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Good Uni-Watching Opportunities at Pats’ Parade

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Screen shot by @TheOldTry; click to enlarge

Pretty cool cross-sport moment during the Patriots’ Super Bowl victory parade yesterday, as backup quarterback Danny Etling wore a Larry Bird throwback jersey from Indiana State. Etling grew up in Terre Haute, Ind., where ISU is located, so that’s presumably the story behind the jersey (although Etling wasn’t born until 15 years after Bird’s final college game, and two years after Bird retired from the NBA).

I’m not much of a parade scholar, so I have no idea how (un)common this sort of thing might be. Does anyone know of other examples of players wearing a cross-sport jersey during a championship parade?

And that wasn’t the only interesting jersey move by a Pats player during the parade. Defensive back Duron Harmon wore a Tom Brady throwback jersey from Brady’s high school, Junipero Serra High. It even had Brady’s NOB (although I wonder if the school actually had NOBs when Brady played there):

As long as we’re talking about the Pats’ victory lap, a bunch of New England players showed up for last night’s Bruins/Islanders game in Boston and were given Bruins jerseys for the occasion. Oddly, some of the jerseys had white numbers with red outlining and white NOB lettering, all rendered in the Pats’ number and letter fonts, along with a Super Bowl chest patch, while others had the Bruins’ standard typography and no patch (click to enlarge):

That’s Super Bowl MVP Julian Edelman about to spike the puck in the first photo.

Speaking of which: How common are ceremonial puck drops — or spikes, as the case might be — these days? I feel like it used to be an occasional thing that was usually reserved for special occasions, but it seems much more common nowadays.

(My thanks to @TheOldTry, Moe Khan, Bryan Prouse, and our own Lloyd Alaban for their contributions to this entry.)

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Membership update: We got an absolutely genius membership request the other day from reader Jason Scherer. Remember the 2007 game when several Virginia Tech players’ jerseys went missing, so they had to wear repurposed Georgia Tech jerseys with handwritten NOBs? Jason wanted his card to be based on those jerseys.

In that game, the players all wrote their own NOBs on their jerseys, so we had Jason write the NOB that he wanted, scan it, and send it to us. Then membership card designer Scott Turner incorporated it into the card. It’s one of the best requests we’ve ever had, and is one of several new cards that have been added to the membership card gallery. I expect the printed/laminated versions of these latest cards to mail out by next Monday.

Ordering a membership card is a good way to support Uni Watch (which, quite frankly, could use your support these days). And 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.

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Click to enlarge

rafflet ticket by ben thoma.jpg

ITEM! Raffle reminder: In case you missed it on Monday, the Chicago Fire are generously offering one of their new jerseys for a Uni Watch raffle. The lucky winner will be able to choose either the primary red design or the secondary white design, both shown above. You’ll also get your choice of size, from S to XXL.

To enter, send an email to the raffle address by this Thursday, Feb. 9, 7pm Eastern. One entry per person. I’ll announce the winner on Friday. Good luck!

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Click to enlarge

KRC update: For the first time ever, a Key Ring Chronicles entry features a photo that shows something more than just the author’s keys. In this case, it’s the author’s keys accompanied by a photo of his mother, from her days in the Navy. That’s her dog tag on the key ring. Read about it here.

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The Ticker
By Lloyd Alaban

Baseball News: Just how much stuff are clubs bringing to spring training? Here’s what the Reds and Brewers are packing. … The Durham Bulls, Triple-A affiliate of the Rays, will become the Lollygaggers for one night in June (from multiple readers). … The NHL’s Minnesota Wild will honor former Twins C Joe Mauer at next Tuesday’s home game versus the Flyers. Custom Twins/Mauer-themed jerseys will be worn during warmups. They will then be signed by Mauer and auctioned off, with proceeds benefiting Crescent Cove and the Minnesota Wild Foundation. … Several readers have pointed out that in this photo, one Tigers player is wearing a home cap with a white “D” on it, while the rest of the club is wearing away caps with the orange “D”s on them. … Here’s a great photo of former Cubs 3B Ron Santo in full chef’s uniform rolling out some pizza dough (from @BSmile). … With the 20th anniversary of the Mets’ 2000 National League pennant approaching next year, Mets Police blogger Shannon Shark is asking whether the team should resurrect the BFBS uniform as an anniversary throwback, much the same way they revived the 1986 racing stripe uni as a Sunday throwback in 2016. … Monument City Brewing and Oliver Brewing — both based in Baltimore — are releasing an Orioles-themed beer can collaboration called, “I Wish I Was at The Yard,” with “The Yard,” referring of course to Camden Yards, the Orioles’ home stadium. … Here’s some great color footage of the 1938 Chicago White Sox during pregame warmups. … The Lakewood BlueClaws, Single-A affiliate of the Phillies, will wear Grateful Dead-themed uniforms for Grateful Dead Night in June (from our own Phil Hecken). … Texas A&M is honoring the late President George H.W. Bush by adding a commemorative “41” patch to their jerseys. The logo will be used throughout the Aggies’ home stadium. … Alan Kreit observed that the 1988 Dodgers had inconsistent warmup jackets. Some had straight letters, some had arched letters, and one had a number. … Diego Yanez-Laguna constructed this model of the stadium formerly known as AT&T Park, home of the Giants. Impressive! … The Korea Baseball Organization League is introducing a new baseball. It’s one millimeter wider and one gram heavier than the current ball. The change was implemented in hopes of making the league more pitcher-friendly. … New uniforms for Louisville (from Cap Carey). … New unis for Florida softball.

NFL News: Reader Christian Finley found this Patriots championship banner that erroneously lists the Texans as their divisional opponent. The Pats actually played the Chargers in the divisional round. … Speaking of the Texans: Texans DE JJ Watt caught wind of an elementary-school-aged fan DIYing one of his No. 99 jerseys, so Watt is offering him a real one. … A very popular YouTuber posted a video of his trip to Super Bowl LIII. He was stopped by a fan in a beautiful, baby blue Oilers jacket (from @pquirk727). … Fanheads sells wearable helmets made of a laminated paper. Save for the blank nose bumpers on all the helmets, they’re surprisingly accurate reproductions of the real thing (from Jon Solomonson). … Chris Peddle found two oddities in this This Week in Pro Football video of a Chiefs/Broncos game from 1975: “At the 18:40 mark of the video you notice Broncos WR Rick Upchurch playing with a plain blue helmet. Narrator Pat Summerall says his regular helmet was cracked earlier in the game. At the 20:19 mark, Broncos WR Haven Moses gets his two-bar facemask obliterated on a hit by Chiefs DB Jim Kearney. You can see pieces of it flying through the air.” … Attendees at the Jim Thorpe Awards Banquet in Oklahoma City were given a chocolate bar in the shape of Jim Thorpe (from Paul Deaver).

College and High School Football News: Joshua Meetz found the possible new helmets for South Carolina. … This article lists every West Virginia color combination ever worn, and their record when wearing each of them (from several readers).

Hockey News: The Devils celebrated Lunar New Year by having their mascot wear a Mandarin NOB on his jersey last night. … The Canadiens wore white at home last night against the Ducks, who wore black (from Mike Engle). … The Capitals will wear GI Joke warmup sweaters for Salute to the Military Night on Thursday (from our own Phil Hecken). … Cross-listed from the baseball section: The Wild will honor former Minnesota Twins C Joe Mauer at next Tuesday’s home game versus the Flyers. Twins/Mauer-themed No. 7 jerseys will be worn during warmups. They will then be signed by Mauer and auctioned off, with proceeds benefiting Crescent Cove and the Minnesota Wild Foundation. … According to @FSBabyHuey, the Flyers’ Stadium Series jersey and cap are completely different shades of orange. … The Swift Current Broncos of the WHL will wear these uniforms for Hockey Day in Canada on Saturday (from Wade Heidt). … A really long NOB was spotted on this Kennesaw State men’s hockey player (from Joshua Meetze). … Wisconsin men’s and women’s teams will wear these throwbacks as they retire the number of C Mark Johnson, who is the current women’s head coach (from Tom Milewski).

Pro Basketball News: AT&T is the NBA’s new telecommunications advertiser. They’ve also inked an advertising deal for the All-Star Slam Dunk Contest. … The Knicks are still using the old NBA logo on their pregame media notes (from Brenden Welper). … “Enemies” will be the name of the fourth expansion team added to rapper Ice Cube’s BIG3 basketball league.

College Hoops News: UNC wore 1969 throwbacks last night, honoring the last team to win three straight ACC regular season and tournament championships, and three straight Final Four appearances. The jerseys did not have the conference logo on them (from Paul Gardner and @Fifth_Factor). … New unis for Illinois men’s (from multiple readers). … New Black History Month-themed unis for Rutgers men’s, Georgia Tech men’s, Georgia Tech women’s, and Kansas men’s (from our own Phil Hecken and Monica Beyer). … BFBS unis for Chattanooga this Saturday against UNCG. … Kentucky men’s will lace up tonight against South Carolina in Nike BB Adapt self-lacing shoes. Here’s more on the shoes themselves (from Chris Griner). … Miami (FL) used to have versions of their “U” logo for their different sports programs. The basketball version is shown here at center court (from Preston Feiler).

Soccer News: FC Barcelona will have Chinese NOBs for El Clasico (from our own Phil Hecken). … New home shirts for the Earthquakes (from Josh Hinton). … New crest for Hull City of the English Football League Championship (from multiple readers). … Nashville FC, one of the latest MLS expansion teams, will make an announcement on February 20 (from @Cheekimonk). … Dan Smith, lead singer of the band Bastille, received a personalized jersey from Manchester United. The numbers on the shirt refer to the title of one of Bastille’s singles, “Quarter Past Midnight” (from Griffin Smith). … Atlanta United President Darren Eales teased a player signing with a cryptic tweet that required uni numbers to solve. Minutes later, United tweeted they had signed DF Florentin Pogba,whose shirt number is the correct answer to the riddle (from Michael Rich).

Grab Bag: New unis for Georgia Tech men’s lacrosse (from @sonnylax). … Here’s a great article about candlepin bowling (from several readers). … Here are the helmets for this season’s NASCAR Cup (from our own Phil Hecken). … Here’s an article on how Twitter hijacked Slack’s new logo. … This scientist-designer makes awesome posters for university lectures (from James Gilbert). … A street sign on 35th Avenue in Queens, where Scrabble was invented, has a great Scrabble-themed treatment. … Pretty awesome new track and field jerseys for Los Alamos High School in New Mexico (from @Milford XC). … Democratic congresswomen wore white to honor early suffragettes at last night’s State of the Union address. More info and historical background here (WaPo link).

 
  
 
Comments (52)

    All the cool kids have them

    (Mine’s the 1960 Syracuse University football jersey, number 44, natch)

    Looking at clips of Brady’s high school days shows he did, indeed, have a NOB, although that large “Padres” on the front isn’t there in these clips. link

    Considering the tackle twill numbing, and overall design of the jersey it is obviously just a unique piece of merchandise and in no way an accurate reproduction of a high school jersey from the mid-90s.

    I live in the next town over from Foxboro. I was at Patriot Place the other day and they had those jerseys on sale at Olympia Sports. They also had Edelman, Gronk, Randy Moss, and a few other players’ HS jerseys.

    The Swift Current Broncos should really consider making those green Hockey Day in Canada uniforms their regulars 3rds. That uniform is stellar.

    The ’88 Dodgers jackets were actually different styles of jackets. The jackets with just the last name were the Starter jackets that are more like a real jacket. The jackets with the name and the number were pullover jackets, much like the early versions of NFL sideline pullover jackets.

    Re: ceremonial puck drops, it’s almost the equivalent in terms of frequency as the opening pitch ceremony in baseball. It’s funny that this type of thing is more or less reserved to these two sports. I.e. no equivalent in basketball? Opening coin toss in Football?

    Yeah, while the refs typically are flipping the coin for every game it seems the home teams have some sort of ceremonial captains come out for the coin toss (at least my experience going to games in Philly).
    What could you do for basketball? Ceremonial jump ball?

    Can only speak for one basketball team (UVa), but there the equivalent of the ceremonial faceoff is a locally famous person/kid/whoever “presenting” one of the referees with the ball.

    Pretty sure it happens every game.

    A long time ago, if my memory is correct, they use to get Canadian Prime Minister to do a ceremonial kick-off at the Grey Cup. Off course that posed a Charlie Brown moment potential, which is why it was probably dropped.

    Are those Illinois uniforms new? They look like throwbacks to the late 80s that have been worn a lot in the past.

    Yep, their Fighting Illini throwbacks are now orange, blue, and white. Should be their primary uniforms IMO

    Is it possible there are three Detroit Tigers caps in that photo? I know I see one white D, but I might see a simple orange D and an orange-with-white-outline D.

    Somebody left a comment to the original twitter picture of Billy Martin that the white D is Norm Cash with his batting cap w/plastic liner.

    link

    Incredible footage of the ’38 ChiSox. I see a guy hitting fungoes wearing number 47 – seems kinda high for a number for that era. A coach, perhaps?

    -Jet

    To answer my own question, here are the team’s uni numbers:
    link

    47 was little-used Johnny Gerlach. There was an even less-used #47, pitcher Bob Uhl who got 2 innings of work all season…

    -Jet

    those South Carolina helmets are a serious downgrade. Why would you go from a distinctive logo that has worked for decades to something as boring as plain script that still manages to confuse people about whether you are your neighbor from the north? Bad design and bad execution.

    Ticker entry says new Black History Month basketball uni for Kennesaw, but links to Kansas uniform. Maybe this was broken when the NOB text was fixed?

    Despite all of that, Haven Moses is still around and quite active in charity activities here in Denver.

    Re: The Mets in black, I wrote this on the UW Facebook page yesterday:

    I’m a die-hard Yankees fan, so I admittedly don’t have a strong emotional opinion either way. That out of the way, I don’t think the black should be be brought back in any permanent fashion. HOWEVER, I wouldn’t be opposed to them being used for a game/series at most celebrating the 2000 Mets (maybe against the Yankees?) While not aesthetically pleasing, they are certainly the most historically relevant uniform for that 2000 team.

    Thought you’d like to add this, as I spotted it last night from someone’s tweet. In the picture that you posted of David Andrews shooting, he is using Charlie McAvoy’s stick. However, as he was passing by the Bruins’ bench, he STOLE the stick right from McAvoy’s hands! Charlie’s reaction is priceless!

    link

    Not uni-related specifically, but Jose Mourinho had a puck drop gone wrong the other day at a KHL game and the clip went viral.

    Also, is Chinese New Year being called “Lunar New Year” a new thing? Never really noticed it before the last few days.

    I’ve never heard of Chinese New Year being called Lunar New Year, but if I were to hear the term “Lunar New Year,” my mind would always go to Rosh Hashanah first.

    I have Mongolian friends who DEEPLY object to it being referred to as “Chinese New Year”, Lunar New Year is celebrated all over eastern and northern Asia, not just China.

    I don’t know if they have deep objections, but I have a couple cousins married to Koreans, whose new year is the same date. I’d guess it’s just a matter of people actually being more aware and attempting to promote inclusion, since lumping all the holidays in as “Chinese” really isn’t any different than any number of derogatory statements Americans have been known to make about people from east and southeast Asia.

    Lunar New Year is the “catch-all” term used (mostly by us Westerners) for the new year celebrations that follow the lunar calendar. Like a couple other things that evolved from Chinese customs and culture (e.g., language, traditions, food, etc. link), several East Asian countries traditionally celebrate Lunar New Year based off of the Chinese lunar calendar. Off the top of my head I can think of Vietnam and Korea who both follow the Chinese lunar calendar. Japan used to until they adopted our solar calendar in the 19th century. But in their countries, they don’t call it Chinese New Year. Either they use their country’s name, or — 9 times out of 10 — use the name of the holiday in their language (e.g., Vietnamese call new year “Tet.”

    Of course, there are the obvious differences, like food on new year. For example, my girlfriend, whose mother is Chinese, throws a party with dishes full of noodles and fish (except we’re not allowed to eat the head and tail of the fish since it brings bad luck). My Vietnamese friends (and mayor) eat Vietnamese-inspired dishes like sticky rice (a lot more sticky rice than my Chinese friends and girlfriend). In Korea, the little envelopes that elders give to children full of money are white, while in China and Vietnam, they’re red. In Chinese tradition (especially southern Chinese tradition, where my girlfriend’s mother is from), only married couples and elders are allowed to give out red packets (to children and unmarried people in adulthood), while in Vietnam, the recipients are usually exclusively children (although, me being me, I never turn down free money when offered lol). Also, some animals in the zodiac calendar differ by country (Vietnam has a cat in their zodiac, while China does not).

    Point is, there are tons of other minor differences, but the holiday and traditions that come from it are rooted in the Chinese lunar calendar. Perhaps due to the earlier (and at some periods of US history, more numerous) diaspora of the Chinese to the US, Americans refer to it as Chinese New Year. Are they wrong? Of course not. But would you go up to a Vietnamese person and say happy Chinese New Year? Probably not (you can just say new year, lunar new year, or Tet instead).

    So short answer is: East Asian countries follow the Chinese lunar calendar, but all have their slight variations according to their own traditions and countries.

    But, short answer to the short answer: If you want to sound inclusive of all the nations that observe lunar new year, then calling it “lunar new year” is your best bet.

    As an aside,perhaps the deep objections from Mongolians over “Chinese New Year” stem more from the long political tensions between the two countries (i.e., they didn’t like each other) than anything. But that’s just my two cents.

    It goes beyond politics, it is very much part of Mongolian Shamanistic past. I am an Anthropologist, it’s not that simple.

    Poppy went to freaking YALE, Aggies. Why are you slapping his memory all over your cruddy brick colored costumes?

    The white box for the manufacturer logo at the top of the back of those Mauer jerseys the Wild will wear is just stupid.

    Can it be a crossover if the athlete is an individual and not a team?
    Goran Ivanisevic won Wimbledon in 2001, and came back to Croatia to get feted while wearing a Drazen Petrovic jersey.
    link

    Interesting note on the Capitals’ G.I.Joke jerseys this year – the numbers, at least on the back (couldn’t tell on the sleeves from the initial pictures) is replicated from their 1995-2006 jerseys, not the current ones (in other words, the black-blue-gold era). Makes me wonder if there’s a new throwback in the works, or if EPS was just feeling creative.

    I’d love to buy a Uni-Watch membership but your entire “I hate purple” thing has gotten old to me (I’m a Colorado Rockies fan). It used to be quaint, but it’s run it’s course.

    So to make things even I’ll consider purchasing a membership on purple amnesty day. But to make it even, I am now turning on my ad-blocker every time I visit this site and will turn it off for the one day a year you allow purple.

    NASCAR Cup Series driver Michael McDowell continues to apply a cross decal(?) on the rear of his helmet:

    link

    His use of one dates back to at least 2006:

    link

    The article on candlepin bowling took me back to the 70’s when my older brother got the Skittle Bowl game by Aurora one Christmas…..

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