In our continuing saga of road teams wearing white when playing against the Kansas City A’s in 1963 (for background, look here and here), today we have some new documentation courtesy of reader/researcher Greg Mays.
As you may recall, we had previously documented that the Indians and Tigers wore white in KC in ’63. Now we can add a few more teams to that list:
1. The Orioles. First, take a look at the Orioles’ 1963 uniform set. On May 28, 1963, Baltimore arrived for the start of a three-game series in KC. Robin Roberts pitched the series opener for the Orioles (here’s the box score), and a photo in The Kansas City Times the next day showed him wearing the team’s home uni:
Two days later, the Times ran a photo from the third game of the series, which was played on May 30. The O’s again wore their home whites (click to enlarge):
They presumably wore their whites for the middle game of the series as well, but we don’t have a photo of that game.
While the O’s wore white for their late-May visit to KC, it’s worth noting that they wore their road greys when visiting KC at other times in the season, such as for this game in August.
2. The Senators. After the Orioles left KC, the Senators came to town. A Kansas City Times item from June 1, 1963, noted that the Sens would be wearing their home uniforms for the series:
Photo evidence backs this up. The Sens’ 1963 home uniforms were pinstriped, and two photos from the second game of the three-game series, played on June 2, 1963, clearly show pinstripes on the Washington players’ uniforms (click to enlarge):
3. The Red Sox (probably). Boston’s 1963 uni set featured red “Red Sox” lettering and headspoon piping on the home white, and navy “Boston” lettering with no headspoon on the road greys. So which uniform were they wearing in Kansas City on Sept. 13, 1963? Take a look:
The lettering is indistinct, there’s no apparent headspoon, and it’s hard to tell if the fabric is white or grey. But if we blow it up, it looks more like “Red Sox” to me:
It’s still hard to be sure. One thing’s for certain: The Sox wore their road greys for an earlier visit in May.
4. The Tigers (again). We already knew that the Tigers wore their home whites in KC on April 22, 1963. Turns out they wore them again the following day. That’s not really a surprise, but it’s good to have confirmation (click to enlarge):
To be sure, there were also plenty of visiting teams that opted to wear grey in KC in ’63, including the Yankees in April, the White Sox in June, and the Twins in June, although those teams might have worn white during other road trips to KC at other points in the season.
That’s it for now. As you can probably tell, I am super geeked-out about this topic, so I’m hoping we’ll have more historical nuggets to discuss soon.
Speaking of which: If we go back to a key moment in this investigation, reader Jim Wagner’s father said that the A’s invited road teams to wear their home whites “for a couple of years” — not just in ’63. So for all you microfilm researchers out there, it might be worth taking a look at 1964 and ’65 as well.
(My continued thanks to Greg Mays for sharing the fruits of his research.)
Membership update: Several new designs have been added to the membership card gallery (including Collin Wright’s 2003-04 Arsenal card, shown at right). I still have five slots open on the current sheet, so if you’ve been meaning to order a card, there’s no time like the present.
Remember, a Uni Watch membership card entitles you to a 15% discount on any of the merchandise in our Teespring shop. (If you’re an existing member and would like to have the discount code, email me.) As always, you can sign up for your own custom-designed card here, you can see all the cards we’ve designed so far here, and you can see how we produce the cards here.
Assorted reminders: In case you haven’t been keeping up with Uni Watch, here are some things you should be aware of:
• Our friends at Ebbets Field Flannels are currently raffling off a very cool-looking Fort Worth Cats T-shirt. Full details here.
• You can help to support Uni Watch by entering the auction for a full set of 2015 Uni Watch T-Shirt Club shirts in a custom-made pine box. The auction runs through this Friday evening. Full details here.
• Bobblehead doll restoration artist extraordinaire Chris Callan is willing to make custom Uni Watch bobbles for up to three customers. One customer has already placed an order, which leaves two slots remaining. Full details here.
The Ticker
By Alex Hider
Baseball News: Dodgers OF Alex Verdugo has his nickname — Dugie — written on his shinguards in Dodgers-style script (from Joey E.). … Luis Yander La O, a pitcher in the Rangers’ farm system, has a kerning issue on his NOB (from @thejohnnyfive). … One of the jockeys at this Saturday’s Kentucky Derby will wear silks with a St. Louis Cardinals logo (from Kevin Hobster). … The Orioles will be giving away these T-shirts to fans on Memorial Day (from Andrew Cosentino). … Speaking of the Orioles, Andrew also notes that RAR Brewery in Cambridge, Maryland, has a new beer named after the Jeffrey Maier home run. … The Single-A Fort Wayne TinCaps have a new uniform set. …Here are the inaugural uniforms for the Chicago Dogs, a new independent minor league team that will begin play this season. … The Orix Buffaloes of Japan’s NPB busted out their 1980s Hankyu Braves powder blue throwbacks last night (from Max G.). … A player for the Marion County (Kentucky) High School softball team wears No. 01 (from Josh Claywell). … Former MLBer Johnny Damon competed on Dancing with the Stars on Monday, and both he and his partner wore costumes inspired by baseball uniforms (from Chris Flinn). … Per Steve Saffel’s 2007 book, Spider-Man: The Icon, Spidey got married at Shea Stadium on June 5, 1987. Check out the happy couple’s wedding gallery here (from Ray Hund). … Jack White Gets It™. The rock star staged a charity baseball game with a Dallas sports radio station, and all players on his team suited up in real striped stirrups (from Ian Voorn). … Following up on the raffle for the Fort Worth Cats T-shirt, check out the Cats’ uniforms from 1942 (from Kevin Vautour). … The Nationals wore Washington Capitals caps during BP — some navy and some red — prior to last night’s game against the Pirates. Both DC teams were playing against Pittsburgh teams last night (from our own Jamie Rathjen)…. Royals baserunners were awarded an extra base last night because Red Sox C Christian Vasquez scooped up the ball with his mask (from Tris Wykes). … Teams in the independent Atlantic League now have front-facing logo creep and sleeve advertising (from Niko Goutakolis). … Mariners INF Jean Segura wore a teal undershirt last night (from Ryan Weetstein). … Cubs P Kyle Hendricks’s cap didn’t have the New Era maker’s mark last night (from David Blackwell). … Harvard and Yale will play their annual college football game at Fenway Park this fall. At a press conference at Fenway yesterday, captains for both teams were given Red Sox jerseys with No. 18 — but in each case, the 8 was upside-down (great catch by Peter Fahey). … Here’s a podcast interview with one of the Brandiose guys (from Steve Johnston).
Football News: Sam Darnold will wear No. 14 with the Jets (from Mike Chamernik and @Needles56). … New Giants RB Saquon Barkley was presented with his new jerseys recently — though he likely won’t ever wear that road white jersey. Notice the Flywire collar, which the Giants ditched last year (from Jamie Burditt). … This blog post wishes the 49ers a “Happy black alternate uniform anniversary!” “Happy” isn’t the word I would have chosen (from Phil). … Overboard, a new movie in theaters now, features a character wearing a modern Seahawks jersey with Matt Hasselbeck’s name and number. However, Hasselbeck never wore that jersey for Seattle — he left the team in 2010, and the Seahawks redesigned their jerseys in 2012 (from Chris Flinn). … These are presumably the game balls that Arkansas will use this upcoming season (from Matt Snyder). … Your Call Football is a startup football league that allows fans to call plays and manage games by voting in an app. It appears that the league’s teams will be using Schutt F7 helmets, and the helmet’s designer, Michael Princip, hopes the league gets creative by using contrasting colors for the replaceable panels and the main shell. … C. Todd Davis reports that the Raiders logo with the pickaxe and shovel that was mentioned in yesterday’s Ticker is the logo for a Las Vegas construction union. There’s a Los Angeles ironworkers union with a similar logo. … Cross-listed from the baseball section: Harvard and Yale will play their annual game at Fenway Park this fall. At a press conference at Fenway yesterday, captains for both teams were given Boston Red Sox jerseys with No. 18 — but in each case, the 8 was upside-down (great catch by Peter Fahey).
Hockey News: Cross-listed from the baseball section: MLB’s Washington Nationals wore Capitals caps during batting practice — some navy and some red — prior to last night’s game against the Pirates. Both DC teams were playing against Pittsburgh teams last night (from our own Jamie Rathjen). … DIY genius Wafflebored has created one of his best jerseys yet. Outstanding work!
NBA News: The colors on TNT’s score bug during last night’s Cavs/Raptors game didn’t match the unis on the court (from @AlsoYes). … Here are the court designs for every team in the NBA 2K League (from Mike Chamernik). … NBA 2K League affiliates with the Cavaliers, Celtics and Sixers have also revealed their uniforms. … Reader Morgan Webster has been tracking the Pacers’ uni colors throughout the 2017-18 season. Here’s the final product.
Grab Bag: Golfer Adam Scott is reportedly set to sign multi-year clothing deal with Under Armour (from Lachlan McLean). … Cross-listed from the baseball section: These are the silks that the jockeys will be wearing this Saturday at the Kentucky Derby — including one that will be wearing a St. Louis Cardinals logo (from Kevin Hobster). … New kits for Australia’s national rugby union team (from @tedkerwin). … The crawl outside of the sports book at the Palazzo Casino in Las Vegas uses some really outdated team logos (from Bryan Prouse). … Art Paul, Playboy’s founding art director and the man who designed the magazine’s bunny logo, has died (WaPo link) at the age of 93 (from Matt Schudel). … A Catholic high school in Michigan says it will force girls to wear “modesty ponchos” at the prom if chaperones deem them to be dressed inappropriately (from Brinke).
What Paul did last night: Last night I went to my friend Carrie’s birthday party and then went to see the new Wes Anderson movie, a black comedy called Isle of Dogs (which, when you say it out loud, comes out as “I love dogs” — clever). It’s a stop-motion animation film about a Japanese city that exiles all of its dogs to an island that also serves as the municipal landfill, and about a boy who goes to the island in search of his lost dog. You can see the trailer above.
I really, really liked some aspects of the movie and am a bit uneasy about others. But what’s particularly interesting about the movie from a Uni Watch standpoint is that one of the dog characters, named Boss, wears a baseball jersey. He explains that he used to be the mascot for a local team called the Dragons (for all of these photos, you can click to enlarge):
If you look more closely at the jersey, you can see that it’s beautifully knit and embroidered, with lots of gorgeous texture:
And a closer look at Boss’s tag reveals that’s baseball-themed! I didn’t realize this while watching the movie and only discovered it while looking for photos after I got home:
There are also a few scenes showing Boss with his team. Oddly, the players wear pinstriped jerseys but non-pinstriped pants:
Anyway: Like all Wes Anderson movies, this one is very eccentric and, well, Andersonian. Personally, I count that as a positive. Recommended.
Interesting that there is a kerning issue on Boss’s tag.
Most of the dog tags had inconsistent letterspacing, a nice detail that I enjoyed very much.
the jockey is wearing a logo for St. Elias Stable. It looks like the Cardinals logo, but that is an E, not an L
Love the (very) detailed captions on the old newspaper photos. Helpful in an era when you couldn’t quickly go online to call up the play-by-play.
i think the Jean Segura teal undershirt is actually Dee Gordon. link
Upvote
The union logos aren’t really official for that local. The official logo is the one of the international for whatever union it happens to be. Stickers are made all the time using popular logos as a template. Harley Davidson is very popular as is an iron cross, etc..
They’re official in that they’re sold at the local halls, but It’s not necessarily the official union symbol.
Here are a few 872 jerseys from right after the Raiders announced their move.
link
Looks like they did a riff on the old Columbus Crew logo for the sleeves.
“‘Overboard’, … features a character wearing a modern Seahawks jersey with Matt Hasselbeck’s name …”
Why did someone feel the need to remake “Overboard”?
It’s apparently a gender-flipped version of the original.
“New kits for Australia’s national rugby team”
This should really say “rugby union” because I know “rugby” unqualified generally refers to union in America but Australia has high-level national teams in both union and league so it’s unclear (without clicking) which one is being referred to here.
Got it.
Or Arthur, Poseidon Adventure, Halloween, The Pink Panther, Psycho, The Omen, Robocop, Shaft, etc. etc. etc.
Baseball stitching on the dog collar too?
The Nats wearing the ALLCAPS Capitals hats highlights a complaint I have about the Capitals lettermark (not just the newest version, but the old one, too) — it uses lowercase, not CAPITAL, letters to spell capitals
It’s amusing to me, more than anything, since the team isn’t named after uppercase letters.
I remember reading about the live-action Spider-wedding (probably in Marvel Age). I was in junior high at the time and was just starting to get into the Marvel Universe proper.
It’s kind of funny that this brings me back to a thought I had this morning in reaction to something I heard on the radio. They were talking about the NBA playoffs (which Detroit didn’t qualify for), and people were texting in the sentiment that “Nobody cares about the NBA”. The hosts pointed out that such sentiments were not true, based on the national ratings.
This led me to the thought: Just because you don’t care about a particular thing, and maybe the circle of people around you don’t care about it either, doesn’t mean that nobody cares about it. People say “Nobody cares about sports uniforms”, but this community alone proves that there are people that do care.
What does this have to do with Spider-Man, you ask? Well, it’s because 20 years after the wedding happened, Marvel’s editor-in-chief decided that “nobody cares about a married Peter Parker”, and proceeded to have a story published where Peter and Mary Jane sold their marriage to Mephisto to save Aunt May’s life… from a bullet. Many fans are STILL pissed off at Joe Quesada for that one.
See, I thought here I’d be safe from remembering that dreadful One More Day storyline. You proved me wrong, Rob.
I doubt I’ll be the only person to note this but the expansion Washington Senators were referred to in print as the Nats (like the first AL franchise and the current NL franchise formerly known as the Montreal Expos). The captions for the Senators v. A’s photos bear this out.
I caught that as well. I personally like how among the photographs found, each of the four teams shown in this post feature some sort of bad throw or dropped ball at first base by the visiting team (though the Tigers were still able to get the out). I don’t know how sports photojournalists normally operate, but it sure seems like that photographer had the shot at 1st base dialed in, and whoever selected the shots to publish seems to have preferred these miss-plays.
Re: Michigan modesty ponchos.
Glad to know the Taliban are alive and well in America.
Actually, lots of fundamentalist religious sects impose standards of female modesty, including Orthodox Jews, certain Mormons, certain Christians, and others. No need to single out the Taliban.
It is also worth noting that these are high school kids, and presumably society still thinks it unwise for minors to act in an oversexualized manner (even if they do so when unsupervised).
Though there is a Dragons team in the NPB, they wear blue uniforms based on the Dodgers and not red pinstripes.
Hey Paul. Can you change the Campbellsville High School softball player to Marion County, please? I forgot to include the team name when I posted that pic last night.
Thanks.
Done.
Paul, would you care to elaborate on what you found problematic about Isle of Dogs? I too recently saw it and mostly enjoyed it but I do have some lingering questions and I wonder if we’re on the same page.
I thought it traded far too easily in cultural stereotypes, and the “Great White Savior” (i.e., the American girl) was pretty unforgivable.
Alison Willmore of BuzzFeed did some really good writing on this: “[The movie is] marked by a hodgepodge of references that an American like [Wes] Anderson might cough up if pressed to free-associate about Japan – taiko drummers, anime, Hokusai, sumo, kabuki, haiku, cherry blossoms, and a mushroom cloud (!). […] This all has more to do with the… insides of Anderson’s brain than it does any actual place. It’s Japan purely as an aesthetic – and another piece of art that treats the East not as a living, breathing half of the planet but as a mirror for the Western imagination.”
I think that’s some really strong cultural criticism, and also quite accurate.
But the production design was incredible, and I *loved* the dogs’ deadpan vocal delivery.
Yeah, I had similar reservations. Specifically about the white savior.
Alison’s Willmore’s comment that the movie has “more to do with the…insides of Anderson’s brain than it does with any actual place” pretty much sums up our experience of almost everything, doesn’t it? My wife is from the Philippines, and I’ve visited the country for an extended period of time, but I wouldn’t claim to know it but by the insides of my brain. Same with my hometown. Come to think of it, I can’t say think of anything I know beyond the insides of my own brain. But I think I know what she was driving at, and am planning to see the movie because I like the insides of Wes Anderson’s brain, though I can only experience it with the insides of mine. Still, I feel a weird connection.
The modesty poncho story has been updated to say that they have reversed the decision to hand out the ponchos.
KC in ’63 Update, More Teams Wearing White on the Road: I noticed that in addition to wearing their home uniforms, the Orioles also wore their home “B” caps which were only worn during the 1963 season.
That cap was *part* of the home uniform, not *in addition to* the home uniform, right?
Was a teen in Baltimore in 63. Remember the O’s switched to block letters on their home uniform and the B on the hat that year. Was a suggestion from player Jackie Brandt who had played for the Giants and liked the look, so ownership bought in. Fans didn’t and next year the script Orioles and bird on the cap were back.
Block letters remained on the home uniform in 1964 and 1965. The B cap was only worn in 1963.
In yesterday’s ticker there was an item about NFL 2K5 having the option of the Dolphins playing in a navy jersey. I played this game A LOT as a kid and I recall other crazy uniform options including the 49ers in gold, the Vikings in “gold” (see: yellow), the Bears in orange, and probably others. The game also featured extensive throwbacks for every team including 1994 anniversary uniforms. I don’t have any screenshots but I vividly remember this.
One handy Google search later and…
link
I guess the NFL didn’t care back then? Simpler times…
I remember that! Good times playing ESPN NFL Football on PS2. Hard to believe that there were two licensed NFL games back then.
So much better than Madden back then. Like you actually had to strategize as opposed to Madden where you could just bomb it 50 yards until it worked if you wanted to.
Some sports teams do not/should not need to have third uniforms. Their looks are simple, iconic and sometimes a third does not fit in well with their uniform identity.
The San Francisco 49ers are one of these teams. Nothing wrong with black and red uniforms, but it is clear this third does not work for the Niners. They do not need a third and need to ditch the black uniforms as quickly as possible.
I attended Spiderman’s wedding at Shea. It was special for another reason as well…it was Doc Gooden’s first game back from his first drug rehab. He struck out Barry Bonds to start the game.
I thought I saw the Alex Verdugo mention on this site a few days ago after he was called up?