By Phil Hecken
Back again with Part II of the WFL uniform contest. If you missed Part I, click here. Very briefly, for those of you unfamiliar with the origin of the contest, the idea was for readers and designers to come up with a uniform for any WFL team had that team remained in existence today (you can read more here and here).
Last weekend featured teams who had five (or more) designs submit concepts for teams. This weekend, we’ll take a look at (and vote on) teams for which there were four designers. For the first design (Birmingham), HHH submitted yearly changes, so all those will be included as concepts. Let’s begin.
Birmingham Americans:
Gene Sanny:
(No Description Given)
Jeff Provo:
Description
Curtis Peddle:
Description
Hungry Hungry Hipster (HHH):
Description
BIRMINGHAM AMERICANS VOTING
(Vote for One)
Chicago Fire:
Dallas O’Meara:
Description
Gene Sanny:
(No Description Given)
Curtis Peddle:
Description
Robert Kramer:
(No Description Given)
CHICAGO FIRE VOTING
(Vote for One)
Detroit Wheels:
Gene Sanny:
(No Description Given)
Bryan Ross:
(No Description Given)
Mark Rabinowitz:
Description
Curtis Peddle:
Description
DETROIT WHEELS VOTING
(Vote for One)
Houston Texans/Rattlers
Bryan Ross:
(No Description Given)
Gene Sanny:
(No Description Given)
Curtis Peddle:
Description
Jordan Reagan:
Description
HOUSTON TEXANS/RATTLERS VOTING
(Vote for One)
Memphis Southmen/Grizzlies
Gene Sanny:
(No Description Given)
Curtis Peddle:
Description
Jeff Provo:
Description
Robert Kramer:
Description
MEMPHIS SOUTHMEN/GRIZZLIES VOTING
(Vote for One)
Philadelphia Bell:
Gene Sanny:
(No Description Given)
Jeff Provo:
Description
Curtis Peddle:
Description
H.H.H.:
Description
PHILADELPHIA BELL VOTING
(Vote for One)
And that’s all for today folks. Make sure you vote for each design, and let all the concepters know how much you liked their designs!
Back with more next time.
Classic Ballpark Scoreboards
I’m pleased to continue with a new weekend feature here at Uni Watch, “Classic Ballpark Scoreboards,” which are created by Gary Chanko. You probably know Gary best for his wonderful colorizations, but he has been a solid contributor for many years, and this is his new project. This segment will appear every Saturday on Uni Watch.
Here’s Gary (click on images to enlarge):
Classic Ballpark Scoreboards – Fifth in a Series
by Gary Chanko
Shea Stadium and Crosley Field are the subjects of this week’s look at classic ballpark scoreboards.
Shea Stadium
Home of: New York Mets
Last baseball game: September 28, 2008; Demolished:2009
When it opened in 1964 Shea Stadium received praise for its futuristic architecture and functional multi-purpose design. The ballpark featured the “fanciest scoreboard in sports” and one of the largest in major league baseball: 86 feet high, 175 feet wide, and weighed over 60 tons. A preview of the scoreboard features was detailed in the 1963 Mets Yearbook.
This recent 50th anniversary commemorative article about Shea tells the story of the planning, building, and later decline.
Shea and its futuristic Cyclotron scoreboard suffered many design changes over its forty-four year history. Still for many the original scoreboard will always remain one of the best ever.
The graphic illustration recreates the original scoreboard architecture from the 1964 season, but with some minor artistic license modifications. The center message board is what appeared on Opening Day, April 17,1964; the rest of the scoreboard display represents the first night game on May 6,1964.
A Few Things to Know
• The original scoreboard was a multimedia extravaganza of colored lights synched to music, movies and colored slide projections. With 28,000 lights and 80 miles of cable wiring you would expect something might not operate as planned. It didn’t. Short circuits garbled messages the first day. You’ll find one of the message miscues in the illustration!
• The Photorama video or slide projection equipment also didn’t function as planned and was retired part way through the initial 1964 season. The Mets logo was inserted into the screen display.
• The scoreboard inventor, Bob Rosten, also designed the exploding scoreboard for Old Comisky Park.
• Rheingold Beer, the Mets radio and TV sponsor at the time, financed the cost of scoreboard.
• Shea was home to the Yankees during the 1974 and 75 seasons. Oddly the scoreboard couldn’t display the letters “DH,” so “B” (for batter) was substituted for the designated hitter.
• In 1988 the original scoreboard was replaced with a new version designed to fit in into the shell of the old one.
Crosley Field
Home of: Cincinnati Reds
Last baseball game: June 24, 1970; Demolished:1972
During the 58 years the Reds played at Crosley Field no other ballpark experienced as many renovations and makeovers.
The park was located in a developed area of homes and industries. The buildings that occupied the areas beyond the outfield fences were plastered with billboard ads, as described in this link to a comprehensive photo tour of all the Crosley Field outfield and scoreboard advertising.
The scoreboard (1957 and on) was similarly surrounded with advertising that appeared to change nearly every season. The illustration reproduces the 1970 scoreboard version during Crosley Field’s final season.
A Few Things to Know
• The scoreboard with that ubiquitous Longines clock was built in 1957. It was manually operated, except for balls, strikes, and outs that were electronically controlled from the press box. The new scoreboard replaced the art deco styled one from the 1930s.
• The scoreboard was defined in large part by the 8-foot high Longines clock. It was so closely linked to the Reds public face that a digital version was designed into the Great American Ballpark’s scoreboard.
• In 1967 Houston’s Jimmy Wynn hit what is regarded as the longest home run at Crosley Field. Wynn cleared the 58 foot high scoreboard with a blast than landed on I-75.
• The old scoreboard (pre 1957) was linked to an odd ground rule: a batted ball going behind the scoreboard, and remaining behind it, was a double. This and another ground rule along the center field fence are the only ground rules ever painted on a ballpark’s outfield walls.
• A “new” Crosley Field was reconstructed at the Blue Ash (Ohio) Sports Center in 1988, including a replica of the scoreboard.
Next week the series will feature two wildly contrasting and celebrated scoreboards from these classic ballparks ballparks: Old Comisky Park and Baker Bowl.
If anyone is interested in purchasing a digital copy of these posters, Gary is working on an online purchase option. In the interim you can contact him directly at Classicscoreboards@gmail.com.
Duck Tracker
Each week, as we have done on Uni Watch for the past five seasons, we’ll be tracking the uniform combinations of the Oregon Ducks. Back for his third season is Tim E. O’Brien, who’ll show you what the Ducks wore in their last game, and add a few words of wisdom.
Here’s Tim E. with the DT (click to enlarge)…
Thursday was a rough night for Oregon and their fans. Performance, aesthetics and outcome: Oregon fell flat.
It’s not that pink, gray and black are a bad color combination – they actually look great together – but to go full breast-ninja is just lazy. This was better than last year’s seemingly half-assed attempt, but there is something far more disturbingly wasteful about this year’s uniforms.
I mean, it’s one thing to make new helmets and auction them off. It’s another to make a full uniform set — including helmet decals, new jerseys, new pants and special shoes — all for one game (and why are we still in the old template?). Rather than spend all that money on a look-at-me gesture, instead save that money and give it to a good charity. Everyone and their mother is aware of breast cancer. Please just donate to research and stop with the unnecessary sideshows.
Decent looking match-up, though.
Anyways, Follow me over at the Duck Tracker and on twitter (@DuckTracker). And if you like pain, you can also follow my Northwestern (@NUniTracker) and Indiana (@Hoosier_Tracker) trackers if you so choose.
U.W.F.F.L. News
Division II & III Games
By Rob Holecko
Well the UWFFL is back in full swing this week, well have Division II and Division III games to vote on today, and we’ll be back tommorrow with our version of the NFL, our Premier League matchups, as well as a handful of quarterfinal matches in the Maple Leaf Cup
Of all of the minor league matches, only one features two 2-0 teams, and that is our featured match today between two Eastern Association teams, the Cleveland Bearcats and the Staten Island Swordfish.
Head on over to uwfantasyfootballleague.com to vote on the rest of today’s games, and we’ll see you tommorrow as the Premier League finally plays its’ first weekend of matches.
Uni Watch News Ticker:
Baseball News: This is pretty cool. Got a submission from Tommy Turner who says he had “my pic taken with the president” at the Nationals/Marlins game last Friday. … In yesterdays Orioles vs. Tigers game, Nelson Cruz ripped his pants (thanks to Gaza for the screengrab).
NFL News: Reader Jaylen Lane Noticed Randall Cobb was wearing a jersey with a different collar than usual. See the difference here and here. … Have new kelly green uniforms been leaked for the Eagles? “If you read the whole article, they acknowledge it could be a fake,” say Paul. … This map lists the most popular football jerseys at Dick’s (a sporting goods store for those who don’t know) throughout the USA. It’s based on jersey sales in 2014, through the first three weeks of the NFL season. A couple of those are interesting (Colts in Nevada? Rams in Hawaii?) — but the fact that Andrew “Luck” plays for the Colts may explain the popularity there. … The Saints will wear white jerseys & black pants tomorrow.
College Football News: Here’s a look at the game helmets Army will be wearing today versus Ball State (nice find by Nick Walter). I don’t think they’ve worn the shiny black helmet with the camo stripe before (but I could be wrong). … No confirmation, but it’s possible Kentucky could be wearing these shiny domes tonight. … Baylor will be wearing its “traditional” road uniform today at Texas (h/t Andrew Lind). … Our fearless leader (Paul) is quoted many times in this article, “Syracuse football: Let’s have an intelligent conversation about uniforms”. Recommended reading! … UNC has USA’ed up its field and will wear these helmets with Carolina blue camo “NC” stickers for their military appreciation game against Virginia Tech today. … This probably isn’t a surprise to anyone, but here is Virginia’s uniform for today. … And it looks like The U is going green/orange/green vs. Georgia Tech today. … Boise State will be wearing black/white/black vs. Nevada today. … Last night, Fresno State broke out their “Night in Navy” unis, while Brigham Young busted out their royal throwbacks against Utah State.
NBA & NCAA Basketball News: Our friend Conrad Burry has found a leak from E-bay that shows the Nets new alternate shorts — if true, this jives with the uniform leak Paul showed us back in January of this year. … Check out the brand new floor at the University of Richmond’s Robins Center (thanks to Clint Richardson). … And here’s how UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion is shaping up after flood fixes (h/t Jeff Knox). … And here’s a nice look at the new New Orleans Pelicans court. … UTEP will be using a slightly modified black alternate this season (h/t Aaron Rich).
Hockey News: A website called The Hockey Writers has posted an article entitled, “A Brief History of NHL Uniforms” which is actually anything but brief. This is definitely an article worth reading. … Tom Reamer is a The Goldbergs fan, and “last weeks episode was centered around going to Flyers games (and leaving early to beat the traffic). Anyway, the attention to detail was amazing. All the flyers jerseys were spot on for the era (as the opening narrative to each episode states: ‘it was 1980-something’). They even got Ron Hextall’s goalie mask correct! Plenty of old Spectrum logos were featured and they even got the dasherboard ads right with the Gulf logos. In the crowd shots, there’s plenty of era-apporpriate Flyers gear going on and even a scene when Murray brings a co-worker to the game only to find out he’s actually a Oilers fan wearing a Gretzky jersey.” You can see all the scenes to which Tom is describing in this album. Tom adds, “The best little easter egg was at the end of the episode a skater wearing #28 is on screen. That number was worn by Flyers great, defenseman, Brin Propp. You can then see in the reflection in the glass that ‘Propp’ is on the back of his jersey! What amazing attention to detail! They even got the correct design for the Flyers Stanley Cup banners hanging in the rafters. With all this authenticity, I’ll let the show slide for having a generic looking scoreboard.” … Wisconsin Badger hockey is wearing a 1980 Team USA-designed patch this year. More here (thanks to Louis Mercer).
Grab Bag: “North Korean Labor Camp Unis” read the subject of the e-mail from David Hatch. He continues, “I hope you’ve never received an email with that subject line before. If this is too insensitive, I can understand, and if that link doesn’t work. Things that stand out to me in the photo — That number plate with Times New Roman font (I think) and the subtle edge border, the tie in the front like a Winter Classic sweater, or the opposite of a US hospital gown. The color is the same that Kim Jong Il constantly wore (Jong Un is more of a dark navy wearer, sometimes even pinstriped dark navy [wtf]); and finally the wide, u-shaped neck line without that awful NFL Nike collar design.” … Reader Jay Abbott writes, “Article from TCPalm.com – sorry, it’s behind a paywall. Typical bullshit about showing support/honoring/blah-blah. One interesting bit of info: “Jensen Beach will sport black uniforms with pink numbers and belts during all home games in October, as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.”…”The jersey is black, and the numbers are interchangeable because they are not sewn on, but rather applied with heat. That way, the Falcons can use the uniforms for regular games, too, just by switching out the numbering.” So they are economical and pandering! Gotta love it.” … The shoes in Batman Returns were actually Nikes (from Chris Flinn).
Whew! That’s going to do it for this fine first Saturday in October. Everyone enjoy the playoffs, the college football, and whatever else is going on in your uniform watching day. Don’t forget, Catherine is back on the 5 and 1, so send her any tips for games (good or bad) to UW5and1@gmail.com. Thanks to all today’s WFL concepters (don’t forget to vote!), Gary, Rob and Tim, and all you fine readers. Catch you guys tomorrow.
Follow me on Twitter @PhilHecken.
Peace.
“Ain’t no party like a pedant party ’cause no two parties held at different times in different locations with different attendees could possibly be the same.”
— terriblehuman
I’m kinda surprised no one kept the Vulcans name for Birmingham. I almost did, with the idea of the team partnering with a certain movie studio, but I changed my mind. Meh…
When does the voting close for the WFL contest?
Today’s designs were a lot fun. Good work designers.
Rams in Alaska, not Hawaii.
Also Redskins in Nebraska and Browns in Oklahoma I found odd.
Regarding the possible Eagles leak, if you zoom in on the Typeface with Eagle head logo, the eagle is still bordered by midnight green. I’m going with fake.
We went over it quite a bit in yesterday’s comments… it’s got a ton of problems.
Yeah, the still midnight green border jumped right out at me, but there are a lot more issues.
Any Kelly green concept without the original silver wings will always be a fake.
this
Thank you Tom Reamer for the Goldbergs review. I was watching it and thought oh man theres a uniwatch entry but im not a flyers fan but they did have my Boston Bruins in there for the wrong reason, giving up first goal to hextall there haha. Great show.
Just one minor glitch… it was home whites in the 80s.
The Old Comiskey Park Scoreboard would display ‘B’ for the designated hitter as well.
A roundhouse to the face in those bad boys?
Brian Propp wore #26.
Propp was also a left winger, and one of the all-time greats in Flyers history.
#28 was worn by Kjell Samuelsson, a defenceman, most often during the Flyers-Oilers heyday, but Al Hill wore #28 briefly.
Thanks for more classic scoreboards. Loved the phrase “suffered many design changes” regarding the Shea scoeboard. Also, never knew that Jimmy Wynn (Toy Cannon) hit the longest homer at Crosley Field. He also hit one of the longest homers in the Astrodome.
For my “Norfolk Fire” concept – will it be shared at a later date or because I made it an expansion team did that mean it didn’t make the cut?
Separate concept. Will be shared later
Brigham Young’s royal blues are just fantastic. White helmet and matching jersey/pants is hard to pull off, but it looks great here.
TX A&M with late-breaking uni change:
link
That article on NHL uniforms sorely misses a pile of facts about some very unique uniforms. For example, the author link when it comes to contrasting names on the jerseys. They miss the boat entirely when talking about the Seals’ white skates – they were heavier due to the link, not due to water.
Mickoski is a great writer, but these are important details.
The HUGE problem with “The Goldbergs” episode is that the Flyers were wearing colors at home. NHL teams wore whites at home until 2003.
Very minor issue that bothers me with that show is one of the characters frequently wears an older looking Flyers shirt that is actually just a “Vintage” Rebook design they put out a couple of years ago for a variety of teams.
link
link
The Goldbergs series in general cares nothing about continuity or historical accuracy. That’s why the announcer always says it’s nineteen-eighty-something. Once I got past that I was able to enjoy the show.
The older brother has worn an authentic (I assume) Ron Jaworski jersey and a throwback 70s Julius Erving jersey…neither of which were for sale back then.
Actually, they got the date for Hexy’s first goal spot on… “It was December 8th, 1980-something.”
And aside from saying Rangers…. that’s the exact scoreboard the Spectrum had at that time.
Classic Scoreboards stand alone. No need for label/name. It’s Shea, Crosley. We know.
Interesting about the DH. My information source was a SABR research article. I know the scoreboards controls from that era were hard wired, so adding DH to the display required some reconfiguration. Perhaps the Shea folks accomplished that shortly before or after the yYankees moved in.
I’ve read that Yankee Stadium and County Stadium had similar issues.
Gary,
I don’t think the Shea board would have had that issue…every lineup spot would have to be able to display multiple letters based on that day’s lineup…the letters had to be flexible. They probably used the same concept as the main message area, which of course had to be able to display all letters.
The Yankee board did display B for some reason…remember that was the first year of the DH (1973, which was the last year of that board) and maybe they did not use DH as the convention yet…certainly looks like the board could have displayed DH…
link
This would make for some interesting research! My guess is the central messaging area may have had “messaging” controls, but the remainder of the board (for cost purposes) would have had “fixed” selection controls for the operators.
This posting (#636) at Baseball-Fever has a snap shot of the Yankee scoreboard controls from around the same time frame. (link)
Gary…that post said the second character was limited to B, F, S…makes sense given that the only positions in baseball are 1-3B, LCR-F, SS…P or C could be in the first character. I zoomed into that photo of Yankee stadium and sure enough…you can see that the bulb possibilities are limited on the second character vs. the first character…so Yankee Stadium could not display DH properly…Shea did not have that limitation.
Great job on the Shea scoreboard! I must point out a few things.
1) I attended games that the Yankees played at Shea and never saw a B instead of DH…link verifies my memory is correct.
2) The version of the Met logo you used is not the one that was displayed on the scoreboard. This is the link that was used. It would be a simple thing for you to fix.
3) the only other thing that looks a bit off is there should be more space between the player number and their position in the lineup section of the board.
Another cool thing you should add are the red dots on the scoreboard that indicated current inning and batter
link
These were mentioned in the greatest Shea article ever written.
link
Thanks for all the suggested improvements and corrections. I’ll endeavor to incorporate these.
Upon even more research, I have discovered that the scoreboard logo was slightly different from the standard Met logo commonly used in the sixties…it was much closer to link You can see it in this photo if you zoom in…the cross on the t is much longer and the stitches are different as they are in Gotto’s version.
link
MINOR GLITCH # 2 FOR ‘THE GOLDBERGS’: PROPP WORE 26 NOT 28. CONFIRMED BY HOCKEYDB.COM & BEING A LIFELONG DIEHARD FLYERS FAN. GO BULLIES!
Do you need to type in all caps? Lowercase letters exist for a reason.
Refs almost threw the wrong guy out of the TA&M/MSU game because #9’s jersey was scrunched up and it looked like he was #8.
Nice link on HHH’s Birmingham entry.
I’ve seen countless uni concepts presented here over the years, and I am not really into that, but I really love the way Gene Sanney presents them. Well done.
Yeah, except for the weird-ass angle the player is depicted at. It’s very hard to say one is better than another when they’re all done in different templates. If they were all in the same template, then maybe you could have a fair vote about what’s the better design.
I completely agree. I’ve been meaning to suggest having a template for all future Uni-Watch design contests because sometimes I’m thinking people are voting for someone’s superior photoshop skills and not voting for the actual uniform.
For people who prefer using a vector program, those “more realistic” photoshop entries wouldn’t automatically get more votes anymore.
Rams in Alaska, not Hawaii, in the Dick’s story about top selling jerseys.
link
Protect the sponsors!
Fair enough, but the Beats’ statement exudes corporate douchebagginess itself and makes me end up hating everyone.
“Over the last few years athletes have written Beats into their DNA as part of the pre-game ritual.” Give me a fucking break.
There are no heroes in this story
Great job on the Bell uniforms, Curtis, Gene, Jeff and H.H.H. I noticed you guys added white to the original helmet logo, I think it looks much better this way.
If you ever look at pictures of the Philadelphia Bell playing you will notice that some of the decals had the crack in the Bell facing the wrong way.
I noticed this as a kid when I was helping the equipment manager Bob Cologna clean the helmets. He told me that the company that made the decals screwed up and made some of them facing the wrong way but he didn’t have enough of the good ones so he had to use them all.I wasn’t there to see this but my father said some of the players once stuffed Bob in a trash can because he gave Tim Rossovich a dirty t shirt for practice, the King could never finish the story because he would start hysterically laughing at the part where they roll the can around the locker room with Bob screaming inside.
Haha, great story Jimmy! Thanks for sharing, I always enjoy your stories! :)
Jimmy – I just to want to let you know that I’ve been enjoying your recollections,
Hey, I’m glad to share a good King story with you guys, I have to say I really enjoyed this WFL project, you guys came up with so many great ideas. I especially like how in the descriptions you talk about changes they made in the future like the league is really still playing somewhere.
I like the stars and stripes uni’s that HHH did for the Americans and said it was done in 1976 for the Bicentennial. It reminds me of Apollo Creeds outfit from Rocky in 1976.
The King wore the same Bell t shirt for all 19 games he played in during the 1974 season, he was superstitious and wouldn’t take a brand new one. In 1969 he suffered a bad shoulder injury while playing for the Pottstown Firebirds that ended his season, he was wearing green Riddell cleats that were issued to the whole team, he switched to white in 1970 and had the green ones in his closet in our house in Maryland, he considered them such bad luck he had my mother throw them away, he wouldn’t even touch them again he thought it would bring him bad luck again. He used to take his helmet off during timeouts and wouldn’t even wear it in practice, he thought it was bad for his hair and would make him go bald, he lived in his own wacky world.
The scoreboard thing is awesome. One item I find interesting…when they started putting dial clocks on the scoreboards, they were circular and usually sponsored by Gruen or Bulova watches. Then by the late 1950’s/early 1960’s, they became square-faced and were sponsored by Longines.
When the cookie-cutter stadiums arrived, the dial clocks were replaced by digital readouts with (usually) no particular sponsor.
Maybe we can a Gruen clock on top of a scoreboard we have yet to see??
Thanks again!
Maybe.
Thanks Jeff for the compliment on my presentation :) As for the angle of the player, I drew a pose I found to be dynamic, and would show all elements of the uniform at the same time…. it took kind of a twisted pose to make that happen.
Really enjoyed this redesign concept of the WFL. Some great ideas were presented. I only had time for a few and would liked to have added more. I do agree with the idea of one standard template for presentation. this way the design is judged first.
Loved both the article of the WFL and the uniform evolution/redesign. Would like to see the same treatment for the USFL, and some of the other forgotten leagues (AAFC, other AFL leagues prior to the 1960’s). Continue the great work.