Fauxback Jersey Inspired Logo Post

Today's the day that the baseball team in Tampa and occasionally St. Petersburg is going to wear a newly designed jersey that is "inspired" by design from the 70s. Specifically, the jerseys are from 1979, a year that there was historically no major league team.

Like my friend Ryan said, they look like the love child between the 70s era Brewers and Padres.

I don't know. This is the kind of thing by which I might have been angered, but I find myself serenely falling for the two-tone blue.

Now, since my leg is uncomfortable and I want to delve into this pre-800 filler post a little more, I've decided to look at Ryan's statement: about the possibility of love-child status of this design.

Right away I agreed, mostly because of the Padres look and the Brewers color scheme from that era.

Here's a late '70s Padres word logo, followed by the jersey that kinda shows it, the jersey actually used in 1979:

It's easy to see the "r", "a", and "s" are in the same basic font. Damn. That was eerie. I didn't think is was exact as that. I thought it would be close, but that's pretty exact. Of course, the mustard and brown of the San Diego Padres is all wrong...all wrong for the Rays and all wrong for probably anytime. There's a reason they don't use it anymore for a regular color scheme: only UPS markets positivity about brown.

So lets's check out the late '70s Brew-crew logos, the mitt-MB, adopted in '78, and the '79 jerseys:

So, the jersey itself doesn't really match, but the blue color is nicer on the eyes, and the mitt-MB logo maybe inspires the Rays' use of an enclosed orange (instead of the ball).

Now, I'm fully taking the train off the track. 2012 saw a few throwback jersey updates for major league teams, and the Rays said, eh, who cares that this is our 15th season, we're getting in on that old-school action. I'll get to that discussion in a second. First, though, the Brewers.

A team from Milwaukee named for beer! How awesome. I once wrote at length about cities and team names, Milwaukee specifically was part of the discussion. The old minor league team, the one from before the braves moved out in '52, used one of the coolest mascots ever:

It's a beer-barrel man! A fucking keg-guy! Sweet. Beer Barrelman is his name, I think. Notice the navy and red color scheme. Once the Braves showed up, the brewed ceased operations. Once the Braves left, and a new team was moved to the city, and time was short and no quality apparel people were found, the new Brewers, as they came to be known simply adopted the blue and gold color scheme from the first team (the Seattle Pilots), and even updated Beer Barrelman:

Apparently playing in the field is for suckers, swinging the bat's where it's at!

Sorry. That was uncalled for.

Now, earlier I mentiond that 2012 has seen some teams "update" their brand by grabbing logos from their past and making them new again. The two teams I'm thinking of right now have birds as their mascots: the Blue Jays and the Orioles.

Remember back in the '80s and early '90s when the Blue Jays were the class of the AL East, and American League in general? Their caps were the two-tone blue and white with the jay and a the red Canadian maple leaf? Pretty soon after their run of excellence, with the ascension of the Yankees and Red Sox, they dropped the white from the cap. Then they modified the logo. Then they muscularized it. Then they adopted black and italics. Eventually they had this mess:

I wasn't a big fan. I'm not a Jays hater, like I was with the Red Sox and Orioles back in the '80s, and that was even when the Jays were the best team in the East. I have a soft spot for things blue, and blue jays specifically, from our shenanigans at the Cabin when we were kids.

But the Blue Jays, this year, looked back to that era of excellence, snatched up that logo, and updated it for the twenty-teens. The old school is on the left and the newer updated one is on the right, but you probably could have figured as much. The beak is pointier and head sleeker, which means new.

Around that same time the Orioles, a team I've come to like instead of hate (thanks The Wire), were sporting the cartoon bird on their three-tone caps. The black, white, and orange caps to my friend Ryan resembled little-league gear, which is a high insult. I'm not sure I agreed...well, maybe that's hard to argue, but I didn't think it was as bad as all that.

But then they switched to a more realistic bird, which I really didn't like--to busy I always thought--and wore that for almost ten years. Then they switched to an even more realistic looking bird, and stuck with that for a while. Take a look at the two birds, the second is the more ornithologically correct version (which should be obvious).

The Orioles changed up the more realistic looking Oriole a few times, but mostly it looked the same as this. Then, in an attempt to re-brand the team for this year's surprising push--the young team is the surprise team of the AL, hanging in there in the East in the second place (go O's!)--they pulled up the old school cartoon bird and brought back the tri-color caps. Below are two of the old cartoon birds and the updated version.

The first is the one used by the '60-'70s Boog Powell powered teams. The middle is that one after a nice cocaine bender, and was used during the '80s Cal Ripken years. The last one is the updated happy median.

Seeing them all together is kinda cool.

So, another thing I thought I had to mention. Since I've been talking about tri-colored caps, and Canadian baseball teams, I realized that I must say something about this:

 That's the old Montreal Expos cap, before they dropped down to solid blue. They've since moved to Washington DC and become the Nationals--another surprising young team on top of their division--but there used to be a joke about how the caps said "elb"...really it was the "M", with a lower case "e" for Expos. That was always my guess, anyway.

But, I bring it up to say that the red white and blue tri-colored cap was not created in a vacuum, that there was inspiration for it. Behold, the Winnipeg Whips, a Canadian team from before the time of the Expos, and their flashy design philosophy:

Okay, so maybe this post is a colorful shout-out to the nether regions and sordid corners of my brain and its capacity to hold onto team's logo information, which is pretty wasteful in reality. And I say "nether regions and sordid corners" because the main burner material in my brain is mostly unspeakable ideas about, eh, well, I'm a guy, so...and this other stuff just floats around uselessly. I have lots of this useless type of knowledge just getting in the way...

But I have one more thing I wanted to say. When the Dodgers came west to LA they needed a design for their logo. What they have today is the iconic interlocking LA letters that look almost from a typewriter. I wonder where they got it...

Look familiar? That is a Los Angeles Angels jersey from the '30s. In the old Pacific Coast League there were many teams out here on the west coast. LA had two teams, the Angels and the Hollywood Stars, San Diego had the Padres, San Francisco had two teams, the Seals and the Mission Reds, Sacramento had the Solons, Seattle had the Raniers, and even Salt Lake had the Utah Bees (named for the ladies, I've learned--to be explained later I 'spose).

Well, when the Dodgers and Giants came west they displaced the PCL (I have a strange post coming up about the third major league and it's death), they needed to design logos for their new brands. The Giants st least didn't rip off the Seals. If they stole something I'm not sure from whom.

The Dodgers, on the other hand, are pretty obvious about from where they took their, eh, inspiration.

Ahh, a rambling, fully off the track post about sports logos...that had been brewing for a while. Just too many distinct barely interesting tidbits, they all needed to be thrown up there, see what sticks.

Brain dump, baby!