Two Days in D.C.: Of Pats, Nats & Racist Logo Discussions

By Phil Hecken

This past week, I joined Paul (and many a Washington D.C. Uni Watcher) as Paul hosted a Uni Watch Gathering in Hamilton’s Bar and Grill. The usual assortment of jersey wearing fans and readers (and contributors) were in attendance, and a great time was had by all. I wish I could have spent more time with everyone there.

One reader with whom I did spend a great deal of time was this dude in the Patriots sweatshirt — his name is Jesse Rogers. Like many who attend UW gatherings, Jesse brought along a bunch of neat stuff, including six Washington Senators and Nationals caps and a bunch of Boston/New England Patriots gear. All of the logos on the Pats shirts appeared identical at first glance, as did all of the curly “W”s on the Nats caps.

Even though I consider myself to be an astute uni watcher, and I’m pretty into logos, there are always little tweaks and twists teams sometimes make to their logos that either escape our radar, or are extremely subtle. Jesse was pretty juked to share with me the progression of Pats logos and Nats cap logo changes over time. Here he is to share his thoughts on both:

Greetings UniWatchers, hope all is well. My 1st time writing a submission, so bear with me.

First, going to talk about the “Pat Patriot” logo. The first, sometimes known as the “Crazy Face” logo (seen on this sweatshirt) was utilized by New England after the “Tri Corner” helmet logo (a great set of photos is found in this writeup from the Helmet Hut).

It lasted from 1961-64, when a second Pat Patriot logo was created (seen on this t-shirt), which remained the team’s primary logo until 1992, when the 1st “Flying Elvis” was introduced. I have never seen the ”Crazy Face” logo utilized on any helmets. The Creamer site actually show 2 variations of the 2nd gen Pat Patriot, but they seem almost identical. [Paul did a great writeup of the lineage of the Flying Elvis logo a couple years back on ESPN. It’s worth the read — PH]

When the NFL held it’s 50th anniversary celebration of the AFL, many clubs wore throwbacks to mark the occasion, The Pats, however, wore a “fauxback” Pat Patriot logo (which is seen on the third Patriots sweatshirt).

Why the Pats utilized ”“ and still use this logo, I don’t know. At the time the it was originally introduced, it was-and still is hard to reproduce. It only started appearing during the celebration. I have looked on the interwebs for info/ explanation, but no dice. It is much much more detailed than the original. The lines are much thicker, the facial expression is changed, more detail to the coat and trousers and an additional shade of blue has been introduced, I believe to show shadow from Pat being hunched over. The button detail is much more enhanced as well.

Great stuff, Jesse. That entire “fauxback” look is odd — given that they’d never worn it in their past and it appears they didn’t use the logo on any of their throwback helmets (or at least to my eyes). It’s almost like, “Lets create a logo we never used and we won’t actually put on our uniform.” Was this done solely to fuel the merch machine? Readers, any ideas.

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Moving on, Jesse was also anxious to describe the subtle but distinct changes in the Curly W between the Senators and Nationals. Here’s Jesse again:

Hello again folks-

I have seen lots of posts about the Senators/Nats “W” caps. I wanted to throw my observations in.

I have a few of their caps, I’ve always enjoyed the logo. I’m originally from CT, a Red Sox fan. Just always liked it even though there was no DC team while I was growing up.

The 1st 2 caps shown are from the 60’s 70’s timeframe. Originals, not reproductions. Note the quality of the embroidery, not like today’s stuff. As has been posted here before, authentics weren’t available to the fans. The market didn’t exist. When throwbacks started coming about, they’re not always accurate, note the lack of soutache on the repro. Also, please note the different fonts utilized. (repro on right)

Next we have a throwback from when Texas played as the Senators. Note the font. Also note the lack of serif on the tail of the W.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, the only place that I’ve seen pretty accurate repros made is the ones available @ Mickey’s Place In Cooperstown. They’re 100% wool, with the exception of the white or grey caps, which are a poly blend. They’re New Era caps, not dead/old stock. If you go to a place like Lids, or wherever, you’ll see the NE flag logo on the side of the caps, but not on the Mickey’s Place ones. Also, no MLB logo on the rear. All the underbrims are green as well.

Cool stuff, Jesse. I was always fascinated by the ever-so-subtle difference between the Curly W caps worn by the Sens and the Nats. Quick, UWers, which is which?

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Moving on to the symposium, Paul and I attended the “Racist Stereotypes and Cultural Appropriation in American Sports” presentation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian on Thursday, February 7. It was billed as a chance to “Join sports writers, scholars, authors and representatives from sports organizations for lively panel discussions on racist stereotypes in American sports,” and a chance to “Explore the mythology and psychology of sports stereotypes and mascots, examine the retirement of ‘Native American’ sports references and collegiate efforts to revive them despite the NCAA’s policy against ‘hostile and abusive’ names and symbols, and engage in a spirited conversation about the name and logo of the Washington D.C., professional football team.”

I promised I wouldn’t scoop Paul on this, so I’ll merely state some observations about the event. It was broken into three segments, the last of which I did not attend, since I was trying to hightail it out of DC to beat the blizzard. The first panel discussed “Mascot Origins and Myths” and the second “Case Studies.” Both were fairly enlightening, and as the name of the symposium suggests, were fairly in-depth in their explorations of the use of Native American symbols over the years, and how they’ve perpetuated racial stereotypes. All of the speakers were fairly high-powered, including former United States Senator from Colorado, Hon. Ben Nighthorse Campbell. The third segment, unfortunately, was “A Community Conversation About the Washington NFL Team Name.” That’s the one I really wanted to attend (and about which I am sure Paul will cover in-depth on ESPN later this week).

Both panel discussions I attended were excellent, although the speakers were largely preaching to the choir. Paul immediately set to work by scoring interviews with panelists.

Among the discussions during the first two sections was on “Lone Star” Dietz, who is at the heart of the naming of the Washington football team (and about whom many myths have been perpetuated over the years). Speakers also covered the use of Wahoo and college sports teams who’ve misappropriated various imagery and iconography and originally used derogatory caricatures or imagery. There was much, much more, and Paul will inevitably tell you more (and better, probably in fewer words) than I ever could. But I’m very glad I attended.

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So, all in all, it was a great and productive two days in DC — tempered of course by the news of the passing of Mike Hersh. I had a great time meeting all the Uni Watch readers and fans, and only wish I could have spent more time talking to everyone at the Gathering. As Paul is fond of saying, “You’re all aces.” And I’m especially thankful I was able to discuss the Nats & Pats logo machinations with Jesse.

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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.

Just a small set (of two) today. But you know the names.

Click on each image to enlarge.

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Up first is George Chilvers, with (shockingly) a football colourization:

Hi Phil

Just a quick one.

This for me is a very small image (trying to resize just pixellated) but the subject matter inspired me to do it. I don’t know how it will turn out on UW. Now, I assume that Health and Safety in the States is as big an issue as it is over here, but this is a photo from around 1908 or so of a football match at The Nest in Norwich which was built into the side of a quarry. Any H&S experts should look away now.

Some of the viewing points seem slightly precarious to say the least. There are other people (near the side of the stand) that also could not have seen very much of the other end of play. And as a final point I was surprised on the close inspection needed to colourise at how many ladies there were in the crowd.

George

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And to close today is John Turney, who colorized the St. Louis Gunners. For those of you scratching your heads, here’s a description of the Gunners from Wiki:

Phil,

1934 St. Louis Gunners

Based on this photo I made the collars red. It was a slightly darker shade of gray and in doing so many of these, it seems to match the shade of gray that is red. Other than that, followed the Gridiron Uniform Database model.

Colorized then filtered it with Alien Skin Kodachrome filter. Red pants came out maybe too bight, but red is tough to work with in colorizations.

John

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That’s it for today. Keep those colorizations coming Uni Watchers!

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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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We begin today with Ben Harris, who has an Eagles tweak/concept:

Hey Phil,

I started using GIMP just about a week ago, and I decided to take a shot at a new Eagles jersey. I switched to the Kelly green base that the fans have been rallying for along with a few other changes. I used the Oregon-style two tone face-mask, which attempts to simulate the beak of a bird, which is lighter in the Eagles logo than the rest of the face, a better effect if you are looking at the helmet straight on. I fooled around with some gradients on the helmet striping to give it a nicer/more unique look as well. Along with manipulating the logos and helmet wings to fit the new color scheme, I used the Philadelphia Flyers-style off color nameplate to back the NOB.

Thanks,

Ben Harris

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Next up is James Samsel, with a sort-of faux-back for the G-men:

Hey Phil –

Here I redesigned the uniforms for the NY Giants. Overall, I felt there was too much red for a team nicknamed “Big Blue”. My changes are as follows:

• Changed the shade of blue to a darker, Parcells era blue
• Removed “ny” from front of helmet and the front of the jersey; too much clutter
• White home pants instead of gray
• Blue road pants instead of gray
• Blue numbers on road jersey instead of red
• Removed stripes from jerseys
• Mono blue alternate with “GIANTS” word mark on helmet

Thanks, keep up the good work!

JP Samsel
Samsel Design

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And we close today with Brian Poor who has a new logo concept for the Fish:

Hey Phil!

As you know, the fins are about to unleash a new logo and uniform designs for 2013.

There has been a logo leaked, that fans think migh be the new logo, to prepare fans for a really bad logo. Earlier, it was reported, they were using the stadium logo as inspiration.

Here is my attempt at a new logo using it as inspiration.

Brian Poor

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

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Thanks everyone for indulging me today — I hope you enjoyed a little look-back at a couple days in the life of a Uni Watcher. Everyone have a great Sunday.

And don’t forget — Tuesday is FAT Tuesday … so don’t forget to wear your PÄ…czki Day stirrups. Don’t have a pair? You can always take Jim Vilk‘s advice: “One pair of tube socks + gold and purple markers = DIY pÄ…czki stirrups.” Interested in getting a pair? I have it on somewhat good authority that Comrade Marshall may make a limited number available in scarlet and gold. If you’re interested, let him know in the comments below.

Peace.

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One For The Road

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“Angry mascots are such a meathead thing.”
–Mark Peterson