From Ricko’s Files — Ideas for a DIY T-Shirt

By Phil Hecken

As early fall turns to later fall, and the chill in the air begins to envelop the nation, we once again turn our sights to the national pasttime. The playoffs are in full bloom, with both the ALCS and the NLCS set — all four Divisional Series went the full five games (a rather amazing feat), with the junior circuit pitting the Tigers of Detroit (who beat the A’s) against the Yankees of New York (who defeated the softball-top donning Orioles). Over in the National League, the Giants of San Francisco pulled off an incredible feat, dropping their first two games at home, then winning the next three games on the road in Cincinnati (who lost the deciding game in a softball top), to defeat the Reds. So, of the first three teams to reach the Championship Series, you have the 2006 Runners-up (Detroit), and 2010 (San Francisco) and 2009 (New York) World Series Champions.

For those of you who missed it late last night (and it was one helluva game — featuring the largest ever comeback to win a deciding game in the history of ever), down in the nation’s capital, you had the 2006 and defending 2011 Champion St. Louis Cardinals taking on the upstart Washington Nationals. The Nationals, established in 1905 née Les Expos de Montréal in 1969, were seeking to win their first post-season series since 1981 (a team that may have even made the World Series were it not for a Blue Monday), and the first post-season series in the District of Columbia since 1924, when the Washington “Senators” won the World Series. Of course, had not Bud Selig ruined baseball forever fostered the strike of 1994, they may have won that year as well. Could this much-traveled, oft-unlucky, much-maligned franchise slay the mighty, defending-champion Cardinals?

You had to like their odds when they came out wearing a uniform, and not a softball top, and they sprinted out to a 6-0 lead after 3. The defending champs battled back to close to 6-5 in the 8th, but those pesky gnats, er… Nats, scratched out an insurance run in the bottom of the 8th to pull ahead 7-5. Warming up in the bullpen to close the deal was Stephen “the Strasiah” Strasburg… Oops.

Unfortunately, they needed a better salesman. The Cardinals scored 4 runs in the ninth, taking a 9-7 lead. They would defeat the Nats by that score. Sorry Arr Scott…you’ll need to wait another year to finish that victory drink.

Even as a Mets fan, with the Nationals as rivals in the NL East, I had to feel bad for that team — they’d come a long way in a short time, winning the NL East, securing the home field, one out away from popping corks. But it wasn’t to be. So we welcome back the defending champs into the post-season fold. Tigers at Yanks tonight (8:00 eastern start), while the Cardinals are moving west tomorrow evening.

So, now that we’re set for a new round of playoffs tonight, with the Yanks and Tigers hooking up in da Bronx, I thought we’d turn our thoughts back to the diamond for today’s lede. My buddy, and the sage sexagenarian of Uni Watch, Rick Pearson had actually whipped this up for me waaaaaaaaaay back in the summer, when I was subbing during the weekdays for Paul. I never did get to it then, but — since my day job involves working for a politician up for reelection, I don’t have as much time to devote to UW as usual — you’re getting it today. Sit back then, as Ricko describes a simpler time, a time when you could get away with…

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Messin’ around with fake Big League Logos…
By Rick Pearson

So I have this old book from 1955. “Inside Baseball for Little Leaguers.” Had it since I was kid.

Lotta fun things about it. Duke Snider on the cover, for instance. Also the many portraits of Big Leaguers, and the Little Leaguers playing in what appear to be generic Chuck Taylors. But what I like so much about it NOW are the fake logos on the inside covers.

As was the case back then when team names, et al, were not quite so protected, if someone didn’t have the rights to use teams’ actual logos, they’d just do their own version of them. That practice lasted well into the 1970s, as evidenced by all the ersatz patches that show upon eBay and occasionally in Brinke’s “Collectors Corner” here at UW..

Anyway, I kept thinking, “Wonder what they’d look like color and, man, those pseudo logos would make great-looking teeshirts. ” And, while I haven’t got up the energy to actually paint some for myself, I thought I might as well plant the seed with any DIYers out there.

So I messed around with a few them in MS Paint, which is the upper end of my computer skills.

Here are a few. Most imagined on white tees, but a few on gray or colored tees. (click on each image to enlarge)

Not saying they’re correct (visually or otherwise), just that they’d maybe make pretty interesting one-of-a-kind tees.

. . . . .

Nice job Rick — what say you DIYers? Anyone want to take a shot at creating one of these?

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Alex Rocklein’s Playoff Uni Tracker:

Uni Watch readers will recall that last season, Alex Rocklein tracked the major league playoffs by uniform worn. He’s back again this year and the graphic below is the 2012 edition. Here’s the chart, and then Alex with a very brief description (click image to enlarge):

“Hey Phil,

In case you’re interested I put together another playoff tree/uni tracker for this season. Looks nice with every available jersey slot taken up so far. I’m pretty sure all but 4 jerseys were worn (not counting the Braves and Rangers).

-Alex”

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50 Years Ago…This Weekend

Last year, Rick Pearson took us “back in time” to bring us his look at the featured television college football match-up from 50 years ago. (If you’re not familiar with it, this was the inaugural post of “50 Years Ago” from last year — after that, it became a recurring feature on UW for the remainder of the season). Last year, Rick looked at the 1961 season, and fortunately for us, he “uni tracked” the games from 1962 as well, documenting the game via his “kid cards”. Each week this fall, he’ll do the same, again.

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Oct. 13, 1962…Michigan State 28, Michigan 0 at East Lansing on CBS

For today’s TV game we finally got to see some scoring, even though it was a blowout in an intrastate rivalry. … Pre-Bo Schembechler Wolverines, of course, so they weren’t what they’d be by the end of the decade. … Unis for both teams were pretty simple, but you gotta like Michigan State in KELLY green and the “M” on Michigan’s sleeves. … Also, the Wolverines’ helmet TV numbers should be maize. … Was tough to tell in black and white. … Michigan was one of a few schools still using black laces in their cleats (Purdue, Washington and Oregon State were others). … About the players: Ernie Clark played LB for several seasons with the Lions and Cardinals. … Dave Raimey had a long and stellar career in the CFL with Winnipeg and Toronto.

**NOTE: Because my DirectTV now also includes both NBS Sports and CBS Sports I ran a count. Last week I had more college games to watch on a single Saturday than during the entire 1962 regular season (that’s not a “Walked five miles to school, uphill, both ways” thing; more like, “Is this great or what”).

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Thanks Rick! Great job with that as always. Fantastic shot (albeit a newspaper clipping) of “Crashing the Wolverine Line” — might make for a great colorization!

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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.

And so, lets begin:

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First up is Jay Henson, who’s new to the tweaking game, so lets give him a big hand for his first effort:

Hey I’m new to your site and love it. Have you ever done any posts on how the Bengals could redesign their awful uniforms? I did this one a year or so ago to probe a point to a friend. The cat logo (head only) is pretty awesome in my opinion yet they go with the stupid “B” as their primary logo. Do you know why they do that? Seems like they had the head as the primary for a while and then switched to the B on their own accord. Which is probably just another example of poor management of this team.

—

Thanks, Jay Henson (Apex, NC via Springfield, OH)

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And last we have another newcomer, Daniel Easley, who’s one of our up-and-coming Uni Watchers (he’s 16) with a suggestion for the 2014 All Star Game logo:

Hi my name is Daniel Easley. I’m 16 years old and I’ve been reading Uni-Watch for years. This isn’t exactly a uniform concept, but with the Minnesota being named to host the 2014 MLB All-Star Game I decided to design a Logo for it.

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And that’s it for today. Back with more next time.

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Stirrup Fridays…

Because we love the stirrup here at Uni Watch, this section is devoted to those of us who sport the beautiful hose on Fridays — a trend popularized many years ago by Robert P. Marshall, III. For many of us, it’s become a bit of an obsession, but a harmless one — a reflection of our times. Where we once had Friday ties, which has been replaced by Casual Friday — we now have Stirrup Fridays. It’s an endearingly simple concept — no matter where you work (or even if you don’t) — break out a fresh pair of rups to compliment (or clash with) your Friday attire.

So, in the order in which they were received (and some of these were received last week, but after the prior Friday Stirrup posting — and there may be some from teams who’ve since been eliminated from the playoffs). And…here we go (click on each thumbnail for a glorious, full size image):

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Matthew R. Lawrence:

Hey Phil

Not even my stirrups and Jeff Blauser’s pants (seriously) could help the Braves not beat themselves last night. We were at an early Halloween party. I don’t ordinarily wear the pants. I was dressed as an Atlanta Cracker but no one really got that.

Cheers!

Matthew R. Lawrence

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James Poisso:

Phil,

Today’s stirrups are a vintage pair I recently received. No idea what team, but they are they are for my Louisiana Tech Bulldogs today.

James Poisso

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Leo Strawn:

Phil,

For the next stirrup Friday, I submit something that Paul will absolutely hate: Purple. (I went to two high schools, and one of them has purple/gold colors. I found these at a local thrift shop. I assume they were worn by one of the local high school baseball players.)

Leo Strawn

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John K.:

Phil,

Going with the classic O’s once again. I know I’m a bit of a stirrup broken record right now, but feel duty-bound to pull for my team as long as they are in it. Also stayed with the ’66 World Series theme with a copy of the program as a prop. As you can imagine, every player is sporting the ‘rups in that era.

John K

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And that ends today’s look at Stirrup Friday — all of you who participate, send me your pics and a brief (~50 words) description of their relevance, and I’ll run ’em here on Saturday (and sometimes Sunday too!).

If you’re not a member of Stirrup Nation and want to join, just visit Comrade Marshall’s house of hose (and you can see the available selections here) or if you have any questions about the availability of stirrups, drop him a line at rpmarshallart@gmail.com. Not much new this week, but still a schweet pair of Broons hose. Check it out:

So, comrades — why don’t you pick up a pair or three and show us your rups!

OK? OK!

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“Benchies” first appeared at U-W in 2008, and has been a Saturday & Sunday feature here for the past two years.

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Click to enlarge

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And that’s it for this fine Saturday folks. Enjoy the college football today, and the baseball tonight. And … we’ll … see … you … tomorrow … morning.

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“Softball tops 0-2 in deciding game 5”²s in LDS. Other than ’03 Marlins, what teams since ’79 Pirates became World Champion or won winner-take-all game 5 or 7 while wearing a dark-colored top? In World Series, ’84 Padres, ’95 and ’97 Indians all lost deciding games in their softball uniforms, but I assume some LDS or LCS teams won under those circumstances.”
–Scott Merzbach