Rites of Spring

By Phil Hecken

Now that Spring Training is in full bloom, we can take a quick look at the Cactus & Grapefruit leagues and see what’s new and what is new again.

The Orioles, who got new unis in the off-season, have given us a look at their homes. Pretty sweet. The cartoon bird is back on the home, road and orange alts (with the two-color panel [black/white with orange brim] cap making a return). Not sure if the tri-color helmet will appear during the season, but for now the black/orange lid is being worn.

The Cardinals continue one of their (most awesome) rites of spring by wearing red caps with road unis, which I personally feel is a much better look than their regular season pairing of a blue cap with roadie. Sure, I know the blue cap has historical roots, but the red on road looks so much better.

The Padres also got new unis over the winter, and haven’t broken them out (yet) in spring, although they did wear the white homes for their official photo shoot. Meh. Not a fan of the headspoon on this uni, not that what they wore last year is anything to write home about. A far better scribe than I wrote about the new duds back in November. Not really waiting with baited breath for when these (and the new roads — although I do love the interlocking SD for the alt) take the field.

The Mets still haven’t broken out any of their new unis, but they have a new blue BP top, which at first glance looks like their “Los Mets” jersey from last season. Two differences — no headspoon on the BP top, and the orange sleeve piping ends at the end of the sleeve, not about one inch from the hem. Paul has opined (or intimated the Mets have indicated) that they’ll wear the BP jersey at times this season, to prepare for the final ditching of ditching of the black after 2012. Thank You God! I’d like to think someone we all know and love had something to do with that, as he has fought this scourge since the late 1990s. And while the Mets haven’t yet worn their new unis in Spring Training play, that doesn’t mean we haven’t been treated to a viewing. OK, I need to change my pants…back in a sec.

OK. The Mets have also been wearing a Gary Carter memorial patch (which they will wear during the regular season). Players from Palm Beach Atlantic University are also sporting the memorial, and the Montreal Canadiens wore “CARTER 8” jerseys during warmups earlier this year. Apparently the Nationals won’t be wearing any patch for Kid.

The Tigers, like the Cardinals, also eschew road caps during spring training, wearing their home cap on the road. Since the two differ only in the color of the Olde English “D”, it’s not so stark as the Cards’ wearing red on road. A nice “ritual” to be sure, but nothing to write home about. However, the Tigers, like the Cards, don’t wear their BP jerseys during spring games, which in and of itself speaks volumes.

Interestingly, the Tigers and Cardinals don’t have alternate jerseys, so they both choose not to wear BP tops (at least I don’t think they do, they may rarely do so — I just didn’t find any instances of it this spring). However, two other teams without alternate tops, the Dodgers and Yankees, both have no problem wearing BP jerseys in spring games.

The Marlins, who also underwent uni-reconstruction over the winter, have been wearing their new caps but BP jerseys thus far this spring. I really hope they keep the black tops to a minimum during the regular season, because the BP jerseys suck. It’s such NOT a South Florida color, and *NEWSFLASH* — it’s not trendy anymore. The new home white is growing on me, however. On the other hand, I sure hope, if we have to see any alternate tops, we see those orange beauties. Not so sure about that home run thing though.

The Blue Jays haven’t yet broken out their gorgeous new uniforms for spring play, but they may be the most eagerly awaited new unis for 2012 (scroll down for writeup). Oh yeah, it’s gonna look good. But they have worn their new BP tops, which have teased us with possibilities, and given us a peek at their unique number font, which they never should have ditched in the first place.

Spring baseball. It’s not quite the real thing, but it keeps our interest until that other thing this month.

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Colorize This!

Occasionally, I will be featuring wonderful, high-quality black and white photographs that are just begging to be colorized.

The usual G&G boys grace this page today, but we also welcome some newcomers and some newer contributors as well.

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We begin this week with John Richards, an acquaintence of John Turney, who provided him with an “assist” on this nice photo of the Pack vs. the G-men…from the 1961 NFL Championship Game (that’s not the pic he colorized, that’s just a game shot I found):

Hi Phil,

John Turney suggested I submit this b/w colorization of Hornung in the ’61 Champ. John’s software is far more advanced than mine. I had to slowly outline areas & add filtered color. After he looked at mine he added Alien Skin Exposure (with the click of a button) which gave it quite a pop.

-John Richards

Nice job John(s) … keep them coming!

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Next up is old standby #1, George Chilvers, who has a pair to share this week:

Hi Phil

This one was discussed last week I think. It’s another Shorpy gem.

The team I believe were the Palace Five Laundrymen from Columbia Heights, and there’s a bit about them here.

As no-one seems to know for sure what colours they wore I’ve gone for my gut feeling of gold and burgundy.

If however the guy second from the left is wearing an example of the standard of pressing, then I don’t wonder they went out of business.

George

Thanks, GC. I got another one a bit later on last week:

Phil

Just a very quick one for fun.

Every sport has its iconic figures: Babe Ruth, Micky Mantle, Pele, Bobby Charlton and so forth.

For cricket it’s W G Grace, and here he is in all his glory around the turn of the century.

Enjoy.

George

Can’t give your work enough superlatives, George, so just suffice it to say, “great job.”

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Moving on, we have Pete Woychick, with two colorizations for us in two pretty-much diametrically opposed sports. Or at least they seem to be:

Hi Phil””

The other day, Paul ticker-linked this stickball photo. I took a shot at colorizing it. Admittedly, there’s a lot more that could be done”””paint” the window trim on the buildings, etc””but I guess that’s the beauty of it…

Then, a shot of Montreal’s Jacques Plante going for a swim (original here)

Enjoy!
–Pete

Thanks Pete — as others stated when Paul posted that stickball photo, there is just so much to love in that shot.

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Closing down the colorizations today is the other half of the GC show, Gary Chanko, who has a knack for timing on his colorizations (and also recognizes a shout out from the UW Prexy). You’ll probably recognize this one:

Phil:

As one of Paul’s “colorization types,” I can indeed add the green and white to those St. Agnes 1959 basketball champions [from this Friday’s Uni-Watch]. Regrettably, however, I am now accepting donations for my eye surgery.

The team went 30-1 on the way to the state championship after leaving most of their opponents in a hypnotic coma. In 2009 the team and it’s legendary coach, Bob Taylor, were enshrined into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.

Gary

And thank you GC — like with George, mere words cannot describe the awesomeness of your skills at colorization!

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And that’s it for this week — back next time with more!

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Benchies

by Rick Pearson

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Let the process begin…

And, as always, here is the full-size.

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Uni Tweaks Concepts

We have another new set of tweaks, er…concepts today. After discussion with a number of readers, it’s probably more apropos to call most of the reader submissions “concepts” rather than tweaks. So that’s that.

So if you’ve concept for any sport, or just a tweak or wholesale revision, send them my way.

Please do try to keep your descriptions to ~50 words (give or take) per image — if you have three uniform concepts in one image, then obviously, you can go a little over, but no novels, OK? OK!. You guys have usually been good with keeping the descriptions pretty short, and I thank you for that.

And so, lets begin:

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We start with Tate Brown, who gives us a Texans uni only THE could love…and maybe Movi:

Hey Phil!

I think it’d be cool to see the Texans in a Texas-flag based uni with the bird’s-eye helmet- so I drew it. On paint.
—
Tate Brown

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Next up is Kevin McClain, who may have set a record for the most possible uni combinations in a single team/concept submission:

Hey guys. I didn’t see your contest back in September. Should have been a reader I guess.

I too think the Seahawks are due for a redesign. Check out my creation if you feel like it. 65 combos I believe.

Home Navy: I kept the navy blue because it fits in with Seattle’s only other team and I think navy blue looks great on uniforms. In fact, I even darkened it. Just plain navy on white really jumps out and is easy to read. The Yankees and Penn St have done it forever and it never gets old.

(Note. All the dark grey is what it is. But the light grey is supposed to be silver, like the old Seahawks unis. Couldn’t pull off silver on MS Paint.)

Home Blue: Everyone wants to make the Seahawks look like the Lions. I don’t. But I do like the idea of incorporating the old blue. Just not too much. I think this blue actually goes well with the dark navy. I just don’t want to see it with the other jerseys so I left it out of the helmets and pants. Having these two types of home jerseys not only allows the Seahawks to identify with the early teams and the successful teams in the 2000’s, it also can reflect the Seattle weather quite well. Early in the season, the sky and the water are a bright blue. Throughout fall Seattle gets much gloomier. The sky turns grey and the water darkens as well. It would be nice for Seattle to use both blues.

Road Navy: A lot of choices on the road and not too crazy looking either. These numbers, I thought, looked even better with a darker navy.

Road Grey: These have Seattle written all over it. Sometimes you see more grey than other times. But there is always some green in sight even when the water or sun isn’t. That was the inspiration for combos lacking the navy blue. My Ducks also brought a nice combo to Seattle in which they wore a lot of grey and silver with only a green “O.” I guess that made this seem okay though that won’t go over well in Seattle. At the end of this photo is a road jersey with the old blue. I think it would be a nice jersey to wear unannounced sometime in a season. I would only wear it with the silver since it looked terrible against the other helmets and pants.

With the navy helmets as the exception, green is in the same spot on all the uniforms. It kept some regularity to a uniform that may not see the same combination all year.

The idea with the pant stripe was to be more birdlike.

Since it’s MS Paint, I didn’t even try to do the shoulder #’s. I would just put the same font on the shoulder if I had the technology.

That’s about it. Enjoy.

– Kevin

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And we conclude today with another NFL concept, this time for the New York Football Jets, from Mickey Matos:

I think the Jets need to add a secondary color, as their look is a little bland. Didn’t want to do black, that’s too late 90’s, early 00’s so I opted for gray. I think the gray helmet makes the logo pop a little more, and the grey pants will add a little to the away uniform (as opposed to wearing those ridiculous green pants). I fooled around with adding gray to the jersey sleeves but it looked a little NCAA / Arena football league. Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Regards,
Mickey Matos

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And that concludes today’s uni concepts. Check back next weekend for more.

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Looking Ahead…

A little over a week ago, during a somewhat heated discussion in the comments about Native American naming of teams, reader JAson posted the following:

The argument over the Indians nickname & Wahoo always comes up, and as a Cleveland fan, I have a dog in this fight but my biggest problem is that no one ever suggests a new nickname! I’ll just throw out the suggestion of a rename-the-Indians contest for weekend posts. Maybe the commUnity could come up with a good replacement nickname then we could have a design contest to go along with the new name? Any takers??

I said shortly thereafter “let me run it up the flagpole”¦see if anyone salutes.” Connie immediately jumped to attention.

I’ve been thinking about this, and I think it might be good for UW’s next contest. Only, I was thinking of not limiting it to the Cleveland Baseball Team, but also including the Washington football and Atlanta baseball teams as well. So…if you guys have any thoughts about this as well as parameters (limit contest submissions to one team, to two or all three, include new names as well as uniforms and logos, etc. or first have a “new nickname” contest and THEN we simply have everyone design a team around the new nickname), I’ll begin formulating a contest. Also, if there are any teams you feel should be included in this (not saying they will be, but I’ll consider everything – teams like the “Fighting Sioux” for example or other college teams can be suggested, as I’d like to keep this to the pros). But nevertheless, do suggest away.

At some point in the near future (possibly as early as next weekend), I’ll make the official announcement, but be sure to check back, and sharpen your pencils be ready to fire up your Macs for this one.

Let me know in the comments below what you’d think might make for some good guidelines (such as including a short essay with each submission outlining why you chose the name/colors/logo for each suggestion).

And if you think everything surrounding the continued naming of teams for native peoples is just fine and dandy, that’s OK. You can still participate.

Fire away.

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And with that, we tie a neat little bow on this weekend’s Uni Watch. There’s plenty of uni goodness ahead this week, as the NCAA bracketology begins, and the special tourney unis get worn in the big dance (or at least I’m pretty sure those three schools are in — I honestly don’t pay attention to college hoop until the full brackets are drawn). Oh joy. I haven’t spoken with Paul about this, but I’m fairly confident Vinny will be doing his usual UW tourney pool, so don’t forget to get in on that, if that’s your thing.

Have a great week everyone!

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“Absolutely the best part of the Carolina/KC tweaks is that the designer took the time to place a swoosh on the Chiefs jersey. It’s a shaky swoosh, drawn in a tremulous hand. And it is the first time anything Nike has ever made me smile.” — Cort McMurray

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