his submission:
For your ongoing column on MLB uniform redesigns, I’ve got one (attached) for the Blue Jays.
Its not very imaginative. They already have their perfect uniform in their past, 1989-1996, and the logo dates back to their founding. The fans loved it, they won two World Series wearing it. I don’t see any need to change a thing.
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Um…thanks Mike. Moving along, reader Brian Cheung (who posts as “Random Reader”) is a man of many words. That’s fine, I enjoy when you guys explain your work. Here’s Brian:
Hey, LI Phil:
I just want to thank you for commenting on my mock-up Blue Jays road jersey. For a while now, I always wondered how they’d look with more blue in their jerseys and I finally decided to put my creative skills to use.
I’m actually a Yankees fan but I’ve just been bothered in recent years by all the black in the Blue Jays uniforms, that wacky font they use for numbers, and how the road jerseys and home jerseys don’t have matching fonts. To put it simply, I felt they could look a whole lot better.
I’ll start with their current road jersey first. I thought of it as being a step in the right direction for Toronto, since it employs a little more blue than the previous uniform in 2007, with that funky “Toronto” script in silver, graphite and white. After seeing this photo, I edited it by adding some red around the front logo and the numbers. I also made the cap blue, the sleeves blue, and tried to add blue accents in on the cap. I was quite surprised primary logo by changing the silver and graphite to shades of powder blue, in order to include a reference to the past in their current logo. I also darkened the blue jay itself, changing it from that light shade of blue to something more of a royal blue. I changed the blue border to red because red was always a color present in their logos and I thought their current logos looked very bland without red as an accent. I did the same with the road cap; I eliminated the silver and replaced it with powder blue and I also included some red to serve as a border.
Next was the jerseys. I actually used to like that wide font they use for names and that strange-looking font for numbers. But I got tired of seeing them and I suppose someone in the Blue Jays felt the same; the road uniforms changed in 2008 as the numbers were now in a different font, along with the logo on the front. But the road uniforms still had that italicized font. What I decided to do was employ the font used on the roads (I believe it is called Agency FB) and apply it to their home uniforms. I gave the nameplates the same font so that names don’t look like they take up half the uniform. I added powder blue to the numbers and gave them a red border. I kept the beveling effect as I see it as being a modernization of the classic Blue Jays number front, with that line running inside each number (I always thought it was cool and whenever I saw them, I always associated them with the Blue Jays). I altered the wordmark on the road uniform to make it powder blue—a nod to how the Jays once wore powder blue uniforms on the road. Originally, the wordmark was supposed to be royal blue but I realized the Jays would look too much like the Texas Rangers; I had to change it to powder blue to give the uniform its own look that won’t be mistaken for that of the Rangers.
For both the home and road, I got rid of the black socks, belts, and piping and made them blue. I also changed their all-black alternate uniform to make it an all-blue one. The team is named the Blue Jays after all, so it would only make sense to have some uniform have a lot of blue in it.
Hope you enjoy. I tagged most of the images just so others won’t try to pass my work as theirs.
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Still more Blue Jays tweaks came in, this one from Matt Murray (who you may recall had earlier offered submissions for the Milwaukee Brewers). I have to say, this is some impressive work for someone who’s still in high school! Here’s Matt:
Phil,
Attached are some Blue Jays uniform ideas. These concepts for the Blue Jays mix in a throwback look similar to the current Friday uniforms. I was also sure not to include the script “Jays” anywhere in these uniforms because THAT ISN’T THEIR TEAM NAME! I also kept the concept free of black. I reverted back to the old “bird on ball” logo for the caps. I opted to keep the maple leaf on the sleeves because that is pretty much the only thing I like with the current uniforms. It’s something that signifies the uniqueness of the franchise as the only team North of the Border. Both powder and gray away concepts are included. I haven’t gone to school for graphic design or anything like that, nor have I graduated high school! But I think it’s the thought that counts with the uni concepts. Hopefully I “get it!”
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Still on the Blue Jays train, next up is Brian Arnold, who I think sent me these a loooooong time ago when Paulie Soto and I did our Fauxback column. If he did, and I neglected to post them, I apologize. Anyway, getting the play they deserve, here’s Brian:
I sent this link as a email a while ago when you did an entry about “fauxbacks”. I just saw your recent call for submissions, so I’ll send it again, maybe it will get some attention this time. Blue Jays Home and Blue Jays Road.
Thanks,
Brian
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Phew…next to last in the Blue Jays tweaks, we have Sean Wilson. Here’s Sean:
Blue Jays. Changed base color to blue instead of black and killed the ridiculous beveling on the wordmark.
Liked what you did with some of the NFL unis, especially the Falcons. On the Bengals, though, you’ve got to have the tiger striped pants stripe
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Finally, we have UW Graphic Artist extraordinaire, Paul “Pretty Boy Paulie” Soto to round things out. Here’s Paul:
The Blue Jays have always had modern uniform designs. They never quite had an “old school” look. So what I wanted to give them here was a “classic” look. Complete with script wordmarks and serifed/bold numerals. Royal blue is their primary color, sky blue is their secondary and I kept the dreaded black as an accent color. An actual Blue Jay does have a black trim on their feathers. So, I can live with the black as long as it’s not the primary color. Plus I only regulated it to the road uniform. I feel it appears more appropriate there. We need more striped socks in the league so why not give ‘em some. Here we have blue socks with alternating stripes that has white/sky blue at home and white/black on the road. The last time I did a Blue Jay uni modification I used a primary logo that combined two of their best logos in their history. It would be a dream to see them use that logo on their home caps and as a primary logo. The road cap features a script “T” that is loosely inspired by their current alternate cap. Stay “classy” Toronto.
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“What about you, Phil? Don’t you have a Blue Jay mockup?” Well, sadly for you I do. I was never fond of the original wordmark/script, but I did love the bird. And I hate the current home and road scripts, with their beveling and black and gray. I was also not fond of the second generation font with the additional red. So I took their classic white and gray uniforms, and found the font to match those found in the Toronto Subway system. A very nice and basic font, but it’s classy and businesslike but not too formal. So — here’s the home and away look, with royal blue cap (also can use a sky blue cap at home and sky blue cap with sky blue trim and stirrups on the road). I just couldn’t bring myself to return the Jays to powder blue.
Well, there you have it. Obviously the Blue Jays should be the next MLB team to undergo a major overhaul. As we say, lots of “retro-inspired” designs, and a few who simply want to return the “blue” to the Blue Jays. My thanks to everyone who sent in a submission, and next time, we’ll get to the rest of the MLB overhauls.
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 OK, in case you missed it, last week, with the help of James Huening, I ran what we hope to be the first of several ‘unofficial’ polls to determine how we feel on uniforms. Don’t bother voting anymore, the poll is officially closed now. That poll, “Rate the NFL Home Uniforms” was an unmitigated success. We’ll have the results next week, but James wanted to give us a quick look at some of the preliminary results.
“Well, the votes are in. Some of the final results are still being tabulated, but the Uni Watch community has spoken and a team has been chosen as having the best home uniforms in the NFL. And it was truly a hard-fought battle for the top spot.
“If you recall, we asked you to rate each team’s home uniform from zero to five points. We also asked you to nominate a team as having the best uni and another as having the worst. Our top team averaged 4.24 points per response, barely edging out our second place finisher at 4.21. In addition, #1 was mentioned by 15% of you as having the best uni, compared to 12% for #2.
“The rest of our top five was equally competitive. The third, fourth and fifth place finishers’ average scores were 4.07 (9% of you thought they were the best), 4.05(6%) and 3.83(7%).
“So, to everyone who participated, thank you. It goes without saying that we couldn’t have done this without you and the response was overwhelming. We were hoping for 500, but we collected nearly 2,000 completed surveys! And people from literally all over the world checked in. We received responses from every continent. Yes, that includes Antarctica.”
Thanks, James. So now that the votes are in — which uniform do you think was rated THE BEST in the NFL? We’ll tell you next week, but why not give an early guess. Just post “Best: (insert team) ” down below.
In addition, a special thanks goes out to Adam Walter, who’s doing most of the heavy lifting on this endeavor, with his incredible data crunching and analysis.
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Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: As the MLB season winds down this weekend, I’m running out of scoreboards…so, either you guys will have to keep sending me some, or we’ll be putting the game on a temporary hiatus. No worries today though, as SlimandSlam hooked me up with this one (although partial credit has to go to Squiddie)– and while in and of itself, it’s tricky, a little detective work on your part (read: the photo you’re about to see was run in one of my earlier columns) will help you solve it. Remember, PLEASE do not post the actual score and date, but rather, use Retrosheet or Baseball Almanac to link to your answer (if possible). Ready? Guess The Game. I think tomorrow we’ll try a football scoreboard, but I’m not sure how that will go over. Let me know what you think.
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A Little Bit of This and That: Somehow we all missed the fact that the official team outfits for Canada’s 2010 Winter Olympics team were unveiled in Vancouver, and some are calling them, “Hoser chic,” while others are suggesting it smacks of a Conservative conspiracy and others noting similarities to an iconic Canadian military symbol. … The Oregonian is getting a lot of mileage out of their Dress The Ducks thingy, even encouraging opposition fans to clothe the U of Zero Ducks in the worst possible combo … This item was posted earlier this week, but it proves once again that worst uniform polls should be decided by UW readers — in fact, in the coming weeks, we’ll be doing just that — stay tuned …Turns out they had to update the poll after readers had other thoughts about those worst unis … This article on the Islanders’ affiliate the Bridgeport Sound Tigers states they will wear uniforms this year that resemble those of the Islanders’ 1980 Stanley Cup dynasty. Unfortunately, no pics accompanied the article — little help? Teebz? … Apparently, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Which means every team, league and sport will be getting in on the pink uniform action … We all know that the Mets sucked this year, but according to NBCNewYork.com, the real villain in the 2009 Mets season was the shade of white used in the Mets’ home uniforms (sorta old news, but a nice shout out to Paul Lukas and the blog in the fourth graf) … If you thought the San Francisco 49ers were mixing too much purple into the red and too much yellow into the gold, well, you’re not alone … Pretty much no one knows that the NBA was segregated for it’s three first years of existence, which may not seem odd until you realize that Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in the same year the NBA was founded. Roger Murdock Kareem Abdul Jabbar is directing a tribute to the Harlem Rens, the “greatest team you never heard of.” (since you read UW, you have heard of the Preston Rivulettes). The Documentary will be called “On The Shoulders of Giants,” and there are sure to be some great unis in it … The soon to be defunct UFL unveiled its helmet art yesterday — and I hope the league is around long enough for someone to work on a full uni breakdown column with me … The FAU Owls, who have one of the best unis in college football, will be playing their 100th football game ever today … Pretty cool look at the Princeton University logos here … Did you ever want to know how Ice gets laid? If you said “a couple drinks, sweet talk and Flunitrazepam,” you’d be wrong. … When you play the “fourth” sport in a big city and you haven’t been relevant since the mid-80’s, what do you do? Why, rebrand yourself of course.
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That’s a wrap for today. Next weekend I hope to have the “Design A Cap” submissions all flickr’ed and ready, we’ll have the results of the voting on the “NFL Home Uniform” poll, and more. And that’s just next weekend. And there’s even more good stuff coming tomorrow. Nice college football today, and still some meaningful baseball in Detroit and Minnesota (where the Twins are hoping for one last miracle before they shut the dump down cede ownership to the Mall of America). That could get very interesting because if the Twins and Tigers end up tied, the Twinks are supposed to host a tiebreaker on Monday — but there’s a twist, because the Dome might be busy. So they’d have to play Tuesday. Hmmmm.
Anyway, let the folks who mocked up some new Jay’s unis know what you think, and don’t forget to take a guess at what we, the Uni Watch community, thought was the best home uniform in football. Oh, and think pink.
October 3rd, 2009
By Phil Hecken
There seemed to be great interest by UW readers in developing new concepts for Major League Baseball teams, following previous columns in which readers tweaked the ChiSox and the Brewers (see here and here). I put out the call for you guys to send me your submissions for any MLB team, and you didn’t disappoint. In fact, there were so many submissions, it’s going to take two posts to get to them all. But we will. So, lets see what everyone came up with, shall we?
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The first two in this batch were actually featured before, but I wanted to include them in this post so they’d receive full comparison:
Jason Krause had a couple mock-ups for his hometown team, the Colorado Rockies:
I based these Colorado Rockies jersey mockups off of the old school logo of the hockey Colorado Rockies before they became the New Jersey Devils. I made them a pull-over top such as the Blue Jays and the Cards from the 70’s.
I created two different home looks, as well as an alternate that pays homage to the Colorado Flag. The black jerseys are also a big hit out here, so I created a look for one of those.
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Alex Rocklein sent me some mockups for the New York Mets. Very interesting. Says Alex, “I attached some Mets uniform concepts. Some are outrageous, but there is considerably less black.”
Indeed, when it comes to the Mets, less black is usually much better. He has come up with three new uniform concepts: a clean new home and away set, with all the black removed (but where are the stirrups???); and two alternates. The first, featuring pinstripes (I guess we can say they’ve reduced the once venerable pins to an alt) and a royal blue top with “New York” in fancy block letters. As you know, I’m not a fan of the “alternate/softball” tops, but if the Mets could replace the black tops with this one, I’d be 100% behind it. Finally, Alex came up with another home alternate, and it is considerably more colorful. He combines a new alternate cap, featuring a blue crown and an orange bill, with a new orange alternate top (plus he has put the script “Mets” on the blue alternate).
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OK, you may remember seeing those before, but the rest are all brand spankin’ new.
Another longtime reader, a Yankees fan no less, Kenny Jacobson saw the above section on New York Mets uniform concepts (when I first posted it), and, having already done some up, thought I’d like to repost them. With pleasure, Kenny, with pleasure. Here’s Kenny:
I’d posted these in the comments this summer but maybe you could get them out there.
I’m a Yankee fan but would really like to see the Mets go back to a classic look.
Home
Road
and if you MUST…
Alt
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Got another submission from Uni Creator Alex Rocklein, (see above for his first uni tweak of the Mets) who this time has been working on some fixes for the Oakland A’s. I’ll let him explain:
I updated the primary (A’s in the circle) because the one they use now is outdated. I added cream to the scheme (now looking similar to their rivals across the bay) and added some piping because, let’s face it, who doesn’t like some piping?
I kept the away set relatively the same because I think it’s one of the most underrated sets in baseball. Threw some alts in there for the sake of having them. I feel like the solid color alts need to be limited by teams because when you watch a Cubs/ChiSox game in which its royal blue on black it feels as though I’m watching Spring Training or a couple of Thursday Night Slow-Pitch Softball games.
Also, matched the A’s “A” from the logo to the one on the hat (right now they use two different “A”s).
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Another uniform concept submission comes from reader Daniel L. Dennis, who has got some proposals for the Texas Texases Rangers. Here’s Dennis:
I read the blog quite often, and I hope these are along the lines of what you’re looking for.
First of all, the Rangers erred greatly in not having their team name on their home jerseys. The Texas Texases (as Paul is fond of calling them) need an identity, but this minor facelift would probably suffice. It’s simple, it’s elegant, and above all, it’s somewhat unique (no comparison to the Angels, please – besides, I think the Rangers were using this typeface first).
Here’s the home jersey. All I did was go back to red as the primary color, and arch the team name like they did in 1972 with the original wordmark. Back then, the bigger “R” and “S” stood for “Robert Short” – today, they don’t really stand for anything, but it’s a nice treatment IMHO.
The away jersey is pretty much – well, gray. But the wordmark gets the same treatment.
Now for the alternate jersey. Seems like every team needs one. This time, I got rid of the blue (too many bad flashbacks to the Dallas Cowboys of the ‘70s, who always seemed to lose when wearing their blue jerseys), and went with the primary red.
Not sure I’m sold on the NNOB treatment, but at least it stands out.
Sleeve patch stays the same, and stripes on the pants go red and blue. Same with the sleeve stripes on the home and away. The red alt can keep the white trim.
This is what Nolan’s boys need to be wearing next year – and it wouldn’t take that much to pull it off. Oh, yeah, and I got rid of that gawdawful typeface for the NNOB.
Now don’t go selling this to the Rangers!
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I received two concepts from “losalkyle,” who tweaked the San Diego Padres and the Seattle Mariners. A man of few words, this sentence accompanied his Padres tweak: “Take the light blue in their primary logo and make it the uni color.” The next one was simply an attachment, with the subject “Mariners Powder Blue.” That should be pretty self-explanatory. Here it is. If you’re reading this and want to identify yourself, please do!
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Next up is Matt Keller, who actually sent me two submissions, but the second one is going to wait for the next batch. His first tweak is for the Minnesota Twins. Here’s Matt:
I’m not legally eligible for a prize being 16, but I mess around in photoshop on occasion.
1st off, I’ve eliminated those dreadful pinstripes from the Twinkies’ away uniforms. I think what I’ve done is pretty O.K. looking.
~~~
Our final uniform tweak for today comes from Matt Murray, who unfortunately missed the Brewer tweaks which ran a couple weeks ago. But I promised Matt I’d include his mockups of the Milwaukee Brewers in the next set of uniform concepts. So, here’s Matt:
Mr. Hecken,
Attached are my uniform ideas for the Milwaukee Brewers. I might be a little late, but I think can still contribute to the discussion.
I like the Brewers current color scheme, but I think the current script and wordmarks are just a failed attempt at a classic look. I combined the navy and gold scheme with throwback lettering to create a modern look that reflects the past of the program. Both the home and away caps have the ball and glove “mb” logo, and the beloved beer barrel man on the sleeve. I’m a big fan of thick piping on pants and sleeves, but not on the front of the jersey. I used cream for the home threads and a powder blue(ish?) grey for the road uniforms to further compliment the historical aspect. A red mock-up is included. Thanks!
~~~
OK, that’s going to do it for this first batch of uniform concepts from the fantastic UW readership. The next batch will be coming real soon. One interesting thing about this exercise, while I didn’t call for any specific teams whose uniforms needed updating/changing/tweaking, I got (so far) a bunch of submissions for the Toronto Blue Jays. How I didn’t see this team as the obvious choice for a uniform upgrade in the first place is beyond me, but I give myself a huge “DUH” for neglecting to ask for specific submissions for them. Let me tell you, the four or five I have received so far are tremendous. So, if anyone else wants to try their hand at tweaking the Toronto team, send em along. Of course, any teams you want to upgrade are fine as well.
As long as we’re on the topic of upgrading/tweaking, it sounds like it’s official that the Miami Marlins will be getting new uniforms when they move into their new digs (there’s a link in that article to the New York Times article [registration required]) where owner Jeffrey Loria mentioned the new unis. Now, I don’t want to step on Paul’s toes in calling for reader submissions for new Miami Marlins uniforms, since he’s been known to have done those type of things on the mothership. However, if you have done, or in the process of doing a Miami Marlins mockup, feel free to send it my way as well.
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 Is this the end of the world as we know it? Apparently so. Yesterday evening, several readers reported seeing Chris Berman state that the oft-rumored Seahawks alternate lime green jersey is a reality. Will it actually be worn this Sunday? And, will if so, will be paired white pants, as in the Wikipedia entry? Or, blue pants, or, heaven help us, lime green pants? And, what color will the jersey numbers be: White? (just imagine this) or blue? Perhaps we’ll know more tomorrow or later this evening. But if Boomer reported it, Wiki posted it, and Madden mocked it … it must be true, right?
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
[*late night edit: I just watched the repeat of the "2 Minute Drill" and here's what Berman said: "The Seahawks will unveil their bright green -- I guess '80s retro-ish green uniforms -- It'll be a 'Green Day'. I think they'll have the time of their lives." (The latter reference was because Boomer spent a portion of the segment discussing LPs {"albums to those of you under 30"}.) So that's what we have to go on. Who knows -- PH]
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Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: OK, got another submission from our resident ’scoreboard finder’ SlimandSlam, who has brought to you another good one. Shouldn’t have too much trouble with the teams or the stadium, but the game itself may prove more elusive. As usual, please post the answer in the form of a linkie from Baseball Almanac or Retrosheet. Date, location and final score please. Ready? Guess The Game. Anyone interested in football? I think we’ll try a football scoreboard guessing game tomorrow…see how that goes. Thanks, Slim!
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 UW #1 Seahawks Fan Michael Princip has been tracking the Oregon Ducks and all of their 2,456 possible uniform combinations this season. He’ll be updating it after each game. Tomorrow marks the debut of his first tracking graphic on UW. It will be a regular feature through the end of the Ducks season. Sounds like a fun little idea. Assuming the Ducks wear the rumored throwbacks tomorrow against Cal, this will be updated with the final score. Otherwise, Mike will insert whatever uni they choose to wear. Check back tomorrow to see the result and the uni they wore!
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Ah, time for Mick and Mike to relax and (presumably) enjoy a game on the tube. And that’s a biiiiiiiig couch, innit? Enjoy the wit and wisdom of Mick in today’s Saturday Benchies. Yakitty-yak…don’t talk back.
***
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This and That: Seems that the Huskers will be donning vintage 1962 uniforms today, complete with black numbers on white helmets. According to the article, “Fans are wearing red, as usual, but retro red. Women are asked to wear red dresses and carnations.” Good times, good times, except, Nebraska hopes, for the Ragin’ Cajuns. Unis and helmets should look like this. … The Yom Kippur religious observance is going to force New York football fans to have to choose between games this Sunday — first time the Jets and Giants have kicked off at the same time (other than when playing each other) since 1984; both teams are 2-0, and the Titans (Jets) versus Oilers (Titans) are wearing AFL throwbacks … And speaking of throwbacks, Navy plays Western Kentucky on CBS today, with Navy to wear replica 1959 uniforms — it’s in honor of the dedication of the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium — check out the program cover from that day! … The Florida State Seminoles will wear white at home for the first time — ever — against USF today; not just the normal white over crimson, but white over white! Nice. Of course, the best thing about FSU games are the uniforms worn by the fans sitting in the stands … The Turkeyfoot Middle School, which, not coincidentally, is located on Turkeyfoot Road, is under pressure to change its name — no, they’re keeping “Turkeyfoot,” but they may be dumping their mascot and nickname, because that is much worse than “Turkeyfoot.” Try saying “Turkeyfoot” five times fast … The LeBron James farewell to Cleveland Cavaliers 40th Season is just jam packed with giveaways, and here’s the list … Reader Ed Westfield shot me a note, “In Any Given Sunday, the Miami Sharks never wore white jerseys on the road, or anywhere. So, I wanted to see what it would look like.” … Let it be known: it is NOT OK to profit of Tim Tebow’s name or likeness! Is that clear? Unless, of course, it’s the University of Florida that’s doing the profiting, natch [*NOTE...I was alternately getting a "404 not found on website" and the article, so if it comes up 404, I apologize] … Speaking of the Gators tho, ESPN has posted an “instant classic” video game, sure to be great fun for all Gator haters … Of course, political correctness is still the hot topic at UND, where the school must get permission from the two Sioux tribes in North Dakota in order to keep using the nickname, “Fighting Sioux,” or face NCAA sanctions, including being banned from post-season play — and they need it by October 1st … Wanna have more shoe combinations than Oregon has uniform possibilities? (Like, 2 million possible combinations???) Now you can. … Here’s a little uniform story that slipped below the radar: seems that UW readers are not the only ones who want to ditch the black — especially when your team is called the “Cardinals” and, “We have the Cardinal as a mascot and our colors are red and white. I don’t understand why you would want to change that.”
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OK folks…that’s a lot to digest. Still time to participate in the Design A Cap Contest that started last weekend — just follow the directions there if you’re still interested. Some great college football matchups today, including a bunch of throwbacks — wonder if any of them will make the Top 5 uni matchup list tomorrow. Enjoy your Saturday everyone!
September 26th, 2009
Relatively quiet day in the NFL yesterday, but there were still a few noteworthy items. To wit:
• Joe Skiba had promised me that the Giants would wear their road gray pants if forced to wear their blue jerseys on the road this year, and sure enough, that’s what they did last night. Personally, I like it.
• Brandon Jacobs’s left-shoulder Reebok logo was sort of ghosted last night. The entire Giants team wore those sotto voce logos in the first preseason game last month, but since then the logos have been white. Not sure that’s all about — I’ll ask Skeebs, but he probably won’t tell me (at least not on the record), because anything involving Reebok is super-touchy.
• It’s official: The Giants’ new jerseys, with their fancy high-tech fabric, are a disaster. (For details on the fabric, look here.) I don’t know if they’re too stretchy or what, but there were all sorts of situations like this and this. Those two shots are both of Jacobs, but I noticed similar problems with other players. A bad scene. (Screen shots courtesy of Phil — thanks, buddy.)
• Meanwhile, the Cowboys unexpectedly (to me, at least) wore a stadium patch, based on this logo. Not sure if they’ll be wearing it at home all season or if it was just a one-game thing — will investigate.
• Those Falcons throwbacks were the bomb, no? Additional images here and here.
• NFL nameplates usually run the full shoulder-to-shoulder wingspan, even for short surnames. But not in San Francisco, where the Niners are using short nameplates for short names.
• Speaking of the Niners, here’s a small detail I’ve been meaning to mention: For the past several years, the Reebok logo on their pants has been black, but now it’s white — much nicer.
• Anyone know what that logo is on Maurice Stovall’s sock?
• Chris Johnson had his belt unbuckled.
• Stupidest move of the day: Many of the coaches were wearing polo shirts with their division noted along the sleeve or shoulder (on the left side for NFC coaches, on the right for AFC coaches). Because hey, nothing says cool like “NFC West” or “AFC West,” right? What a load of crap.
• Even weirder: Jim Zorn’s shirt wasn’t division-specific — it was conference-specific.
• And speaking of coaches, Brad Childress was wearing this rinky-dink headset instead of the usual Motorola rig. Anyone know what that was about?
Raffle Reminder: Today’s the last day for the SoccerPro.com raffle. Details here.
Just Sayin’: Awesome work by Phil over the weekend. In case you missed it, he’s running a cap design contest, plus he and Ricko have proposed an innovative solution to the NFL’s sleeve problem. Great stuff.
Uni Watch News Ticker: Buried on this page is the news that the Browns are going with the chocolate pants on the road all season. Interestingly, the lack of a stripe is cited as a comfort issue (with thanks to Charles Ryals). … New hoops uniforms for Nebraska (with thanks to David McGee). … New mask for Steve Mason (with thanks to Matt Lesser). … Also from Matt: Former Penguins goalie Mathieu Garon is now with Columbus, but he’s still wearing his Pens mask, at least for now. New design presumably forthcoming. … More new NHL masks, this time for Vesa Toskala and Chris Mason (courtesy of Matthew Gahm). … Good observation from Ben Beattie, who writes: “Georgia Tech’s Demaryius Thomas is using a ‘B’ first initial. According to his profile on the GT athletic site, his nickname is Bay-Bay, though he could be doing some sort of dedication to his father, who is named Bobby. Last year he had no initial.” … Got a spare five grand laying around? You can buy yourself over 50 old jerseys. … Other good eBay stuff: a tennis jacket, bowling sweater, basketball warm-up shirt (additional hoops warm-ups here, here, and here), track and field jacket, and baseball jersey (here’s one more). … Wait, here’s one more basketball warm-up. Look at that chest logo! … New hoops uni for Cincinnati. Here’s the rear view. … Those were some weird-ass trunks that Floyd Mayweather wore on Saturday night — fuzzy on the sides and dimpled in the front. … New AHL uniforms for the Texas Stars, Bridgeport Sound Tigers, and Abbortsford Heat (with thanks to Kevin Wright). … Now that’s a geeky look for tossing out a first pitch. “I think it was a game-used Bob Gibson jersey,” says Elena Elms. … Steve Johnston was at Comiskey on Saturday night and spotted this kid with a converted Joe Crede tee. “His sister did the same thing with her Nick Swisher T-shirt but she taped over the whole thing to turn it into a #15 Gordon Beckham tee, but I didn’t get a photo of that one,” says Steve. … Oh man, check out all these awesome NFL lunchboxes! … Steve Mandich has posted more pocket schedules from the Seahawks and Mariners, plus he’s begun compiling paperback book cover designs from a seminal category I’d forgotten all about: Bill Gutman’s sports biographies. … Reprinted from last night’s comments: According to this interview with Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins will have new uniforms and colors for their new stadium in 2012.
September 21st, 2009
and the uniform will be perfect…
By Phil Hecken, with Rick Pearson
You may have heard the phrase before, since I used it last weekend quite a bit. “Just One More Bumper Sticker” syndrome is a phrase my running mate, Rick Pearson (aka “Ricko”) and I use to describe a (typically) football uniform that has one unique (or semi-unique) design element, but instead of just plain leaving well enough alone, the designers have to add one (or more) unnecessary, superfluous or extraneous element(s) rendering the entire uniform … well … not good. The “design” may look great on paper, or more likely, in Adobe or some other photoshop-type program, but it fails when actually put on a human being. Stick with me here.
With the official first weekend of NFL football finally upon us, and with Paul’s most-awaited column of the year (in my opinion, anyway) posted last Wednesday, Ricko and I are going to look at some of the uniforms on the NFL that suffer from OMBS (”one more bumper sticker”) syndrome, or are just a tweak or two away from looking REALLY good. We’re not touching the classics, we’re not talking about changing colors, logos or helmets — we’re just going to look at several teams whose uniforms are thisclose to being very good or great. Today, we will examine the five most egregious violators of uniform protocol — the Cards, Falcons, Bills, Rick’s own Vikings and the Bengals. With just a few minor tweaks (OK, in some cases they may be more than minor), we can improve these uniforms. Of course, many of you will disagree, but that’s OK because these are just our opinions. But when all is said and done, we think you’ll agree, the minor changes we’re suggesting will be changes for the better. OK? Good, let’s set the ground rules.
Ricko sets the parameters:
* We see it more as “editing” than redesigning.
* We stay inside the current design elements.
* That means…
> No color changes.
> No logo changes.
* We just clean up the overkill, the excess in “bumper stickers”, show a little restraint.
* We will consider past unis in making minor modifications.
* No dark monochrome combinations will be considered. (Well, Rick thinks there are a few that work OK)
Rick also wants to stress that we’re “not saying EVERYONE should make these, not at all. Just that if a few did, it would diminish the now-getting-routine proliferation of panels, yokes, wandering piping and meandering pants stripes.”
Many of the new looks are fun, and we left them alone. We’re also giving the Broncos a “full and complete pardon,” since, although that uniform may have been the precursor to the side panel and truncated stripe madness, they were the originator of that look. That’s good enough for us — you invent it, you keep it, it’s yours. We just think if a few teams would pull back on such things a little, there’d actually be more variety in NFL uniforms.
Ready?
 Arizona Cardinals: The southwest birds underwent a major uni overhaul only a scant few years ago, going from one of the all time classics to one of the worst OMBS teams. Seriously — WTF? You’ve got shoulders that are a different color (on the roads) than the rest of the uni, little “panels” within those shoulder blotches, weird stripes running down the sides of the jersey, and some amorphous truncated stripe on the pants. Too much. So, what can we do to improve this cacophony of offensive visual malacuity?
Lets start by removing the side panels truncated pants “stripe”. This way, we keep the feel for the uniform, but remove the extra bumper stickers. Oh yeah, adding striped socks is a must too. The Cards don’t look too bad in red pants, so we take the same approach there — ok, maybe they need a real stripe. You want to add a throwbackish stripe instead (and some ‘matching’ socks)? Maybe that’s pushing it. Personally, I loved the ‘all white look‘ of the last generation of uniforms, so if I had my way, I’d remove the shoulder red, give them some real shoulder stripes, and stick the old logo on there for good measure. But that’s probably just wishful thinking.
For the home uniform, while it’s already better now than the road (at least being solid red, for the most part), it still suffers from the random white panels & unneeded black piping — plus those awful pants. If we remove the bumper stickers, and properly stripe the pants, here’s what we get. Not bad, right? Only other tweak you could make is to put the Cardinal logo back on the sleeve.
We start with the Cardinals because they seem to exemplify the alarming trend of making the pro’s unis look like NCAA Division II schools. Let’s keep that sort of stuff back in the college game. But the Cardinals are far from alone.
 Atlanta Falcons: The southeast birds very much like the Cardinals. And again, this is only one or two less bumper stickers away from being a really good uniform. Especially when you consider that this season, the Falcons are throwing back with this beauty. Their current uni set (notice the beautiful throwbacks in that template) is light years away from anything resembling an NFL uniform, but with a few minor changes, it would look pretty damn good.
Simply removing the multicolored “chips” in the shoulders, and eliminating the superfluous side piping and truncated pants stripes yields a very respectable uni set. Of course, those shoulder colorizations could certainly go too.
One element about the Falcons uniforms is, if you take away the extraneous junk, you can dress them in several different (although no monochrome red or black) unis and they’ll look good in all of them. Seriously. All-white, black over red (hey, we like the red pants), red over black (just make sure the socks are a different color), red over white, white over red (even looks good without stripes), or black over white. It’s all good! They like to play mix-and-match, and we like that. Just get rid of the extra bumper stickers.
 Buffalo Bills: OK, we think most of us agree this is the worst uniform in the NFL. It’s always running neck and neck with the Bengals (we’ll get to them shortly), but surely, it’s up there. It would probably take more than the removal of a few bumper stickers to get them looking anywhere near as good as the AFL throwbacks they’re sporting this season, but we’ll give it a shot. We can certainly improve the uni without too much effort. As with the first two offenders, we’ll need to remove the side panels and start there.
Simply getting rid of the panels is an immense improvement. But it’s still not very good. Yet. See, the Bills are one of those teams who think monochrome white (not terrible) or monochrome blue (awful, awful, awful) is a good look. Simply pairing the white top with blue pants is an improvement. Conversely, pairing the blue top with white pants is much better. (Ricko tweaks that look a tad further by adding the logo to the jersey and moving the TV numbers to the shoulders.) But it’s still a mess — two different colors (and not all that complimentary either) of blue, red helmet, shoulder “yoke” (for lack of a better term). Feh.
We strive to keep at least one unique element when tweaking the uniforms, and it appears as though the Bills are alone in that shoulder yoke. But do they really need a two color yoke on their road unis? No. So, lets keep the outline and decide on one color blue for the jerseys and pants. Not a fan of the navy? We’re not either, they’re more of a royal blue kind of team. See? Much better.
We’ve eliminated the visual cacophony that is the current uni. Now, lets fix the home jersey by simply keeping the minor adjustments and putting them in a more appropriate royal blue. Is it as good as this? Hell no. Like most people on the planet, we’d prefer they adopt that full time. But is this better than this? You be the judge.
On a quick side note, Ricko and I disagree on at least one point concerning the Bills. I wouldn’t mind seeing them in a red jersey (with throwback helmet) or especially in their current lids. Rick, however, remembers the Bills in royal blue, so to him, that red jersey is anathema. Hey, we can’t always be in agreement.
 Minnesota Vikings: One of the more egregious offenders in the bumper sticker syndrome department. Actually, the Vikings have what appears to be a very cool and unique element to their uniforms — the attempted “replication” of the helmet horn on the jersey sleeve. Or, at least that’s what we’d like to believe. But, like the others, they take it too far by adding the ridiculous panel. And then there’s the pants. Piping and truncated striping again. Make it stop.
Our solution for the Vikings is relatively simple. Ricko simply removes the superfluous side panel to create the illusion of a horn, and of course, gives them normal pants stripes. I took that a bit further by putting an actual horn on the sleeve. Either way, it’s an improvement.
For the away jerseys, you could put the actual Viking on the sleeve, continue the “shoulder treatment” (as Ricko suggested), or go with purple horn (similar to the home mockup). I really like Ricko’s idea the best here.
Simple, keeping a nice unique design element (viking horn replicated on shoulder), and cleaning up the excess bumper stickers. Done.
 Cincinnati Bengals: Viewed by many as the worst uniform in all of football (or at least a close second to the Bills), this could easily be a great and distinctive uniform, but for all the extra clutter bumper stickers. I mean, c’mon … seriously? Yet, the Bengals are very unique in distinct with their “tiger stripe” helmet and shoulder pads, but they get carried away with the panels, piping, etc. Our solution to the Bengals is surprisingly simple, but it fits in with the above teams. Lets dump the junk and focus on a truly cool element. And give them some real pants stripes. And no monochrome black.
The Cincy club is another who like to “mix and match” various tops and bottoms. That’s OK. We’ll start with the white over white. Now, damn! That’s a pretty good looking uniform, right there. But the white jersey, currently is the only one without the stupid panel down the side, so that’s an easy fix. How about black over white? Nice right? Keeps the stripes prominently but not to the point of beating a dead horse. And since real bengal tigers are more orange than black, Ricko thinks the orange jersey should be their main jersey, rather than the alt. I think we could all enjoy seeing this six or eight times a season. The key element here, though, is the white pants — they really look good with any of those three jerseys.
What about the black pants? Well, we’d prefer they don’t wear them, but as long as they will, we need to put on real stripes and make sure the socks are not black. What about on orange top? We’re getting a little crazy, here but OK. Still beats what they wear now. Finally, they don’t actually wear orange pants, but again, how about we replace those black ones? It’s a tad loud, but it could work. Better orange than black.
And we’ve still kept the unique helmet and shoulder stripes, which are the essence of the Bengals, and the beginning of a much better uniform. At least we think so.
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Lime Green Hawks? On another note, the rumor mill is still ablaze about a possible Seahawks alternate — the one Paul wrote about on April Fool’s Day. Paul alluded to it in his NFL preview column, and we’ve all seen the leaked Madden screen grab. Even UW’s resident Seahawk uber-fan, and the man behind greenglare.com, Michael Princip has come up with a concept.
God save us all. Of course, Ricko and I are on opposite ends of this one — Ricko thinks the snot lime green alt (NOW rumored to be paired with lime green PANTS) would be ‘fun’ while I think it may be “ok” if worn ONLY ONE TIME and then permanently retired (unlike the Browns brown pants). This retina searing getup can only be a blight on the game, in my opinion.
And if you’re all hoping to see this, even once, whether it be with white or “blue” (not quite sure what that color is) pants … Be careful what you wish for. Can you imagine a whole UNIFORM in that color? That could set the earth a-spinning off its axis. Seriously.
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OK, that’s going to do it for this week’s “bumper sticker” piece. I’ll be back with Ricko soon to offer some more modest tweaks to some of the other NFL teams. The worst offenders have been fixed. But our work is not yet done. Let us know what you think.
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 Our man in the street, Jim Vilk brings you his “Top 5″ Best and one WORST college football uni matchup from yesterday:
#5: How classic is Notre Dame vs. Michigan? And the game was pretty classic too.
#4: Iowa vs. Iowa State. A lot of yellow, but it works, so let it brighten your day.
#3: USC vs. TOSU. You probably won’t see this matchup in January, so enjoy it now.
#2: PSU vs. Syracuse. Love the contrast of blue and white vs. white and orange.
#1: UCLA vs. Tennessee. Very cool. Don’t change a thing, either one of you.
And the WORST uni matchup is….
Mizzou vs. Bowling Green. All black vs. brown pit stains? Bleah.
Thanks Jim. I’ll make sure to provide dissenters with your E-mail addy on request.
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Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: I’m pretty sure I never gave you this one as a game before. If I did, in advance, I apologize. It’s probably not all that difficult anyway, but you never know. Teams are obvious, stadium should be obvious … all that’s left is determining when the game was played and the final score. As always, use a link Retrosheet or Baseball Almanac to post your guess. And, please let me know if you want to try a “Guess The Game” for football, since the season has now begun (don’t know how that would play out, but we can try it if you’re all up for it). OK? OK. Ready? Guess The Game.
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Two words: “Foot Fault”
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Whew. We wind down this post with a nice, full-color edition of Benchies. Of course, on ‘opening weekend’ of the NFL, the boys are out on the gridiron. Ricko didn’t fix their unis, tho — they’re fine just as is. So, without further ado, here’s your 11 Panel Sunday Benchies.
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That’s a wrap. Are you ready for some football?
If you’re interested in sending me a MLB “uni tweak,” you know what to do. Probably gonna have a post on those I’ve received so far real soon. And, next weekend, all you graphic artists get ready, because we’re gonna have a contest … with an actual prize. So stay tuned. Have a fantastic Sunday everyone.
September 13th, 2009
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, I started up Photoshop to work on re-doing the rest of their logos.</p>
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