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A Civilly Righteous Game in Houston Town

Civil Rights Game Ball

By Phil Hecken

Last night, the Houston Astros — playing as the “Houston Eagles” — and the Baltimore Orioles (playing as the Baltimore Elite Giants), engaged in the annual Civil Rights game. Believe it or not, this annual game has been played since 2007.

The first two games were held at AutoZone Park in Memphis, Tennessee. According to WikiPedia, “The intent of the game was to ’embrace baseball’s history of African-American players,’ as well as to generate interest for future black players, after a demographics survey revealed that the percentage of black players in the league has dwindled over the past twelve years to just 8.4 percent.” If you remember those games (played as Spring Training games), the uniforms were kind of made up, with New York and St. Louis wearing simple block lettered jerseys.

After those two games in Memphis (St. Louis hosted Cleveland, and the New York Mets hosted the Chicago White Sox), the games beginning in 2009 became regular season games. In 2009 and 2010, the games were played in Cincinnati, and MLB began adding actual throwback uniforms. The 2009 game featured the powder blue White Sox vs vested Reds, while the 2010 tilt featured the Reds in 1947 and Cardinals in 1946 uniforms.

In 2011, the game moved to Turner Field in Atlanta (where it would also be played in 2012), and featured the Braves and Phillies first donning Negro League throwbacks, followed by those teams wearing 1974 throwbacks (with the Braves in the uniforms that Hank Aaron set the home run record, and the Phillies in powder blue and burgundy) for the actual Civil Rights game.

In 2012, the Dodgers and Braves hooked up, but didn’t wear any kind of special uniforms (the game was played much later in the year — August 18th — previous games were all in May or June), wearing their regular uniforms but with Civil Rights Game patches on their caps (more photos here).

2013 brought more uni-disappointment as the White Sox hosted the Rangers, and neither team wore any “special” uniforms, instead just putting a patch on jersey and cap.

Fast forward to 2014, and the game was moved to Houston. And MLB decided to return to the wonderful Negro League uniforms that have been gracing MLB diamonds for at least a decade now, in throwbacks hosted in various cities. But MLB had a slight problem — Houston didn’t have much of a Negro League history. In fact, according to Ultimate Astros, the Houston Eagles (to whom the Astros were throwing back) were “Texas’ lone member of the old Negro Leagues.” And even then, the Eagles only existed for two seasons (1949 and 1950), having moved from Newark. You can read about a a day in the life of the Houston Eagles here. The Baltimore Elite Giants, who the Orioles were representing, had a much longer and more illustrious history in the Negro Leagues.

The Eagles, as mentioned above, began in Newark, and played there from 1936 to 1948. A simple google search yields a plethora of gorgeous uniforms the team wore, but a similar search on Houston Eagles yields almost no photos. Those Houston Eagles wore the Newark Eagles uniforms for their entire two-year existence in Houston, and disbanded after that. Unfortunately (for Houston) but fortunately (for America) the reason for their demise was that Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby (and others) broke the color barrier in 1947, and Negro League teams simply couldn’t survive (especially with their best players now joining the Major Leagues). The Elite Giants (who began in 1920 in Tennessee, were renamed “Elite Giants” in 1933), moved to their permanent home in Baltimore in 1938, where they would play until their final season (also in 1950).

So with that as the backdrop, the Astros (Eagles) and Orioles (Elite Giants) wore uniforms approximating those of 1949-50. And they looked great (click on any images to enlarge)!

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Unfortunately, the leggings/hosiery were all over the place — some guys went high cuffed…

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…while others wore long leggings…

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…and others were just styling:

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As annoying as the lack of uniform uniforms is, I’ve given up on expecting the players to wear the uniforms with the cut of throwbacks (whether it’s a tight 1970s polyester game, or a 1940’s Negro Leagues throwback). Just getting to see the uniforms of yesteryear is a treat. And the uniforms worn last night were beautiful (and if you looked at the google images for those teams — they seemed to get the Eagles pretty well, although the Elite Giants didn’t seem to match up quite as well).

And both teams did go the (unneeded but nice) extra mile of applying new decals to their helmets so they matched the uniforms (unneeded because there were no batting helmets back in the period to which the teams were throwing back). Still, it looked good (although the Orioles’ helmets still had their orange bill, rather than the red bill of their caps):

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All in all, a very enjoyable look back at some of the teams from yesteryear. Glad MLB decided to go back to throwback uniforms (and Negro League ones this time) for the Civil Rights game. Hope this tradition continues in 2015 and beyond.

You can see more photos from the game here and here.

Readers, what did you think?

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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, GUD

This month saw Uni Watch celebrate two milestone anniversaries (15th for the Uni Watch column, and 8th for the blog), and today, I’m pleased to announce another anniversary — for the Gridiron Uniform Database. Many of you readers are likely familiar with the project, which seeks to document every uniform worn by football teams (in all leagues). It was the brainchild of Timmy Brulia and Bill Schaefer, and it’s having a birthday. If you’re not familiar with the GUD, you can read about its birth, right on Uni Watch, here, here, and here.

So, let me turn the remainder of this section over to Tim and Rob Holecko (the fifth Beatle third GUD member), as they discuss the GUD and announce some new news. So, here’s Rob & Tim with…

. . .

GUD’s Third Anniversary
by Tim Brulia with Rob Holecko

After launching the GUD in June 2011 with our collection of NFL uniforms back to 1933, we have grown these three years to add the 1920-32 era, the full weekly matchups all the way back to 1940, as well as spinoff websites featuring the uniforms of the short-lived WFL and USFL leagues. Over 500 viewer submitted corrections and updates have made the GUD that much more accurate as we strive to improve our sites every day. While it may never be totally done, we still have much, much more to bring you in the coming months and years, including this rather sizable addition that we announce today.

In the next two weeks we will be celebrating our third anniversary, and to celebrate the occassion, we are proud to now add to our websites the full graphical history of game officials uniforms. We believe this to be the first sports uniform database of any kind to graphically display a detailed history of game officials attire.

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Our Bill Schaefer has once again amazed us by bringing the same attention to detail that he has shown in creating the football uniform graphics we have been displaying for these past three years and applied it to the uniforms of the men who make up the third team on the field, those who officiate the games.

To the GUD we have added the complete history of officials’ uniforms worn in the NFL, the AAFC and the AFL. You can see these uniforms here. We have also completed the WFL officials’ uniforms and the USFL officials’ uniforms, which are available on their respective websites.

You can read in more detail about this addition to our database at the Gridiron Uniform Database blog. In this article, Tim and Bill break down all of the changes to the officials’ uniforms era by era, throughout professional football’s 90+ year history since the beginning of the APFA in 1920.

We hope you enjoy perusing this latest addition to our website.

And of course as always, we would appreciate any alerts to any errors, omissions, or corrections you may have to the officials’ pages as well any to the existing players’ uniform pages, as we move into our fourth year and continue our quest to make the Gridiron Uniform Database the definitive website resource for football uniform information on the internet.

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2014 Logo


U.W.F.F.L. Spring League

UWFFL Spring 2014 – Week 12
“Who’s The Better Lumberjack?”

by Rob Holecko

We are back with another week of competition in our 2014 Spring Developmental League. Our thanks go out to all of you who took the time to vote last weekend. Today we present to you another full slate of games to vote on, including this week’s spotlight game, another matchup from the Northwest as the (5-1) British Columbia Lumberjacks take on the #1 and undefeated (5-0) Yellowknife Lumberjacks. It’s a summertime all-Lumberjack affair in Yellowknife, this sleepy town of approximately 20,000 people in the Northwest Territories, way the heck of a long way from rest of civilization. Temperatures should be around a beautiful 55 degrees for this game as the days get long and the teams battle for the first time in what may become a regular UWFFL rivalry and compete for the “Big Brown Axe”. This game will go a long way toward deciding first place in the competitive Group F, as these teams both seem to be headed for promotion to the Pacific Coast Conference.

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British Columbia at Yellowknife
  
pollcode.com free polls 

Be sure to head over to uwfantasyfootballleague.com to vote on the rest of our games this week.

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Uni Watch News Ticker:

Baseball News: Following up on the lower case/small font lettering that Paul detailed in his most recent ESPN Piece (also from yesterday’s UW lede), Mike Wilson sends along Justin De Fratus for the Phillies. … “I’m a huge Mike Schmidt fan and I’m ashamed to admit that I never knew he briefly wore #22,” writes Jonathan Daniel. “13 games in 1972,” he adds. … Also from Jonathan, how great is this photo of Nolan Ryan? … “There is a Twin Cities-based online publication called MinnPost that has a feature called Minnesota Blog Cabin, which ‘…features the best work by bloggers from around Minnesota’,” says Wolfie Browender. Yesterday featured “a great post by Clark Griffith (son of former Minnesota Twins’ owner Calvin Griffith) who explains how licensing of MLB trademarks came to be in the mid-1970s and how that opened up the market for team merchandise.” … John Furstenthal writes, “When I played baseball at Cal in mid 90’s we were required to wear one of these when lifting weights.” … Good spot from John Przebieglec, who says, “This is the Goose Gossage HoF toy on their website, see a problem?” … Yesterday, Nebraska broke out their ‘rainbow guts’-inspired unis for the College World Series regionals (thanks to David Wilson). … Speaking of ‘tequila sunrise’ inspired unis, here’s what ASU wore yesterday (h/t Alex Simon). … Haggar clothing may not have much (any) cachet these days, but did you know it was once the brand worn by the Mick himself? Nice find by Bruce Menard! … “As an A’s fan since 1968 growing up next door to the Coliseum, I enjoyed Wally Campbell’s ‘White Shoe Diaries’ history of the A’s and white cleats,” says Rich Paloma. “He neglected to mention the only season the A’s didn’t always wear white cleats was 1982 when they had hunter green on the road.” … More Star Wars night jerseys, this time for the Buffalo Bison (h/t Matt Vaughn). … And finally, a “clever” Star Wars jersey (h/t Dustin E.). … The Memphis Red Birds did their own Civil Rights Throwbacks yesterady (h/t Jermaine Curtis). … On June 8, as part of the Cubs on-going 100th Anniversary of Wrigley Celebration, the Marlins will wear 1949 Sun Sox throwback uniforms. … Oooohhh, a double rainbow over Fenway. … The Houston Cougars stirrup game is “strong” (via Marty Garner). … Got a nice note from Jeremy Derr regarding last weekend’s article on the Texas/Detroit throwbacks: “I caught your mentions of negro leagues we regard to the Texas/Detroit throwbacks. Huston Tillotson University in Austin is custodian of a relic, Downs Field in East Austin, a former negro league park. The schools team still plays there, as does the local MABL/MSBL men’s league. I played on this field for years! It’s really amazing to know that I was playing on a field that greats like Satchel Paige are supposed to have played on, too! There was recently an event to raise awareness for the field. I’m told (but am not certain) that HT has a lot of historical documents related to the field and its usage through the years.” Thanks Jeremy! … Well, at least they’re not Tequila Sunrise: Here’s a look at the Louisville post-season unis (from Matt Miele). … The Mariners were giving away fedoras last night (via Robert Silverman). … This is VERY COOL — In 1990, Matt Malinoski wrote to the Expos asking them to explain their logo. They actually have an official reply which they sent back to Matt! You can click to enlarge or read here. … The Oakland A’s are honoring the 1974 WS Team this weekend, and here are the jerseys players will wear for ceremony (big thanks to Rich Paloma). Unfortunately, the game won’t have throwbacks — but it didn’t stop Rich from getting a pic with Sal Bando and Bill North!

College Football News: Is Georgia Tech moving to wear throwbacks as their regular jerseys? Reader Britton Thomas thinks maybe so: “The Georgia Tech Football poster for 2014 has been released. It looks like they’re moving back to the throwbacks Russell attempted to create last year. And it seems that they have worked out the striping inconsistencies from last year’s disaster.” … Trying to anticipate what uniform combo the Oregon Ducks will wear each game is almost a cottage industry, nowadays, but now you can meet the man who already knows everything they’ll wear (spoiler alert: he’s not telling). … Here’s Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick discussing, among other things, the transition from adidas to Under Armour (thanks to Matthew Walthert).

NBA News: “New (Milwaukee Bucks) co-owner Marc Lasry told a Milwaukee radio station on Friday that he and co-owner Wes Edens are looking at changing the Bucks’ team color scheme,” notes Jeff Ash. “It does need a little bit of help,” Lasry said of the Bucks’ red and green. Unfortunately, “No other details, though,” notes Jeff. … Now that the sale of the LA Clippers to ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is complete, will he bring back Clippy? (thanks, Brinke). … In Game 6 of the NBA playoffs last night, Roy Hibbert’s right arm sleeve was inside out in the first half and while he fixed it in the second half, he still didn’t tuck in the tag (nice grab by Jason Christie).

Hockey News: New Hockey team for Seattle? Seth Moorman writes, “Did you see the TSN article about some fan mock ups of a Seattle NHL team uniform. Looks like they want to stick with the same color scheme as the other pro franchises in town.” Hmmmm. Pittsburgh can (kinda) pull that “all pro teams in the same color-scheme” thing off — but could Seattle? Some interesting concepts. … Is this an LA Kings Prototype Jersey? “I came across this item from a closed auction regarding a possible prototype of a LA Kings jersey from 1967 that an ex-hockey trainer had acquired,” writes David Hembree. “I love the crown above the sleeve numbers.” … Holy shit — check out this 1972-73 Blackhawks logo (via Todd Radom).

Soccer News: Reprinted from yesterday’s comments (and also sent in by a number of readers) is this AWESOME interactive World Cup kit guide, in which you can ‘explore the history of the World Cup with our graphic guide to every kit for the 32 competing teams since the competition began in 1930.’ … If you happen to find yourself in London (England), you might want to stop by this Genealogy of Innovation — NIKE Football from 1971-2014 exhibit (thanks, Brinke). … Here’s a glimpse at the new Aston Villa kit, from their comic book themed teaser. The full kits will be revealed on Monday (h/t Joshua Dryer).

Grab Bag: Are you a fan of Costacos Bros. posters? Well, Brady Phelps found a guy who probably has the largest collection of Costacos Bros. posters on the planet. Not familiar with Costacos Bros. posters? Read more here. … This is a pretty cool DIY project — creating a miniature felt likeness of Rockies OF Charlie Blackmon (nice find by Paul Richard Cook). … Those of you who tweet have probably noticed your “me” page changed (whether you wanted it to or not), and now Twitter has changed its font from Helvetica Neue to Gotham (thanks, Brinke). … I’m sure Paul’s examination of MLB belts didn’t trigger this, but are belts the next frontier in men’s accessories? (thanks to TommyTheCPA).

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And that will do it for this last Saturday (and day) of the month of May. Everyone have a great day and I’ll catch you guys tomorrow.

Follow me on Twitter @PhilHecken.

Peace.

.. … ..

“‘Rational’ and ‘douchey’ are not mutually incompatible. No one’s saying it’s (hooking human beings up to vision-tracking glasses) not a clever marketing tactic. However, it widely comes across as invasive & intrusive to men of ordinary habits and sentiments. They’re just doing their jobs. But not every job is worthy of doing, or”“even if arguably worth doing”“says good things about the men who’d do it.”
–“Le Cracquere”

 
  
 
Comments (58)

    The Georgia Tech uniforms are GORGEOUS! THAT is what a football jersey should look like.

    I wouldn’t exactly say Ga Tech has worked out their striping inconsistencies. Look at the differences between #s 70 and 5.

    Yeah, the white between the black and gold on 70’s is narrower than the others that we can see in that shot.

    But at least there isn’t an extra stripe.

    The throwbacks are a tremendous improvement over all the ugly Russell unit of the past decade. Of course, the original unis didn’t have the dark patch at the V of the neck. Would’ve been better to have a white sleeve band so there wouldn’t be the striping problem, but the black band somewhat resembles the three striped Tech jerseys worn in the 50’s and 60’s.back when the Jackets were really good.

    I’m not sure if I’d cheer for the Clippers or actively despise them if they actually decided to use that… thing.

    The sale of the Clippers to Ballmer is NOT complete, nor has it been finalized, nor has it been approved by the league.

    Stop spreading outright LIES. Sterling lawsuit manes he will remain the owner of the team for months.

    Historical kits is an amazing site and I vociferously recommend it for any uni-history geeks out there. I linked to it yesterday in the comments. One thing I didn’t know until I saw it yesterday was that Brazil had to use makeshift blue jerseys for the Final vs Sweden in 1958. They only brought their yellow shirts for the trip to Sweden and when they found out Sweden would wear their yellows, they had to quick get a supply of blue shirts and white shorts, and sew on their CBD emblems on these shirts. When they won the World Cup, Brazil permanently adopted the blue shirts as their secondary jersey!

    Thanks again for that link Timmy! I loved the Brasil 58 story and the bit about Bolivia’s gesture to the host country in 30 in their first-ever world cup match.

    The problem with the Bolivia team tribute to the hosts was that one player went missing for the photo call:

    link

    The BBC has been showing the official World Cup films of all the tournaments. I just watched the 1958 one today and, although, black and white, its fun to see all those wonderfully simplistic kits.

    Also, the British announcer keeps referring to Edson Santos, before he was Pele. ;)

    Mr Chilvers, thanks for sending me there and I am heading down the rabbit hole right now looking at these kits!

    If you are going to have two Canadian football teams named the Lumberjacks, someone should have had them do the CFL thing and have one of the teams put a space in their name (Lumber Jacks) like they did with the Roughriders and Rough Riders of old. :)

    I’m not a fan of a team throwing back to a franchise to which they had no ties. So not a fan of the Astros wearing Eagles uniforms. I’ve heard of the Houston Buffs, who were a longtime minor league team before the Colt .45s/Astros came along. And even the. I wouldn’t be a fan of throwbacks for that. But at least I had heard of the Buffs. I hadn’t heard of the Eagles until earlier this season when they announced the throwbacks.

    The fact that the caps are already on sale, as are the game-worns on the Astros Authentics site, just reveals what all of this Civil Rights Game stuff really is: another money grab by MLB. It’s no different than hawking camo caps and uniforms based on military themes. Let’s see if I can capture this correctly: Find a social cause and use it to squeeze sheep for a few bucks and profit from it.

    I’m more disturbed that MLB actually lifted “local market” blackouts on MLB Network and MLB.TV for a random game in May that was just determined to be a Civil Rights Game. What is special about this game other than it was just randomly determined to be a celebration for it? Did I miss an anniversary? And why are “local market” fans, some who live in different states, allowed to see this 1 random game but are blacked out of the other 161 games because of some antiquated, arbitrary, illogical blackout rule?

    Throw this on the same pile as the military dress-ups, and the hollow NFL October pink celebrations where 8 cents of every dollar actually goes to the people who need it. It’s a shame because civil rights history is another valid cause that doesn’t deserve to be exploited for the sake of more money.

    You are obviously anti-Civil Rights (kidding!).
    I’m right there with you about having issues when teams adopt throwback looks that can’t be linked to their individual franchise history (I also am not a fan of MLB teams dressing in minor league duds). But if the practice is going to continue, I hope the uniforms look as great as the ones worn last night. IF MLB can say “Hey, you 2 are going to were these uniforms for one game”, can’t they also insist on uniformity on how they are worntoo…stirrups, cuffing, etc.?

    There’s one big difference between MLB teams wearing uniforms with camouflage print and Negro League throwbacks. The Negro League uniforms don’t suck.

    If you hadn’t heard of your own area’s ties to Negro Leagues baseball until this throwback was announced, shouldn’t that be a good thing? I’d think it’s a positive that now more people in Houston are aware that Negro League baseball was played there.

    Bob, doesn’t the fact that they moved here even though they were only here for a couple of years mean Houston should have the right to wear them as a throwback? I think it’s great for the whole state of TX that we even HAD a Negro League team…

    Watching NCAA softball Thursday night and saw one of the pitchers wearing what could best be described as a modified catcher mask as she pitched. I’ve never seen this before. Seems like a good idea and more pitchers should do it. Missed the screen grab.

    Here you go: link

    Also see picture number 18 of 19 in the slide show at the bottom of the article for an action pic.

    Loved the piece by Clark Griffith about the origins of MLB licensing. It pretty much matches my perception of what the situation seemed to be. Good stuff!

    I agree completely. This site has had a pretty staunch opposition to buying jerseys and has no qualms about heaping ridicule on the practice. I am from the era before team hats and shirts were available and I have no regrets about buying a 2005 Tadahito Iguchi White Sox jersey. I am qualmless.

    Haggar slacks were also a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson. I saw his personal collection at the LBJ Ranch earlier this year. :)

    Arizona State used to have gorgeous uniforms in every sport until they went crazy like Oregon. Maroon and Gold can’t be improved, much less by adding black. As for Oregon, the unis that they wore in the Rose Bowl against Penn St. were beautiful.

    Perhaps I’m still asleep but what exactly makes those hideous and unnecessary Star Wars jerseys “clever”, as the Tweeter pointed out?

    I’m not sure if it’s clever, but it is much more subtle than most of the Star Wars jerseys.

    I think the Star Wars theme has kinda run it’s course though. It can’t be too much longer before teams find a new popular thing to capitalize on. I look forward to the inevitable My Little Pony jerseys, those will be nice and colorful and piss off a bunch of people.

    Agreed on the subtlety. Also agree on the Star Wars being over. As well as other movies, Ghostbusters, Spiderman, Batman etc. Unless the minor league teams are owned by a movie studio or Marvel/DC I don’t understand why/how those movies and pop culture references have anything to do with baseball or hockey etc.

    It’s minor league, so ultimately, it’s “for the kids” or “fun”. Basically, it’s an attempt to get people in the seats. They’re trying to draw in a few extra people who wouldn’t have otherwise bought tickets. Minor league teams don’t exactly get the hardcore following of the pros, so they use gimmicks. It’s just kinda sad that they aren’t more creative, so we end up with 20 different teams doing a Star Wars night.

    I think the Richmond Flying Squirrels did a “Price is Right” promotion a few years back which looked fun to go to.

    In 2012, the Dodgers and Braves hooked up, but didn’t wear any kind of special uniforms (the game was played much later in the year – August 18th – previous games were all in May or June), wearing their regular uniforms but with on their caps (more photos here).

    Missing something in that sentence toward the end of it referencing the cap patch.

    Good spot — I was simply missing a “>” (close tag) in my coding. Didn’t pick that up in the re-read. Now fixed!

    Watching the CRG last night I noticed the dot on the i in Giants was missing from JJ Hardy’s jersey. I couldn’t find a pic of him, but you can see it in this video

    link

    Why do they say the Houston Eagles were the only Negro League in Texas when just recently Texas wore Ft. Worth Black Panthers jerseys?

    Sara, I can’t answer that but link goes to a very thorough page on the Texas Almanac site that traces the history of black amateur, semi-pro and pro baseball in the state.

    I was at the game last night. My first thought as I got to my seat while the O’s warmed up was that they looked sort of like the link. Not sure what that says about me or the uniforms.

    I’ve been to ‘throwback’ games before, mainly the Astros’ friday night affairs and enjoyed the look of the rainbow shirts, shooting stars shirts, etc. Last night was sort of disconcerting. I had the weird sense I wasn’t watching the O’s versus the Astros. Maybe that was exactly the point.

    There were other Negro Leagues, including some minor leagues, but there was only one actual Negro League (most of the teams were located on the east coast).

    Well, the screenshot indicates that they were the “only team from Texas in Negro Leagues history” — the plural indicating (to me) that that should include all of the various Negro leagues – minor and major. Unless, of course, you subscribe to the theory that correct punctuation is optional these days, and that was supposed to be the possessive form of Negro League, in which case it may explain it if the Ft. Worth Black Panthers were indeed a Negro minor league team.

    Today’s rant:

    1. Love the new/old Georgia Tech jerseys. The striping issue was pretty heinous, especially for a major college program.

    2. With all the hoopla over throwbacks, I expect someday a major-league team will go all throwback — that is, spend an entire season wearing only throwback uniforms. Seems the likeliest candidates for that would be the Indians and White Sox, both of whom have worn more than 50 uniforms in their existence. In the Indians’ case, they had a new/different uniform for both home and away five years in a row (1969-73) As you can see here:

    link

    Of course, all-throwback teams would have to take a break from that so they could wear their GI Joe’s and Flag-Desecration ensembles on appropriate holidays. And pink on Mother’s Day.

    3. Steve Ballmer buys the Clippers: Fine with me, but I hope he does something about those awful uniforms. With the possible exception of the Brooklyn Nets, the Clippers have about the blandest uniform in the NBA and they can’t even claim it’s a “traditional” look, like the Celtics, Knicks or Lakers.

    Best NBA uniform ever (IMO): The old San Francisco Warriors. As shown here as a throwback in 2006:

    link

    Best NBA uniform ever (IMO): The old San Francisco Warriors. As shown here as a throwback in 2006

    Ugh. No. Hey, we’re the Warriors, so… um… our logo is a bridge. Yeah…

    Sure, in a vacuum it’s not a bad jersey, but it’s absolutely stupid for a team called the Warriors. What, are they fighting traffic?

    Admittedly, I don’t know what the heck the 1997-2010 logo was really supposed to represent, but even a freakin sword & shield would be better than a bridge. They’re the Warriors, they’re supposed to be charging into battle or… whatever. It’s a fairly generic name that could work for any city. If they want to embrace their geographic location, then use a name that makes sense locally – like the Pittsburgh Steelers or Colorado Rockies do.

    Sure, in a vacuum it’s not a bad jersey, but it’s absolutely stupid for a team called the Warriors. What, are they fighting traffic?

    You do realize they were originally from Philadelphia, and their logo was what we now consider an offensive American Indian character? And that the Golden Gate, cable car, and “The City” motifs were classic design elements for a newly-arrived team to establish its San Francisco identity?

    Oh, that’s right. I forgot who I was talking to.

    One other note from this weekends Astros-Orioles series… The scoreboard uses the link. Why can’t an MLB organization get this stuff right?

    It was covered in the comments yesterday – it’s still the team’s official primary logo. It’s just not as prominent as the cap logo these days.

    Re: Louisville “postseason” unis. At what point does a player tells his coach, “I came here to play baseball, not model your AD’s contract with {inserts brand here}. I will play naked before I where that crap.”

    White Sox are wearing the “Batterman” hats with the 1983 uniforms, I think it’s the first time they’ve done so…

    Three things:

    1. No one has responded to the question about what’s wrong with the Gossage toy. It’s obvious; but I’ll say it: it has the NOB of a Yankee uniform.

    2. The person who typed the Expos’ response accidentally used an accute-accented E in the English participle “représented”, as in the French verb “représente”. (The two versions are not word-for-word parallels of one another.)

    3. The A’s 1974 uniforms do not show the correct front logo. The A with no extra pip on the left side was worn through 1972.
    link
    And in 1972, the logo and numbers on the yellow jersey was white-on-green.

    In 1973 they added a second pip, and switched the logo and numbers on the yellow jersey to green-on-white.
    link

    And it stayed this way through the end of that uni set, including 1974, as Catfish’s 1975 Topps card shows.
    link

    The team got the logo right in 2010 when they did a throwback day.
    link

    The logo was right also at a 2013 function held at the Warriors’ arena.
    link

    If that’s all you see that’s wrong with The Goose, take another look.

    Yeah, I didn’t catch it at first glance either. And it’s not the facial hair. It’s kind of like those “how many things can you spot” magazine dealios. I see at least two things.

    Anyone else spot what’s wrong besides the NOB?

    “Anyone else spot what’s wrong besides the NOB?”

    Oyo is having a hard time distinguishing between Rich Gossage and link?

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