The Third Sunday in June

By Phil Hecken

Every third Sunday in June, for the past two-plus decades, I spent watching the U.S. Open with my pop. When the U.S. Open came to Long Island (1986, 1995, 2002, 2004, 2009), I was either AT the Open with him (1995, 2004), working it with him (2002), or watching it at his house. It was a Father’s Day tradition.

This year, I’ll be watching it alone, and it just won’t be the same.

Wherever you are today, whatever you may do — if you still have a Dad who is among us — give him a call and tell him you love him. Thank him for bringing you into this world, and remind him this is his day.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to do that just one more time.

Happy Father’s Day everyone. Peace.

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Benchies

by Rick Pearson

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It’s never too early to make Dad proud…

Click to enlarge

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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.

Like the colorizations, I’m going to run these as inline pics — click on each one to enlarge.

The concepts have slowed to a trickle, probably because of all the uniform contests Paul & I have been running. So…just one concept today.

And so, lets begin:

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We have Brent Hatfield with a new take on the old Crew:

Hello there, Brent Hatfield here again. Below are four Milwaukee Brewers Concepts of the Home/Road Jerseys and Home/Road Hats. I am a lifelong Brewers fan, and the inspiration for these was the reintroduction of the Orioles cartoon logo (Believe it or not).
–Brent

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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.

Got a pretty nice (full) set today, including 4 of the “Big 5” colorizers (only Gary didn’t submit this time around).

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We’ll start off with John Turney:

Phil,

I did a high resolution scan, which allows for better colorization, which I did in Photoshop. The sun drenched black and white photo also allows the picture to “grab” the color I apply. I colorize the grass, then the faces, and then I do the crowd. I then do the uniforms and then cover the whole thing with a dark brown “wash” of brown. I then use Alien Skin Exposure (and Photoshop plugin) and I added a Kodochrome 25 film filter, to bring out more color, to lighen the lights and darken the darks.

–John Turney

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Next up is Pete Woychick, with a glorious Giants colorization:

Hi Phil””

I found this action shot and had to give it a try. Not only did the photographer catch the baserunner in mid-air, but also apparently at the very moment he realized he was about to be a “dead duck.” (see enlarged facial expression)

ӣ The caption says it comes from a 1947 exhibition game at Seals Stadium, but judging by the Giants cap and stirrups, it looks more like a 1946 uniform. Glorious stirrups!

”£ The Seals uniform is rather generic””nothing on the cap or sleeves, and only a small insignia on the chest, just barely visible on the shortstop 404 feet, and a ~20 foot wall, to center field. That would be quite a poke!

Cheers!

— Pete

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Next up is George Chilvers (who actually sent me two, but I’ll save the second one for next time), with…shockingly…footy:

Hi Phil

I thought I’d better start doing some research about football kits in the Olympics in years past. But I then got sidetracked colourising this one of two teams neither of which are in the 2012 finals!

The original is here and shows US captain, Harry Keough, in the pre-match ceremonies with Italy’s captain, Egisto Pandolfini, and referee from England Arthur Ellis. The game was played in Tampere in Finland on 16 July 1952 (nearly 60 years ago) and your guys (assuming you’re not Italian) took a bit of a beating – losing 8-0.

The tournament was won by the “Magical Magyars”, a Hungarian team that 12 months later became the first continental side to beat England in England. I’ve already colourised them for you — :)

Best wishes

— George

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And our final colorization today comes from Larry Bodnovich, who did a nice job on an old college all star uni:

Phil,

I colorized football uni around 1940. I used TimmyB’s picture for reference.

I saw the picture on an auction site, Mears. It did not give much info. I think it had 1940. Said about new uniform. I had no idea of the colors. Then on GUD site featuring TimmyB’s Hall of Fame pictures I saw the display picture and went with those colors. Same uniform but different socks. The guy modeling the uniform does seem to be an older guy.

— Larry Bodnovich

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Thanks gentlemen! Wonderful, wonderful stuff as always. I’ll have more fine efforts on the next installment of “Colorize This!”. See you then.

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In the Uni-Battle for the Lone Star State…

…nobody won.

Yes, last evening, the Rangers and Astros held a little throwback game deep in the heart of Texas.

A day after I lauded almost every throwback game this season, we got treated to a dud. It’s not that the unis weren’t done well (they seemed to have most of the authenticity they needed), tis just that the 1986 Astros versus the 1986 Rangers was probably one of the worst years, uniform-wise, to which to throw back.

Let’s start with the *good*. The last time the Astros threw back to 1986, the uniform had a belt. Now, that style of uniform did have a belt from 1989 thru 1993, but that was worn with a button-front jersey, not a pullover. The uniform worn by the Astros last evening in Arlington at least had the period-correct sansabelt pants. Unfortunately, most of the players wore their pants pajama-style, and all of them had black cleats. The Astros always wore white cleats with those uniforms.

The Rangers also had most players going pajama pantsed, although it seemed like Majestic was pretty spot on with the repro. But really, that uniform should look like this, not like this. Even though the Rangers look more like the Dodgers, it’s just not that great a uniform. But I’m sure the reason they’re throwing back to 1986 is because the Express wore that uniform for his entire Rangers career.

The Astros will be wearing this this throwback twice more (at home, on July 6 and July 20) as a part of their 50th Anniversary uniform lookbacks. At least in 1986, the Astros came thisclose to reaching the World Series. The Rangers in 1986? Not bad (87-75 record, good enough for second place — 5 games behind the California Angels in the AL West), but not much reason to celebrate either. If the uni were more attractive, I could see doing so. Oh well, it’s certainly not the worst uniform in history, just doesn’t strike me as much.

I give Majestic a decent grade (and I’ll do a letter grade later on) for a decent job, but as far as the matchup? Meh.

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And that’s going to do it for today. Have a good Sunday everyone — if you have one, don’t forget to tell your Dad you love him.

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“I would say Interleague Play did more damage to the sport as a whole than all the PEDs, expansion & bandbox stadiums combined.”
–Mark Peterson