By Phil Hecken, with Tim Brulia and Rick Pearson

It struck Ricko and me at about the same time. We were trading E-mails before the Denver Broncos played the San Diego Chargers in their throwbacks this past Monday, and exchanging some barbs about the uniforms as depicted on the 1960 AFL section of the Football Uniforms Past and Present website — that website is an invaluable tool, and the amount of incredible research that has gone into it cannot be undervalued — and Ricko asked me, “you don’t think the Broncos are gonna wear brown pants with white stripes, do you?” Now, I wasn’t born when the Broncos played that first season, but I did know they only had one pair of pants. Yet, on the 1960 section of FUPP, those pants are depicted as having white stripes (which would have made infinitely more sense, only it didn’t happen).

Then we looked more closely at some of the other uniforms — and Ricko informed me they were wrong too. In fact, it occurred to him (and it hit me at about the same time): “Did the NFL actually use the FUPP site to base a good number of their AFL throwback uniform upon?” Could they have been that lazy? Were they relying on a (very good, but not infallible) website to dictate the look of their throwbacks? Certainly, the Houston Oilers, who are depicted as having blue numbers and blue stripes on their socks (for their road uniform) — which is also wrong — could have been the NFL’s model. When the Titans came out wearing their road throwbacks, sure enough they were wrong. In fact, they really butchered the socks, (those are the home socks).

Anyway, this got us (and by us, I mean Ricko) to thinking … just how many of those 1960 uniforms depicted on FUPP were not correct? As it turns out — EVERY SINGLE ONE had something that is incorrect — some mistakes are minor, some are major — but every single one of them is incorrect. And that is a shame, because FUPP is such a great site, but really, accuracy is of paramount importance. As it turned out, the Broncos did wear the correct pants for their game, but many believed they screwed up. Had FUPP correctly depicted the gold pants stripes, perhaps no one would have even noticed. But the fact that many felt the Broncos were actually “wearing the wrong pants” speaks volumes about the importance of making sure the historical record is correct.

One of UW’s outstanding research historians, Tim Brulia, who has compiled two historical columns for the UW archives (”White At Home in the NFL” and “Pro Football Uniform History” — both of which can be found on the right hand side of the UW main page, under “Research Projects”), is actually planning on working with and expanding upon the efforts begun by the FUPP website. I will now turn the column over to Tim, who will explain a bit about that and more. Here’s Tim:

“What is my stake in all of this? I am trying to extend the great work the FUPP site did when it was first launched. But in order for a site to have teeth, it must be accurate, as close to 100% accurate as possible. With a site like FUPP, every little nuance, and detail (colors, stripes, numeral fonts, patches, logos, etc.) has to be accurate.

“In my research, I have used the Proquest archives of the New York Times that are available online. When I was a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), they made available the Proquest archives of the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. I utilize the Pennsylvania State Library in Harrisburg, PA and their vast microfilm collection of PA newspapers, including the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia papers. When I get a rare chance to make it to Washington, I also use the microfilm newspaper collection from the Library of Congress. As well as various historical football pictorial books. Not to mention various contributions from others along the way. I thank all the facilities and generous people for the help.

“Currently, I am working with a contributor who is doing the graphic work on the pre-1959 uniforms. The aim is to complete these sets of unis. From here, we hope to revise the corrections that need to be made that is currently shown on FUPP and bring the uni combos that have been worn since 2003 up to date. When will all of this see the light of day on a website? Frankly, it is too early to tell. But even after our dream becomes reality, our work will never be done. There will always be something that we missed or we need to fix.”

Thanks Tim. I will now turn the remainder of this section over to Rick Pearson, who will explain the importance of “getting it right” when it comes to stuff like this. Through Ricko’s tireless efforts this past week, he has reworked every single AFL uniform template for the 1960 season. This has come about by using his personal recollections, the study of numerous photos and clippings from “The Ricko Files” and the experience of being a “uni watcher” from birth. I’m often impressed, usually wowed, suitably satiated, and never bored by what we as a Uni Watch community bring to the table. But what you’re about to read and see, which is the culmination of that lifetime of paying attention to the little things that really DO matter, is one of the most amazing efforts I have ever seen, and not just on UW. If he and Tim (and others) collaborating now and into the future produce results like those below, then the historical record will have found in Tim and Ricko an equal to Marc Okkonen.

And with that, here’s Ricko:

I’d just turned 14, with six or seven years of serious uni watching (lower case) already under my belt. It was a black and white world, except for Sports Illustrated, SPORT magazine, baseball and football cards (the latter being almost worthless) and Preview Annuals. One NFL game a week on TV and only a half-hour weekly highlight show on Saturday mornings. So if you didn’t see it on Sunday, you pretty much weren’t gonna see it.

And then along game this new American Football League. Lots of ink, mostly about how stupid and lame-brained the idea was. Precious little detail. Hard to know who the players were, much less anything about team colors or unis. Such things were of little or no concern to most people. No “gamers” on sale anywhere. No fan hats. Nuthin’.

Anyway, here comes this loopy new league, with lots of new names and faces, and plenty of familiar old ones.

I parked myself in front of the TV every Sunday. Actually had one in my bedroom, a bit of novelty for a kid back then, and I watched the AFL, making sketches of their unis. What color were they? Well, that required something of a science in itself. Scarlet and royal look almost alike on b&w TV…unless they’re on the field at the same time. If you knew “A” was red, then you could figure “B” (although when together, royal generally did look a bit darker).

You needed to be around for the beginning of the telecast. That was the time, if ever, the announcers would “set the scene. “ Maybe half the time, though, they didn’t bother to describe the unis at all.

Gradually, I figured them out. Logic indicated the Oilers were in powder blue (though yellow gold was something of a possibility). Eventually, announcers confirmed the blue. The Titans certainly wore old gold pants. One announcer said they were in “maize and blue, like Michigan.” My ass, they were. Those pants were WAY too dark to be “maize” as Wolverines knew it. And so it went. And sometimes you’d guess. Educated guesses, but still guesses. And look for details. Is there a feathered edge on those stripes? Especially on socks. That could be a tough one. Not a ton of close-ups back then.

Wasn’t until maybe the third time I saw the Broncos that someone said they were in brown and gold. Until then, I was thinking maybe navy and gold. Or navy and the light orange we now call “Tennessee Orange.” I had reckoned the Patriots were in royal (not wanting to be the “Redcoats,” as many of you have mentioned) and that the Bills had chosen red and silver. Why not, it was a great look at Georgia at the time, and had served the 49ers well the season before. Then I learned it was just the opposite, probably when they played each other and I could compare the “grays”. Or when an announcer bothered to tell us what the hell the teams were wearing.

After a full season of carefully watching all or part of probably every ABC telecast, I had everything pretty much down. Then it was just a case of waiting until the end of the following summer to check preseason magazines (and hope for SOME quality in football cards) to check my findings … even though the magazines would all be black and white, too (it wasn’t until SI’s pro football preview in ’62 that I finally saw a color photo an AFL game).

And somewhere along the line it occurred to me that maybe no one else what recording the things I was recording … and that maybe someday it all would mean something to someone. Guess maybe now it finally does.

So that’s it. The photos I’ve supplied Phil all are from 1961 publications (unless noted), so they have to be 1960 games. Tough to find a camera that will photographs next year’s games.

And I have nothing but respect for FUPP. When I first saw the site, the mistakes irritated me. Then I came to realize they had taken on an outrageous task and very probably just hadn’t had the time to search for everything. I wish I’d know of them sooner, I’d have been glad to help.

What DOES irritate me is that it almost appears that the NFL simply went to FUPP for a lot of its input for the Legacy project. You like to think they’d have bothered to, oh, I dunno, look through their own photo files…or send someone to probe the local newspaper archives.

When Paul visited me a year ago, I kidded about being available to consult with the NFL on the AFL’s 1960 unis for the 50th celebration “for a reasonable fee.” We both laughed, and then he said, matter-of-factly, “They don’t care.”

He was right. The league doesn’t. The Broncos, though, put some extra effort into it. And whether we liked the ’60 duds or not, they got it right. All things considered, that’s exceptional. Also unusual, unfortunately.

Phil here. Before we return to Rick’s write up, I want to show you what Rick did to fix the FUPP 1960 AFL team graphics. So, here, for the first time, are all Eight Original AFL teams, properly rendered by color, stripe, helmet, etc. OUTSTANDING effort Rick! And here are each of those eight teams individually:

Boston Patriots … Buffalo Bills … Dallas Texans … Denver Broncos … New York Titans … Houston Oilers … Los Angeles Chargers … and Oakland Raiders.

Tremendous, tremendous job on those Rick. OK — I now return you to the sage uni watcher, Mr. Pearson, who has some notes on those templates:

Notes on the Revised Templates:

1. Wide red band on Patriots socks.

Back then it took me a while to realize that was the top of the crew socks many of the Pats chose to wear. In some games, they wore crew socks that ended with a pair of red stripes, which totally garbled the leg striping.

2. Titans and Raiders helmets.

Raiders wore the same as the Bears at the time. Titans wore something different altogether. It might have been MacGregor, but I don’t remember any other teams wearing it (and I probably should have made theirs a darker blue, because they were). That blue-helmets-darker-than-blue-jerseys thing.

3. Raider numbers were same font as Oilers.

Most uni historians don’t get that right. They assume that Raiders were more like the Bears…probably because the uni was patterned after them.

4. Have not double-checked the specific versions of block numbers for teams that wore them.

Titans and Chargers are right, I believe. The others may well need adjusting.

5. Raiders gold.

You can see on my “Kids Cards” that I had the Raiders’ gold wrong. It had a bit of sheen to it, and I thought it was metallic old gold, like UCLA or Notre Dame. It wasn’t until I saw the 1962 cards (’61 Raider cards all were hand-tinted black & white PR photos and pretty useless) that I learned positively that it was yellow-gold.

6. One-year wonders.

Only Bills and Raiders were unchanged for second season.

In 1961…

* Titans went to white-added loop unis used for the Legacy games.

* Patriots changed loops to royal around white, and lost the white road socks. And, of course, the three-corner hat was gone.

* Chargers changed all bolts to yellow-gold edged in blue.

* Texans ditched white high road socks.

* Oilers changed to block numbers with no contrasting edge on numbers or sock stripes, either home or road.

*Broncos had no TV numbers on home jerseys.

Well, that’s it for the history lesson. All I can say is “WOW”. Outstanding effort Mr. Richard Pearson. It’s clear to me that the once and future FUPP website will be getting an outstanding resource in you, and when combined with Tim Brulia’s yeoman research and a quality graphic artist, we can look forward to an historical record that will rival that of Marc Okkonen. (And maybe even surpass it). Tip of the cap to you gentlemen, for this first salvo. I’m sure the project, when it finally does come to fruition, will be well worth the wait for those uni watchers (and non-uni watchers) who have been waiting for something like this since … well — forever.

What say YOU, Uni Watch community? How freakin’ great was this? Big round of applause for both Ricko and Timmy B!

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. Oregon continued on its winning streak, remaining unbeaten in PAC-10 play and taking Washington behind the woodshed this week, with a 43-19 buttwhoopin’. Look for Oregon to move up from the 11-spot in the rankings and into to the Top 10. The Ducktracker is now updated.

Our man in the street, Jim Vilk brings you his “Top 5″ Best and one WORST college football uni matchup from yesterday:

5. USF/Pitt: Bulls are growing on me, while Pitt is a script away from being awesome-looking.

4. Indiana/Northwestern: A lack of Northwestern striping kept this from being rated higher.

3. Tennessee/Alabama: Oh, Bama…if you would have let the Vols wear orange you could have been #1.

2. Auburn/LSU: Tigers win this battle of the unis…

1. Iowa State/Nebraska: Cyclones blew me away with this look, while the Huskers remain classic.

And the worst one: Ball State/Eastern Michigan: A battle of winless teams in more ways than one.

OK that’s all for today. Apologize for the lack of “extras” but needed to get this loaded early. Everyone have a great Sunday. Don’t forgot to nominate your Worst Uni Ever (see yesterday’s post for details). Two legacy games today, plus the ALCS resumes, following the rainout yesterday.

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.

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:

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.

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

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.

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.

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!”

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

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

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lookie what I’ve got: a pair of the Broncos’ throwback socks. And if you’re wondering why I folded them down at the top, it’s because they’re the longest tube socks I’ve ever owned. Super-plush and comfy, though — Uni Watch’s highest rating! If you want your own, they’re available for $15 from the Broncos team shop (720-258-3300).

Congrats to Pierce Bassett, who won the soccer jacket raffle. And apologies to everyone else, because I’m celebrating the autumnal equinox by taking the day off and shutting down the comments. See you tomorrow, OK? OK. — Paul

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.

That there was some right purty football, it was.

And not just in Foxboro — the Raiders and Chargers looked my-t-fine as well. Sure, you could quibble about a few things elements not being 100% authentic or whatever, and today’s fabrics don’t have the texture of the old days, but on the whole these two games were very, very easy on the eyes. And as Phil points out, the teams looked a lot better than if they’d been wearing their standard attire.

A few things I was fixating on:

• I loved that the Raiders/Chargers gridiron was laid out over the Oakland Coliseum’s baseball diamond, with lots of the game action taking place on the dirt infield — a bonus throwback element for those of us who remember when so many football games were played in baseball stadiums.

• The Bills’ throwback helmets have had no NFL shield and no American flag for several years now, so that’s nothing new. But I was surprised to see that the Pats, Raiders, and Chargers also went without those two decals. An impressive bit of graphic restraint. (For the record, though, only the Bills went the extra mile of removing the fine-print warning decal, which means the Pats, Raiders, and Chargers are officially total Nancys.)

• Speaking of rear-helmet details, the Pats had a very nice uni number treatment. Is that how they looked back in the day? Yup.

• Were those officials friggin’ awesome or what? I especially loved their uni numbers, which were probably my favorite visual element of the entire night.

• Obviously, there were lots of modern details that we wouldn’t have seen in an early-1960s game — visors, super-short sleeves, African-American officials, etc. None of that bothered me, but for some reason I was seriously annoyed by Buffalo’s captaincy patches, which felt completely out of place and ill-advised. The other teams, thankfully, did without them.

• The other big turd in the punch bowl: those goddamn green dots.

• If you look again at that last photo, you can see how Buffalo’s helmets were cream, not white. New England’s were even a micro-shade darker, or at least that’s how it looked on my TV. In theory, this is fine, but the game was played on FieldTurf, so the uniforms didn’t get dirty and the whites stayed very white, which really accentuated the off-white helmets, probably a bit more than was intended.

• Best argument — maybe the only good argument — against San Diego’s helmet numbers: They don’t mesh well with today’s high-hookup chin straps.

• Oakland’s sideline staff wore these totally boss sweaters, or maybe they were sweatshirts. Whatever, they looked cool.

• Belichick just wore his usual sweatshirt with the cut-off sleeves, instead of that cool throwback hoodie. Dang.

Not a bad start to the throwback series. I could definitely get used to this.

Research Request: I’ve begun working on a column about football gloves, which I think have had a massive (and largely overlooked) impact on the game in recent years. I admit to knowing relatively little about their history — who was the first player to wear them? The first QB? The first QB to do so on both hands? Was there any ever question about their legality under the rules? Also, I know there’s a story about CFL players wearing glass cutters’ gloves but can’t recall the details.

So if you have any thoughts to share about football gloves — history, design, colors, quirks, oddities (until yesterday, for example, I didn’t know that Lions punter Nick Harris wears gloves), whatever, — let’s have ’em. Big thanks in advance.

Please Note: Yes, I’m still having e-mail problems. Yes, it’s incredibly frustrating. Yes, I’m about to switch to gmail but am giving the Earthlink techies one last chance to solve the problem because I really don’t want the hassle of telling the entire world that I’ve changed addresses. For today, please keep using beerframeguy at yahoo.com. Thanks.

Uni Watch News Ticker: Really fun item here about a visit with MLB licensing VP Howard Smith (with thanks to Chris Flinn). … That is one super-cool radio (welcome back, HHH). … A frog in a baseball uniform? Sure, why not. … Completely gorgeous vintage hoops jersey here. … Good post on hockey uni numbers by Jeff Barak. … Sorry, this item is no longer available, but maybe one of them is rattling around a flea market or something. I gotta have one! (Great find by Kirsten.) … Also from Kirsten: These antique baseball gloves. Lots of other cool stuff on that site, too. … Good news in Rochester, where this has given way to this (as noted by a very happy Doug Brei). … New shirt sponsor for Liverpool (with thanks to Keith Dow). … Several people have asked where I got — or, more to the point, where they can get — this T-shirt. Look here. … FNOB alert from a 1983 Saints/Jets game (courtesy of Bill Kellick). … Do you think the caps worn by members of Hamas look like green Washington Nationals caps? Right, neither do I. But some security personnel at an Israeli airport did (with thanks to William Yurasko). … Jonathan Sluss notes that Ryan Williams had a uni-numbered towel on Saturday. … Also from Jonathan: Virginia Tech soccer player Jennifer Harvey has been wearing an interesting nose guard. … Uh-oh, kitty in the stirrup drawer! That’s Jescoe, Robert Marshall’s mama cat. Hope none of our Uni Watch Stirrup Club members are allergic. … Speaking of which, in case you’ve missed it, ordering instrux for the latest round of stirrups can be found here. … If you go to the 2:13 mark of the first video on this page, you’ll see the jumpman logo now appearing on Marquette’s basketball shorts (with thanks to Brendan, who didn’t give his last name). … Another good Penn State equipment room video here (Chris Flinn again). … Here’s a weird one: Apparently the Pistons are going to have a memorial patch for Bill Davidson on the back of their collars — a blue patch at home and red on the road. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of that spot being used for a memorial patch before, in any sport (big thanks to Jeff Cohen). … HelmetHats!

By Phil Hecken

Welcome back to part two of the Milwaukee Brewer makeover series. If you missed Part I, featuring some amazing mock ups by Chance Michaels and David Frost, be sure to take a look-see.

We’re on to part two today, however, and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. So, let’s get it started.

We begin today with an amazing effort from David Timmerman, who happens to be the Editor of the Grant County Herald Independent, and who has been sending me many submissions over the past month or so. David has a lot to say, so I’ll let him say it in his own words:

Taking up your challenge on changes to the Brewers uniforms, I tried to mix some history into the current uni set, staying away from wholesale changes. A lifelong Brewers fan, I wanted to see some history incorporated into the mix, some more subtle than others.

Thoughts on current uniforms

When the Brewers unveiled their newest jersey in the spring of 2000, it was supposed to usher in a new era with a new ballpark, but due to an unfortunate crane failure which took the lives of three construction workers, as well as the roof in right field, Miller Park was still a year away from opening. So the Crew took the field in the new unis to say goodbye to historic Milwaukee County Stadium.

After jettisoning the ‘Notre Dame’ look of an intersecting M and B (and eliminating the moldy green bats of the fairly generic logo) they came out with one harkening to a past – not the Brewers past, mind you, but a past. And I liked the logo very much – That B for Brewers is certainly unique and rich feeling, as is the M that graces the hat. I like the touch of barley under the M as well.

The logo is similar to the one for Miller Park, which hovers over the scoreboard. Now why they didn’t make that logo more animated (like having the balls rotate, or the lights blink for a homer) I have no idea.

When it came to the jerseys, I was less than thrilled by final version, mainly due to font selection which I blaming on Laurel Prieb, who was one of the VP’s at the time, related to the ownership of the Minnesota Twins, and more importantly, married to Wendy Selig-Prieb, team president and Bud’s daughter. That choice of Garamond/Times/serifed typeface, similar to what the Washington Capitals were using at the time should never grace a uniform, but there it is. I have to note that it is the same font chosen for the seats and rows within the park as well.

Now I think uniforms should stick with tradition as much as they can, but I also don’t want teams trying to look to a past that they never had. Most teams usually incorporate a block-style for the numbers, and while I would never want the Packers to alter their uniforms, I think the Brewers should have some leeway. Now what I would love to have is a toned-down version of what the Brewers had in the 90s, liking the shape of the numbers, which did have too much layering going on. Since I cannot find that, I went with a font, SquareSlab, that I find is similar to what the Eagles used when they revised their unis.

Another issue I had with the unis was the lack of either piping or striping. Very few teams incorporate neither on their jerseys, the Cardinals come to mind, and I think their main reason is, beyond tradition that is, because their chest graphic is so large and detailed, it would be over-doing it. Otherwise, I think every team should have one of them, but since the Cubs utilize stripes, and the retro jerseys have it as well, I went with piping.

I just couldn’t decide on whether to go with a single pipe, or dual-colored piping, much like the Braves. On the road jersey, it felt like a bit much, but looked good on the home jersey. I went with multiple stripes on the sleeves to harken back to 1970, which was a remnant from the Pilots.

Another thing was the color scheme. There have been three Milwaukee Brewers teams in the history of the city. The first was the 1901 team that played for only the inaugural season of the American League, jetting to St. Louis to become the Browns, who then became the Orioles. The second, and more famous of the first two was the American Association Brewers, who were the ones implementing the BarrelMan logo. Bud Selig had always wanted to return to those days, which included a blue-red color scheme, which was probably copied from parent club, the Braves. But strapped for cash, Selig had to go with the Blue-Gold color scheme of the Pilots when they were moved from Seattle.

Now on the current Brewers uniform, the gold has shiny specks in it, and is a truer gold. But Baseball players shouldn’t sparkle! Although I love the 80s Brewers, I didnt want to go with the yellow. So what I tried to go with was something slightly lighter than the ‘old gold’ the Jets used on their throwback Titans of New york unis last year.

Road Version – One of my biggest complaint for specifically the away unis was the fact that they removed Milwaukee. In understand that maybe this was done to have one cut for patches on the uniforms, but if you can have multiple colors for the dark blue, alternate uniforms, as well as the throwback unis, you can cut Milwaukee and slap it onto front. For the road jersey, I altered the grey, adding more blue, and darkening them a little. I wish I could mock-up one that was alittle shinier, similar to Georgetown’s unis and harken back to the late 1940s satin jerseys teams wore for nighttime games on television, but that may be a bit gaudy. I brought back BarrelMan for the road uniforms….I also think he may look good on a hat….

I wanted to set these uniforms apart from others, so I reversed the lettering, making it white. Like I said, I like the M, so I kept that on the hat. Another area I had a conflict was on the back – I really like having the numbers in white, but I wondered if it conflicted with the numbers in blue on the front. Also, what to do with the piping. I show both here……

Home uniforms – Similar to the road uniforms, there are a few changes. We stick with ‘Brewers’ across the chest, and I retain the gold drop shadow, although part of me wants to alter the tail under the letters to make it much larger. I bring back a revised ball and glove to the hat – The ‘fingers’ would be raised as on many new hat logos. I had real conflicts about this – do you alter the logo in any way, make it look more like a glove, make the M and the B more subtle? (David even added a red version of the uniform — [PH]) What color do you make the elements? Is it even a good idea, or should this log be saved for the throwback jerseys? I like the new Curly B, and would like that on the hat, but in the end I went with modifying the ball in the logo to simplify it, but wouldn’t be against somehow incorporating a metal stud in the shape of a ball…I also don’t think the home team needs nameplates on the back. The teams in the 80s didn’t need them, and it seems to be the only think the Yankees and Red Sox can agree on, so it should be good enough for the Brewers…

Different colors – I thought another alternative could be ‘colorizing’ the jerseys, going red, or blue, or green for St. Patty’s Day.

Pretty good start, right? Well, David had more — much more — in store for me. We’ll get back to him in a little bit, but let’s see what else we have.

Moving along, our next few sets of uniforms come with a little less description, but the effort is top notch.

Next up is Paul Radetsky, who simply writes: “This a first attempt at something like this … I’ve done some uni-design for All-Stars for the league my son played in … (I’m a) Graphic Designer by trade.”

And what did Paul create? Only this amazing concept set.

He didn’t describe it, but it’s obviously a complete home, away and alternate set. The home jersey is actually a vest, with pinstripes, and a unique font. The cap is a fauxback, featuring a blue brim, white crown (with blue back) featuring the classic “ball in glove” logo. On the sleeve, Paul has added a throwback Milwaukee state patch with the “ball in glove” (BIG) logo contained within. The away set returns the word “Milwaukee” to the chest, in the same font as the home, and keeps the sleeve patch the same. He uses a solid blue cap featuring the current Brewer “M” logo. Finally, the alternate is a solid blue jersey, featuring not a wordmark but the “ball in glove” logo on the left side of the chest, same patch as on the home and away, and a third cap similar to his home proposal, only this cap features a blue brim, gold crown (solid all around) and the “old school” BIG logo. Two sock options are provided — one a solid blue sock with the BIG logo, and the second, a blue stirrup with gold sanitary (real nice throwback element there). Each of these elements is shown clearly on his mockup.

Stellar job Paul!

Our next submitter is reader and poster Andrew “Greenie” Greenwood who has some nice ideas to share. Here’s Andrew:

I’m bringing back the ball and mitt. The colors are the gold used back in the 80’s and a brighter blue than they use now. Ball and mitt on hat, current brewers script on home chest with new colors. Home jersey is not white, but more of an eggshell. (I love the cream of the Giants, and that off-white skews toward orange, so i figure the Brewer’s cream should skew toward gold, making it an eggshell color.) Blue sleeves on away grey jersey with blue belt. Milwaukee written vertically arched in blue and gold on the chest, both with blue socks. Also kept the M on Wisconsin outline as a sleeve patch for the home team.

And with that intro, here is Andrew’s creation. When I first saw it, I thought Greenie was going for a “vest” on the away jersey, so I asked him about that. Turns out, as usual, I was wrong. “Those blue sleeves were actually inspired by the Milwaukee Bears throwback they wore this year,” explains Andrew. “It looked so nice on the field, I wanted to bring back the look. The slightly different blue that I used is actually from those Bears jerseys too.”

Superb job, Greenie.

We now return to David Timmerman, who liked the idea of tweaking the Brewers so much, he continued to send me submissions. He continued to fine-tune his home and roads, and added some new powder blues (a nice harkback). His next missive went like this:

Well, I worked on revising my template, so I am ready for future projects. In addition, I made revisions to the home Brewers jersey:

• Increased the size of the tail under the name on the front of the jersey
• Increased size of B on ‘Brewers’ nameplate, also skewed the rest of the name for better arching over number
• Eliminated the gold piping (looked like too much after I revised the piping template)
• Added stripes to the sanis
• Fine-tuned the Ball & Glove logo (two-tone ball has ying-yang look about it)

I didn’t say what I did with the Powder Blue unis, but I increased the flag from the Road Milwaukee logo, and only kept the ‘Pilot’ striping. (As with many of David’s creations, he sent me a second powder blue concept — [PH].) To tell the truth, the toughest part was deciding on the hat (ball&Glove versus others, what color).

This is my latest, with striped sanis since I know you guys love the sanis, and a yellow brim (could not go with a yellow front, and still not crazy about it…). Also, I felt that maybe in these high-definition times, the color I had utilized for the powder blue was too vibrant, so I scaled it back, maybe as the unis looked like when they were unveiled in the flannel days…

Sorry, don’t mean to be a bother, just a fun project to work on…

No bother at all David, they keep getting better. But David is still not finished. We’ll be back with the next batch in a sec.

The next to take the plunge was Zach Davis, who, like all who submitted suggestions, did a tremendous job. Zach states, “My basic idea was to take the pre-strike Brewers uniform and update it for 2010. I tried to keep everything classic yet modern at the same time and logically evolve things as if the mid-’90s redesign never happened. Of all the Brewers logos I’ve always loved the old ‘Wisconsin’ logo, so that takes center stage with a newly designed ‘M’. The Ball-in-glove logo goes through some color shifting — the yellow outline becomes white and I’ve added a yellow outline to the glove itself. In doing that I absolutely fell in love with the ‘ball’ part of the ball-in-glove, so I’ve separated it and made it the official third logo (and replaced the ‘Milwaukee Star’ in the ‘Wisconsin’ logo with it) and I think it looks fantastic, even slightly harkening back to the Pilots. All the fonts are new and I threw in a custom script logo for the hell of it. The uniform set is classic without (hopefully) being either too stodgy or too ‘retro’ and I especially liked being able to give a nod to the Pilots in the styling of the third/sunday uniform. The caps are nods to the history of baseball in Milwaukee, combining stylings of the Brewers with that of the Milwaukee Braves.”

Here’s a “full look” at Zach’s masterpiece. Another tremendous effort from a dedicated Uni Watcher. Great fonts, and I love how a couple of our submitters, like Zach, are “harking” back to the old Wisconsin outline logo.

Next up is Kevin Callahan who is the Creative Director for Alterra Coffee (alterracoffee.com) here in Milwaukee.

And here is what Kevin created for his Brewers redux.

Kevin states, “As you can see I am a big fan of the “Barrel Man”, which I feel is a much stronger and livelier logo than the much ballyhooed “mb Glove”. The glove logo is simply clever and that’s all. Barrel Man is clever and has a personality that is lacking in the glove logo.

“I kept the Pilots’ Blue and Gold even though Red, White and Blue would be more traditional. While it is imperative that the city name be on the road uni, I understand that “Milwaukee” is possibly too long.”

Fantastic job on those Kevin. Can’t say I am a huge fan of the abbreviation (although, there is certainly precedent for that sort of thing in baseball). And here we have another submitter who has put a logo, rather than a wordmark, on the “alt” jersey. Nice work!

Winding down, our penultimate submitter is Steve Prestegard, who has a slighly different take on the new look for the Crew. Here’s Steve:

I freely admit to being not much of an artist. I can visualize concepts, but the execution … well, to quote John McKay, I’m all for it.

While there are certainly better concepts out there, I think the concepts are off the mark in one important area. None of them use the colors of beer, and they usually use colors that are quite overused — namely, navy blue and red. (Arguably, those colors and the royal blue and gold are more befitting of beer cans than beer.) The colors in this concept are black (for dark beer), gold (lager) and cream (the head).

The first one is a very simple Germanic M (yes, it looks very similar to Detroit’s D) using black and gold. The next two are home (cream) and home alt uniforms, followed by road (tannish-gray) and road alt unis.

Anyway, do with these what you will. Ein prosit.

Thanks for those Steve. Those were actually sent to Paul, and were part of an inline message, so I apologize for them having a “black” background — not sure what happened, but, especially with the black alts and cap, it makes them more difficult to see. Still, you guys will get the idea.

Winding this massive post up, we return, one last time, to David Timmerman, as he completes his masterpiece of uni concepting:

Well, here I am once again with my thoughts on the Brewers jerseys. In my reimagining of the jerseys, I would have four jerseys for the team (Home White, Road Grey, ‘Ghost of the 70’s’ muted powder blue, and 80’s throwback striped.

I have never been a fan of the full-color alternate unis, which look too much like a team’s batting jerseys in my eyes (The ‘Black’ Sox are one of the few exceptions). The Cubs especially look awful in those royal blue outfits (well, at least even more putrid then they normally look for this long-time Brewers fan). So if I was the owner of the Brewers, those navy alternates would be on a truck for the clearance rack.

But, looking to make a buck off anything (and taking a positive cue from the college and NFL practice unis unveiled) I would put some style into the spring training / batting practice jerseys. I like the choice for batting practice caps made a few years back, and think some choices on the batting jersey, which is also worn exclusively during spring training, could lift sales.

So here is what I came up with — retaining the darker tones that usually grace the practice uniforms, while tossing the stripes and piping. I have added muted blue strips below the armpits, similar to some football uniforms, but these are not meant to reach out of the pit onto the front of the jersey, merely run down the sides. With Milwaukee training in Arizona, these strips would be made of a highly breathable, and stretchable material, and utilize ‘Dry’-Cool’ fabrics.

Since they will be used for spring training, going with a block letter/number combo to reduce costs. Also, unlike the the regular season jerseys, no drop shadowing. Thought about making the front numbers blue or gold, but just couldn’t pull the trigger. Also, going with a simple sock.

During spring training, would go with the powder blue pants (matching the armpit strips), but they would be worn above any pants before a game. Also went with a pullover with a button instead of a full jersey..

I also wanted to add some detail to the jersey, but couldn’t decide what to do. Thought about placing letters on the front (R for rookie, C for captain) as well as incorporating some small stripes on the sleeve or front to represent each year the player had been with the team…

Still not quite finished, David came back up for air and asked, “what did you think was better, the bright powder blues, or the more muted look?” Obligingly, I told him, and he even created a uniform just for me, which he called “Powder Phil.” Flattered was I by this gesture, but it’s really just combining a couple disparate elements from his different concepts.

Thinking David was done, I was ready to call it a post, but, hey, what’s one more missive and one more concept? Here’s David, one last time:

to annoy you, whipped up one more jersey, this one more reaching out to my creative side then necessarily looking to to create a new Brewers jersey, per say.

Being an amateur historian of certain Wisconsin teams, I know that teams from the state that wear blue and gold often place their numbers in a circle at some point in their history. Marquette, who often tried something new when it came to uniform design, had blue circles around the numbers. The Packers, when they were still using Blue and gold, before they donned their namesake green, first encircled their numbers in a gold ball on the front of their jerseys.

So I thought, why not the Brewers? Baseballs are round, and what better way to determine the arch of the nameplate on the back than with a circle. I decided to add a tint to the home jersey, because I think a few teams can pull that look off, and also incorporate the jersey number on the pants as well.

Kept the piping to a minimum, and modified the tail under ‘Brewers’ which looks more classic, or generic, depending on your opinion

I thought about incorporating a circle with payer number on the sani, thus making it more likely players would actually show them off, but have not in this example. I also kicked around using the ball and glove on the hat, making it fit entirely in the circle, but did not in this version.

I am not certain any team had a similar design, but please let me know if I am wrong (not counting the old star on the back of the Hollywood Stars) Also, maybe you think this look would fit better with another team…I could alter it to that club.

OK. That’s really all from David. But what a tremendous effort on this part, huh?

I apologize for the length of this post, but I wanted to give all the submitters their due. If you’ve made it this far, I thank you for your patients.

Just truly great stuff from all those who participated. I actually had three more people who had contacted me about ‘fixin’ the Brewers’ but after the initial contact and interest in the project, they didn’t get back to me. Still though, quite an impressive array of jerseys.

And moi? Did I have any ideas for Brewers concepts. Sadly for you, I do. Lots of them, but I’ll spare you the gory details and just show you the two I’d like to see someday. Like many of the submitters, they borrow heavily from the Brewers past. For the roadie, I’d love to see something like this: powder blue, blue stirrups with gold sanis, script “Milwaukee” and for a cap logo — the Wisconsin outline, which is replicated on the sleeves. For the homes, how about this? A cream-tinged uniform (after all, Milwaukee is the “Cream City”), with the BIG logo as a sleeve patch and topping an all blue cap. Once again, stirrups are blue with gold sanis. The original road “BREWERS” wordmark adorns the front.

That’s really all for today folks. Big, big round of applause for all who submitted their designs. Let them know you appreciate their efforts, and tell them what you think.

With baseball season winding down, if you’d like to submit your suggestions for “uni concepts” for your favorite (or any team), please send them my way. I’ve already received a bunch of submissions for different teams, and I will be sure to feature them and more at a future date.

Got a note from regular James Huening on an event that may be of interest to golfers and charitable types out there. Johnny O, you down with this?

Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: You guys may have noticed that we have a weekend visitor who goes by the name of “SlimandSlam”, who enjoys the GTG bits a lot, and is frequently one of the first (if not the first) to guess the game. Well, “Slim” contacted me this past week and graciously offered a few scoreboards up to me. So, for that, I’m quite grateful. This will be the first of those. As always, we need date, location and final score, all of which can be done by posting a link from Retrosheet or Baseball Almanac. So, here we go with Slim’s first submission. Ready? Guess The Game. Thanks Slim!

Well, football season is here and that means for the boys of Benchies, it’s touch football time. What? You thought they only played softball? They’ve been away from the game for a while tho, so things could get dicey. On that note, enjoy your Saturday Benchies.

OK, that’s it. Good college football today (Go Trojans!), and “Super Saturday” hopefully some tennis, weather permitting, for all two of us tennis fans. And tomorrow, a full schedule of NFL games. Plus, there’s a few baseball teams still worth watching AND there’s golf playoffs, where they narrow the field down to 30. Not to mention other sports as well. Basically, a uni watcher’s dream, this weekend. Enjoy your Saturday.

By Phil Hecken

Welcome back, everyone!

It all started a few scant weeks ago when I and a couple of other posters decided that the Chicago White Sox uniform needed “fixing.” While reaction to that post was mixed, it was also met with a call for other teams who could use either a uniform tweak, overhaul or to just plain start from scratch. There were many obvious candidates.

Based upon that sentiment, I asked readers for suggestions as to which team might be next in line for fixin,’ and it was decided that the Milwaukee Brewers were a good next candidate. I received many submissions from readers with their suggestions, some of which we’ll examine below. What follows, then, are the first batch of suggestions for a New Crew. Due to the large number of submissions I received, this is merely part one of a two-part series. We begin with the man who suggested the Brewers tweak, and a long-time reader and poster who’s been passionate in his call for a revamp of the Brewers uniforms for years.

No Milwaukee Brewer uniform overhaul would be complete without the man who has, for the past eight years, been clamoring for the Brewers to change things up, Chance Michaels. Chance is a UW stalwart, a Cream City affectionado, a Milwaukee-phile, and more. He’s written on the Brewers and Packers on several of his websites, and I’m sure you’re familiar with his “online museum of the American Association Milwaukee Brewers”, borchertfield.com. The last of the designs featured today were first seen on that blog several months ago. What follows now, though, are Chance’s earlier design concepts, the ones that began his passionate desire to fix the Brewers.

I asked Chance to describe his creations. “My experience with re-designing the Brewers goes all the way back to the late 1970s, when I first realized that their pinstriped uniforms, then just a few years old but comprising the entirety of my baseball awareness, weren’t the only uniforms the club had worn. I came across an old pennant featuring the Beer Barrel Man, and I was hooked. Later research on the BBM led me to its origins in the 1940s, to the minor league Brewers of the American Association, where the current ballclub got its name, and ever since then I’ve been hooked.”

He continues, “In 1996, I submitted my first concept to the team – a recolored BBM sleeve patch to replace the ‘Motre Bame’ crossed-bats logo – in the form of a fan letter. Never heard back from them, but I’ve been trying ever since.” Fast forward to five years later: “In 2001, I started working on new designs for my True Blue Brew Crew. I brought back to the Ball-and-Glove, but dropped the pinstripes in favor of classic piping. I also created a modern version of the old American Association Brewers, and I’ve been playing with refining that design ever since. I still haven’t given up hope of getting the Beer Barrel Man on the Brewers’ sleeves.”

Lets take a look at what’s he created.

Chance’s first uni-concept, entitled “True Blue,” had a distinctly retro feel to it, and returned the “Milwaukee” wordmark to the road jersey. Chance explains the philosophy behind the concept: “Building off the very successful ‘Retro Fridays’ uniform, this concept draws largely from the Brewers’ great past, the days of Bambi’s Bombers and Harvey’s Wallbangers, Rollie and Paul and Gumby and Rockin’ Robin, giving the classic a modern twist.” Of the original Brewers colors and wordmark he notes, “The design touches fans in a very deep way, telling us of the glory days ahead by reminding us of the best years of the franchise.”

Of the logos, he adds, “The ‘Ball and Glove‘ logo of the American League glory days signifies a tradition, a bond between the Brewers and the fans. This is what most Milwaukeeans think of when they think of the Brewers. Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Jim Gantner, Cecil Cooper, Rollie Fingers, Gorman Thomas and Don Sutton all played with this logo on their caps. The Beer Barrel Man logo is synonymous with Milwaukee baseball from the American Association days to Hank Aaron’s final playing days. Not only does it link to that tradition, but it also provides the team with the opportunity for a mascot logo, which has been very successful for the Reds, Orioles and Mets since they re-introduced their mascots.”

But Chance wasn’t merely satisfied with his first efforts, introducing a second concept he calls “A New Classic” (here is the road version). According to Chance, “This concept draws largely from the American Association Milwaukee Brewers, a powerhouse for fifty years and Milwaukee’s first great baseball team. From 1902 through 1952 they were dominant in their league, and it was that success that paved the way for the Braves to move from Boston in 1953.”

Mr. Michaels views the “New Classic” as having four distinct advantages:

1. A timeless design, guaranteed not to go out of style. Many teams have become very successful by rediscovering their 1940s and 1950s designs (such as the White Sox, Giants, Reds, Pirates and Indians) or creating a new design with a classic flavor (such as the Mariners and Angels). The Brewers are fortunate that they can do both at the same time, by honoring their namesake.

Baseball is the most traditional of sports, with a long and cherished tradition, and a team’s look should reflect that.

2. The excitement of an expanded color scheme. Red was a traditional American Association Brewer color from its inception. The Brewers, by adopting it, can honor that tradition. Coupling it with the contemporary Blue and Gold, the Brewers would have a color scheme not only unique in Major League Baseball, but offering many great opportunities for merchandising. These are colors that will never go out of style.

3. The Beer Barrel Man logo. The Beer Barrel Man logo is synonymous with Milwaukee baseball from the American Association team to Hank Aaron’s final playing days. Not only does the Beer Barrel Man link to that tradition, but it also provides the team with the opportunity for a mascot logo, which has been very successful for the Reds and the Mets since they re-introduced their mascots.

4. A clean, solid design that is both contemporary and classic. The simple wordmark appeals to the timeless nature of baseball, while the dark, classic colors are very popular with fans and the general public. The piping allows the team color to shine through. The lack of names on the back signifies a return to tradition (names are a relatively new addition to the Brewers uniform, not being present on Hank Aaron’s back or Robin Yount’s when he smacked his 3,000th hit).

Chance has proposed to top the Brewers in this classic cap, first worn by the American Association Brewers, but made more famous by the Milwaukee Braves. He’s also provided a slightly modified alternate cap which could be incorporated into the uniform set as well.

Well done, Chance, well done. But wait, we’re not quite done with Chance Michaels and his Brew Crew reworks just yet. He has a third set of concept unis, which we’ll explore in detail a little later on.

Piggybacking on Chance’s tremendous efforts, we have a great UW DIYer, David Frost (aka “Frosty”), who’s created some actual Brewers concept jerseys (and ALSO taken the amazing step of taking one of Chance’s concepts and made that into a real-life jersey as well!)

Frosty has been featured on UW before, so I’m sure you are all familiar with his awesomeness. If you guys have any questions about his work, or are maybe looking to have him do up a custom jersey just for you, drop him a line.

So, let’s see what David has created. First up is this amazing pinstripe jersey (here’s the back), which is basically a perfect replication of Chance’s proposed “True Blue” road jersey, only with pinstripes. Says Frosty, “I made this jersey last year… (it) is more like a retro ‘I wish’ for the old Milwaukee script. I always wanted the Brewers roadie to be pinstriped when I was a kid as well (I mean…the home jerseys were…shouldn’t there be SOME uniformity there rather than a completely different look?), so I found the gray with royal pins and went with it. The patch is the old Harvey Kuehn patch from the year he died. Take that off…and ya got a winner.” Outstanding.

Frosty wasn’t done, though. He also made this incredible jersey (here’s the back), borrowing from Chance’s mockup. David explains, “here’s my current project – Thanks to the fantastic talent of Chance Michaels. This ‘beer script’ is exactly that – and exactly beer. When Chance first did the art, he had a standard outline around it. I decided to tweak it with a drop-shadow to add a more classic beer label look. The colors? The original American Association Brewers were navy and red. Not that the big leagues need more of this combination, but I thought it would work best.”

As you might be able to tell from the pictures, at the time, that was still a work in progress. “What else is needed?” David asks. “1) A classic barrel man patch on the left sleeve (and I mean the OLD one); and 2) For this jersey to be done on ecru. What is ecru? It’s the color that most people call ‘cream’, but in the trade, the color is called ECRU. A cream-colored jersey for the Cream City…NO BRAINER.”

After David sent me these, I figured, “wow — just wow” that’s amazing. Little did I know he would not only finish off that second jersey, adding the barrelman logo to the sleeve — but he still wasn’t done DIYing.

Frosty struck out on his own this time, creating a THIRD Brewer concept jersey (of course, complete with barrelman on the sleeve). David says this jersey “was made possible thanks to some of the current Phillies braid I came across. The finish down the shoulders has always been a classy look to me, so I went with that, a classic front font in red/white, and our barrelman again on left sleeve.”

When you combine those three with the photo of Frosty at Miller Park in another of his creations … well, I’m not real good with math but that’s a LOT of amazing DIYs.

Thanks Frosty!

Returning to Chance’s Brewer redesign proposals, I will draw your attention to a new set which appeared back in May on his blog. Some of you have probably seen it before, but it too is an outstanding effort.

Chance has “made no secret that I am no fan of the current Brewers uniforms. They’re sterile and plain, designed by committee, but worst of all they have no connection with Milwaukee’s rich baseball history.” But his new uni proposal seeks to change all that. “Here’s my proposal to give the current bearers of the name the unique and modern look they deserve, while at the same time honoring the whole of that history, including (and especially) the American Association Brewers.”

His vision for the new home uniform as well as it’s road counterpart build upon his earlier efforts, and he has arrived upon a primary logo (along with the uni concpts) he has sent to Brewers’ management for their consideration. Chance contiunes:

The details, in no particular order:

Sleeve patch: For me, it all starts with bringing back the one, the original, the Beer Barrel Man. Symbol of Milwaukee baseball since at least 1901. Time he finally made the sleeves.

Wordmarks: The script font on the home jersey is Saloonkeeper, based on the script used by Leinenkugel’s. It’s surprisingly similar to the script used by the Brewers in the 1940s. The road wordmark is based on a 1930s Pabst Blue Ribbon label – I’m terribly fond of that one.

Colors: The color scheme utilizes the blue and gold influenced by the current colors (the only thing I really flat-out love about the current scheme). I’ve moved the home uniform to a light cream to reflect Milwaukee’s nickname as The Cream City, as well as the various historical baseball teams known as the “Creams” and “Cream Citys“.

Accent Striping: I included the shoulder piping not only because it has an historical precedent, but would also create a pattern currently unique in the majors. Another way to instantly identify the team. The Brewers used a similar thick piping from 1996-1999, and it looked great.

Number font: The numbers are what I call a simple square block. Again, they could be as easily identifiable as the San Francisco Giants’ numbers are, without either drawing too much attention or sacrificing legibility. FWIW, I’m basing these on a number font worn by the Packers in the 1940s.

The cap logo: I’ve always wanted to use a bottlecap in a Brewers concept. And the block “M” on the bottlecap clearly references the Milwaukee Braves and the American Association club… okay, maybe I’m officially overthinking this one.

Just amazing Chance and David. Thanks for sharing your efforts.

That will conclude the first part of “A New Crew,” but there are many more new designs I have received from the fantastic Uni Watch readership. They will appear in the next installment due to appear next weekend. I’m still truly amazed at the abilities and efforts that have gone into them (I even did a couple myself which will probably pale in comparison). Let us know what you guys think! Thumbs up? If these don’t quite strike your fancy, the next part will have something for everyone, from the classic to the serene to the sublime. And everything in between.

There’s a few weeks left in the MLB season (and next week is part II of the Brewers Redux), so rather than just pick ONE new team for your “uni reworks”, if anyone has ANY team (and I’ve already received a few submissions for teams that AREN’T the Brewers) they’d like to submit a “redesign” for, drop me a line. I’ll be glad to feature them throughout the remainder of the season (and probably post season) too. Check back tomorrow for two new teams, and make sure to check back next Saturday for the rest of the Brewers reworks. You won’t be disappointed!

It’s that time of year again, when the courts at the US Open are full and fans are guaranteed of seeing at least one winning team — even if they’re playing doubles and not baseball — in Flushing Meadow. My doubles partner and UW West Coast Correspondent Brinke Guthrie joins me once again for his look at this year’s Open fashion.

The US Open is good for lots of tennis-uni news, and at the Uniwatch West Coast Tennis Bureau, we like that. We don’t much care for those tacky patch deals, tho.

Murray, still with Fred. James Blake has a new custom Fila line, & it’s named for his late dad. McEnroe’s got the retro thing going.

Mr. Brooklyn Decker (that guy’s not too obvious) in Lacoste, but not in 2010 — he’ll be in Babolat.

The Fed’s look is here, with Nadal & Serena here. Serena’s sneakers have 3 little trophies, too, and The Fed’s say “5″ on the tongue, all part of the brand. Um, he even has his own pillowcases at the fancy hotel he stays at.

adidas checks in with ugly stuff. Oops, check that: got Daniela and Ana? Is Ana still in tennis? Forget that, she lost in the first round. Got Wozzi?

PS- this looks like something you’d throw up after a night on the town.

Sam Querrey of the US wearing shoes he designed at adidas’ request — note the flag on the tongue. (check this and this)

Thanks Brinke. Whaddya say? Fed takes the sixth? Ties Tilden? Stands one behind Sears?

I can’t see anyone (even A-Rod) standing between Raj and #16.

Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: Little different twist on today’s game — I don’t KNOW the answer. But I’m sure you guys do. I usually have the answer ahead of time, and if i don’t, I figure it out, just like you. But for this one, I said, “screw it, let them tell me.” Actually, I just didn’t have enough time to figure it out so, if as and when you do (and I know you will), walk me thru it, would ya? You know what do to…date, location & final score, via Baseball Almanac or Retrosheet. Thanks. Ready? Guess The Game.

While UW was away, the Ricko kept himself real busy. In fact, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be an announcement any day now concerning a Benchies Blog. But that day isn’t today. Instead, we have an installment of a Saturday Benchies for your reading pleasure. Ah, baseball cards … how I miss thee.

Alright, that’s about all for this first Saturday after break. Big things afoot in the sporting world this fine Saturday and lots more good stuff on here tomorrow. Have a great day.

I only caught the last few minutes of the Hall of Fame Game last night. Fortunately, thanks to the magic of internet photo galleries, I can bring you the uni-related highlights anyway:

• In recent weeks, it had looked like the Bills were gonna go with this pants stripe pattern. But they ended up going with this instead.

• The Titans’ much-discussed Steve McNair memorial decal is innocuous enough. And Tennessee’s coaching staff wore memorial collar pins.

• Take another look at that helmet photo. Notice anything? No NFL logo! In fact, the NFL shield was absent from both teams’ helmets. That’s nothing new for the Bills, whose throwback helmets have been shield-free for years now. It’ll be interesting to see if the Titans — and/or other teams partaking in the AFL throwback series — continue to eschew the league logo.

• Now go back to that Jeff Fisher shot. See how the logo on his shirt is all faded? That’s not a glitch — both coaching staff wore shirts with “distressed” emblems. I hate that faux-vintage approach (if you want a beat-up old Bills shirt, spend some time in thrift stores like I do), but I do find it interesting that they’d use that look for the coaches — a much more casual look than the usual coaching attire.

• The officials looked so damn great. A few people in last night’s comments were griping about the socks or the uni numbers not being fully accurate, but AFL officials had a wide range of looks over the years — they didn’t have just one standardized number font, e.g. I’m perfectly fine with how they’ve handled this.

• The red gloves that were worn by members of both teams reeeaaaally don’t belong in a throwback game.

• Bills owner Ralph Wilson wore his Hall of Fame blazer. But hey, Ralph, we gotta talk about those sneakers.

I’m sure there was a whole lot more that I missed, but I was busy catching the world debut of the Pedestrians. More on that later. For now, enjoy the onset of football season try not to melt today.

Raffle Reminder: I’m currently raffling off 10 free copies of Bill Henderson’s amazing MLB jersey guide. To enter, send an e-mail to the raffle address by 7pm tomorrow. One entry per person, except for Uni Watch Membership Program enrollees, who can send four separate entries. I’ll announce the winners on Wednesday.

Research Project: We’ve all long lamented the fact that there’s no online database for NBA uniform history. Now reader Chuck Myron wants to do something about that. He’s willing to do the archival research, but he’ll need help creating the illustration templates and the web site itself. If you’re interested in helping him out, contact him here. Thanks.

Uni Watch News Ticker: Some guy on eBay is selling some really great baseball-themed Cuban pin-up posters. I just bought this one, and there are additional examples here, here, here, here, and here. … Bizarre coincidence: In last week’s ESPN column, I mentioned that I’d met a collector named Michael Ono, who’s been collecting USC alum autographs. Got a note from him on Friday, thanking me for including him in the column, with a twist: Turns out that he’s been the creative services manager for the A’s for nearly a decade (”I thought I was the only one who knew about the various discrepancies in our logo,” he says) and even designed their 40th-anniversary patch last year. So when I interviewed him at the convention, I was talking to a professional logo guy and didn’t even realize it. Small world and all that. … Red Sox third base coach DeMarlo Hale appears to be wearing the same flapless Wilson helmet design worn by A.J. Pierzynski (good spot by Andy Chalifour). … New logo for GW hoops (with thanks to Dan Franko). … Whoa, check this out: a black Ohio State hoops uni. The design was never worn on the court (thankfully), but it’s still interesting (with thanks to Dylan Glickman). … Small change for Iowa football, where the chest wordmark has been replaced by a collar logo (with thanks to Matthew Nelson). … The Raiders have posted a bunch of archival photos, many of them spectacular, on their web site. Check out image No. 9 and you’ll see them playing against a decal-less Broncos team. Preseaon, perhaps? (Major thanks to Mako Mameli.) … Didn’t know AT&T Park had a Giants uni display until Brinke Guthrie sent me these pics. … I might actually watch soccer if it was played by kangaroos. That’s the logo for the bidding for the 2018-2022 World Cups in Australia (with thanks to Jeremy Brahm). … Those Adidas college football practice jerseys, first seen on Tennessee, are also being worn by other schools, including Notre Dame, Kansas, and Indiana. … New football uniforms Louisville. In addition to the new striping, Louis Samuels notes that the QBs already have hand-warmer pockets — odd for August, no? … And according to the very last sentence on this page, Pitt will be unveiling new Nike uniforms today (with thanks to CJ Giannuzzi). … Here’s a NickNOB. That’s Yuji Nakazawa of the Yokohama F Marinos in the J-League (with thanks to Jeremy Brahm). … Matthew Hiett notes that Braves first base coach Glenn Hubbard still has the 4ALS decal on his helmet. … Lots of good shots of Babe Ruth as a pitcher here (with thanks to Chad Todd). … Scott Little sent a bunch of scans from a Tokyo Giants mag. Among the highlights: a guide to the uniforms worn by the stadium staff at the ballpark and some sort of “design the uni contest” (look here, here, and here). … Also from Scott: Maybe the best “Official [whatever] of the [league]” sponsorship ever and some killer furniture. … Ricko sent me scans of a ticket brochure from the old Minnesota Buckskins of World Team Tennis. “I was league PR director and a minority owner in the Buckskins,” he explains. “I didn’t do the paintings, but I did design the unis and the logo (well, drew the intentionally unisex character and my dad did the lettering, by hand). Note that the women are shown wearing two different colors — brown was to be the road uni. Men’s road would have flip-flopped the brown and gold on the uni shown. All moot, though, cuz the majority owner didn’t wanna pop for the custom unis.” … Super-cool interactive map on old Indiana basketball gyms here (great find by Ben Traxel). … Dr. John C. Barnes notes that UNLV appears to have changed their black helmet stripe to a red stripe. … Mark Teixeira was missing the 2 on his helmet last night (as spotted by Mike Lafferty). … “This watch ad ran in various football game programs, including those at Dartmouth, in the late ’70s and early ’80s,” says Tris Wykes. “It ran with the image reversed year after year, and they failed to correct it. That’s Columbia at Harvard, in case you’re wondering. Interesting that the helmet logos weren’t airbrushed out.” … Reprinted from last night’s comments: Chris Cooley’s latest blog entry is all about uniform fines. … Check out this completely amazing vintage SF Giants apron! It’s available for sale here. … The Cowboys have been engaging in some haircut-based rookie hazing. … The long-rumored new Arizona State jerseys look like this. … Ladies and gentlemen, your new Philadelphia 76ers. … Someone on the Chris Creamer board showed a small scan showing that Broncos-style vertically striped socks were briefly featured in the Wilson catalog.

By Phil Hecken

Ok, in this final weekend before UW’s Vacation, we have round 2 of our MLB Uniform Tracking. If you missed the first batch, they can be found here and here. Good stuff. But, we’re two months further along, and it’s time for another look at the tracking — with warmer weather, streaks (good or bad), or just whim, a few teams have altered their usual rotations (if they had any) and others have fallen into different patterns. The Mets, for example, had worn pinstripes every Sunday at home until the last week of June. They haven’t worn them again on Sunday (at all) and have only worn them once, when they became Los Mets for Latin Appreciation Night. Other teams have broken out special uniforms, Negro League tributes and throwbacks, and our trackers are on top of it all. So lets get started.

We kick off with Doug Keklak “Kek” one of our Pirates trackers:

The Pirates had a rough month of July, going 8-17 overall. Through 7/31, they were 44-58. They have performed best in the home whites with a 20-10 mark. They are a terrible 15-33 in the road grays, thanks in part to a dismal 1-12 July. July was the best month thus far for the Friday black alts as they were 4-1 which gives them a 5-10 mark on the season (3-4 at home, 2-6 on the road). The team is 1-5 on the season in the Sunday home pinstripes.

Special issue: the Buccos are 3-0 in special uniforms this year, going 1-0 in 1909 throwbacks and 2-0 in Homestead Grays throwbacks. The Pirates are 2-2 in the stars and stripes cap and won the game they played in the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police cap.

Doug provides us with two spreadsheets which nicely document the past two months of uniform tracking.

Next up is Scott Curl “ChiScott” who has been tracking the White Sox:

Hi Phil -

Here’s my tracking update for the White Sox through July 31.

Quick Note: The other day I emailed Sox VP of Communications, Scott Reifert, and asked him just how the Sox go about picking which jersey they pair up with their home and road pants on any given night – since each team varies, was it based on the choice of a pitcher, the equipment manager, a team/coaching decision, day of the week, etc.? He wrote back and told me that aside from pre-planned “event” games (Negro League tributes, throwback games, etc.) jersey choice is strictly up to the game’s starting pitcher.

Recent trends: Whole lotta black lately. Mark Buehrle pitched his perfect game in black on July 23, and the Sox have played well (29-26 this season) while wearing the alternate black jerseys. Interestingly, Buehrle made the rare choice to go with pinstripes this past Sunday, and the result was also rare: an ugly home loss for him. Coincidence??? (Cue the Theramin music.)

The other trend has been to go almost completely away from the official road grays. Not counting “Stars and Stripes” cap games, the team has only worn their official grays in 15 games this year, and they lost 10 of them (their last win in the gray official road uniform was May 31).

Event Unis: We’ve now seen the Sox play in several “event” uniforms – two different “stars and stripes” combos, the Negro League tribute uniforms, the 1959 throwbacks, and the Civil Rights game 1964 throwbacks. The Sox are 5-2 so far in “event” unis.

Tracking: As for my sheet, I changed my layout so that the row colors now reflect the jersey worn for that game. Each row color-corresponds to a particular uniform combo, depicted on the right. I think it makes it much easier to see at a glance what they were wearing over the course of the season.

Next up is Scott Gladin, who’s been tracking the Braves:

In the first installment of Uni Tracking back in May, the Braves seemed to be definitively better in the Home Red and Away Blue Uniforms. However, as the team has started to play better baseball, the uniforms have started to somewhat even out. They still are showing a better record with the alternates, but the average runs scored and allowed are much closer together.

Moving on, we have Ben Teaford who is an Indians Tracker:

Thru Sunday 8/2 the Indians have worn an amazing 11 different uniform combinations on the season (4 more since my last update). So while they may be near the bottom of the standings, they’ve got to be near the league leader in that category. The four new unis they’ve worn are the 80’s throwback (although these look so much better with stirrups, don’t you think?), they wore the Stars & Stripes cap with their home whites, and they had a home and home with Detroit in the unis of the Cleveland Buckeyes negro league team.

Mostly they have stuck to the traditional home white and road grays, something that has become more pronounced as the season has progressed though. They’ve only worn the home blue alternates 3 times since June 1st and when they wore the blue road alternate at the Angels on July 28th, it was the first time they had worn those in over a month. Cliff Lee loved the traditional unis, so with him sadly out of the picture now, we may see the blue alts come back in.

Ben also included, per my request, a screengrab of his tracking sheet; unfortunately, it’s a little hard to read, but trust me, he’s got it ALL in there. And here is a nice chart of all those combos.

Next up, Michael Jaworski “MtJaws”, who tracks the Marlins:

Now that we are at approximately 100 games into the 2009 season, the Florida Marlins have settled in with decent trends for their uniforms. Thru Sunday, August 2, the Marlins are 55-50. In their Home White uniforms, the Fish are 30-23, plus two other rained out starts in white uniforms. In their Road Grey uniforms, Florida is 9-12. In their Alternate Black uniform, they are 0-2 at Home, and a winning 17-12 on the Road. The black has seen lots of action on the road, but at home, the black hasn’t been seen since late May, presumably due to the heat. In color vs color games, the Marlins are a nice 6-2, with only one of those games at home. Included in those records above are the 4 games wearing the red Stars & Stripes hats. FL won 3 of those games.

With nearly every home game in white, the decision to wear grey or black on the road seems to rest with the starting pitcher. In all 10 of Ricky Nolasco’s road starts, the team is in black. For the other starters, they’ve mostly split between wearing grey or black. Josh Johnson does favor the road black in 7 of his 10 road starts.

The biggest surprise to me was seeing that the Alt Black has only appeared twice at home. I thought I’d seen it more often than that. I don’t mind the Road Black Alt, but I wish it wasn’t worn more often than the traditional grey. Maybe the last third of the season will change the numbers.

Mike also included very detailed tracking sheets: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV; he also included a record by uniform and a breakdown of uniform by pitcher.

Although he didn’t include a detailed writeup, Mike Vamosi did a nice breakdown of the Royals:

Royals UniWatch Record as of Aug. 6, 2009

Powder Blue (Day Home): 7-11
White (Primary Home): 17-22
Salute to Negro League Home: 0-1
Overall Home: 24-34

Royal Blue (Road Day): 5-10
Gray (Primary Road): 13-21
Salute to Negro League Road: 0-1
Overall Road: 18-32

Overall: 42-66

Next up is Kenny Montross who is an Astros tracker:

Howdy Phil,

I’ve always been curious how my teams did in different uniforms but had never even thought to keep track myself until I saw the posts back in May. I started keeping track of the Astros in Excel. That seemed a little confusing so this last week I made a graphic representation.

The Astros have worn a total of 5 different jerseys (white with pinstripes, ’snow’ white, red ‘Astros’, red ‘Houston’ and gray) and 6 different hats (black, red, ‘patriotic’, ‘go green’, Houston Fire Depart. and Apollo 11) in 10 combinations. As you can tell, the ‘Stros like their one off caps. I like them too, as long as they wear them at home. They’re 3-0 with these hats at home, but 1-3 away from the juice box. That could also be because the only ’special’ cap they wore away was the clashing bright red patriotic cap. Some one in the Astros organization also seems to like softball jerseys. I personally can’t stand them. Not only does the team look bad in them, they play worse too. They are 25-29 in the softball jerseys and 28-26 in the more traditional jerseys.

Bring on the special hats and gray and white jerseys!

We move on to Mike Styczen, our resident Blue Jays tracker:

What can you say about the Blue Jays – after an exciting first couple of months, they’re showing us that they’re basically a .500 team. As I write this, they’re 51-54, and they’re within a game or two of .500 in every jersey and hat combination.

They’re maintaining their uniform pattern so far so far this season – grey on the road, white for home night games, black for home day games, throwbacks for friday home games. Even with the malaise that’s set in, Cito hasn’t felt the need to shake things up uni-wise.

Record to date, by combination, is here, and Screenshot of tracking spreadsheet is here.

Thanks again, Mike

Moving on, CJ Giannuzzi is one of our Pirates trackers:

The white pinstripes are always worn on sunday day games. The black and white alts are worn on friday nights at home and the black and grays are worn on friday nights away. I did not include those throwbacks they wore for the Royals series. If I’m correct they wore it all series.

And here is a nice screen shot of CJ’s tracking.

Our last tracker today is Gregg Girard, who like me, is a Mets tracker:

Phil. Here you go.

Like Phil, I’m uni-tracking the Mets. (Your sympathy is welcome.)

Well, I made one bold prediction back in May: Santana will never wear black. Unfortunately for Johann and me, I was wrong. In the three Santana in black starts (all on the road), he went 0-3 with a 10.06 ERA.

As I said in May, I am searching for patterns, both in terms of victories and behind actual uniform selection. A losing record tends to negate the former, but I was able to dig out a few notables: the Mets home winning percentage is .528 overall, but it rises to .636 and .625 when they wear snow white/blue and black, respectively. Wearing their classic pinstripe/blue combination, they are a dreadful 1-4. As Phil noted in May, that combo seemed to be the regular Sunday uniform, but after wearing them for three straight Sunday losses, they haven’t worn them on Sunday since June 21. In fact, they didn’t wear pinstripes until July 31, when they put them on for a Friday night loss to the D-backs.

OK, that’s all for today for the Uni Tracking. Tomorrow will conclude the second round. If you are tracking and haven’t yet sent me in your data, please try to do so by early this evening, so I can include it in tomorrow’s post. If you can’t, you can either save it for the season-ending wrap up or send it do me during the UW hiatus, and I’ll try to include it in a future post. Send me your stuff in an email and we’ll set something up.

Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: Today’s GTGFTS might be a little tricky, but it shouldn’t be any trouble for you guys. As always, location, date and final score are needed. Today’s scoreboard comes courtesy of James Huening (thanks, JTH). James is therefore, prohibited from playing along today. Ready? Guess The Game. Once again, if anyone wants to send in scoreboards for future games, please do so. Also, with football season approaching, does anyone want to try a football “Guess The Game” game? Don’t know if it’s quite as much fun as baseball, but we can give it a shot. And for this game, as always, don’t post the answer directly, but do try to tell us how you solved the mystery.

Since this is my penultimate post before the vacation, I’m gonna give you a weeks worth of Ricko’s finest Benchies today. Well, five days worth, anyway…a work week’s worth (say that five times fast). And, it’s a serial.

“Monday” Benchies

“Tuesday” Benchies

“Wednesday” Benchies

“Thursday” Benchies

“Friday” Benchies

Back tomorrow with a Saturday and a Sunday.

So, last night the Blue Jays did their Flashback Friday thing — but with a twist. They wore white throwbacks, commemorating their 92-93 World Championship Winning teams. The unis looked really sharp, although today’s cut and style (long, baggy pants without stirrups) kinda tarnished the look. Of course, their opponents, the Orioles, wore dark tops (although, one could make an argument the O’s were throwing back to 1993. OK, not really.)

Lots of players from the 92-93 teams were on hand, including Joe “Touch ‘em all” Carter, Dave Winfield, and Pat Borders (pictured with Carter). Former (and current) Manager Cito Gaston was also on hand, but for some reason, chose to wear the current BP top (in lovely black and slate).

Hey, at least the old timers did not do the jersey tuck. While I will admit those unis were not my favorite MLB uniform of all time, they sure beat what they’re wearing these days. Good stuff!

That’s gonna do it for today. I’ll have Part II of Round 2 tomorrow, a bunch of announcements and goodies, and of course, Guess The Game and “Benchies.”

Everyone have a great Saturday.