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Uni Watch

Oops: Twins Get Stuck With Wrong Logos on Caps

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If you asked most baseball fans — maybe even most Uni Watch readers — I’m fairly certain they could not identify the American League and National League logos. Indeed, Major League Baseball has done its best over the past two decades to diminish or even eliminate the separate league identities. There are no more separate league offices, no more separate league presidents, no more separate league umpiring crews (and, lest we forget, no more separate league umpiring uniforms), and so on. Yet for some reason MLB and New Era felt the need to put league logos on this year’s stars/stripes flag-desecration caps. You can’t even see these league logos clearly on TV, so the logos, like the caps themselves, were strictly a retail gimmick. “Hey, if we slap another bumper sticker on there, even more chumps will buy this!”

Fittingly, this gimmick blew up in MLB’s face yesterday, as several Twins players had the National League logo on their caps. According to an in-game report from the game broadcast, all of the size 7-1/4 caps had the wrong logo. Oops!

Unfortunately, the Twins will have plenty of time to fix this mistake, because MLB has turned Independence Day into Independence Four-Day Festival, with teams continuing to wear the flag-desecration caps today, tomorrow, and Sunday. Sigh.

The caps had retro/throwback logos, which led to some unusual looks. It was particularly odd, for example, to see the Marlins’ original logo with their current uniform:

Similarly, it was weird to see the Nationals wearing a different “W” on their caps than the one on their chests/sleeves:

As usual, for better or worse (a bit of both, I’d say), the Brewers once again went the extra mile and had their batting helmets match their caps:

Three more days of this, wheeee!

(My thanks to the many readers who brought the Twins situation to my attention.)

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Oops, continued: MLB wasn’t the only one with quality-control issues yesterday. In MLS action, LA Galaxy forward Zlatan Ibrahimović — one of the top players in the world (even a soccer-clueless guy like me has heard of him) — was saddled with an NOB typo. D’oh!

And while this next item isn’t exactly uni-related, it seems worth noting: The Mets’ Single-A affiliate, the St. Lucie Mets, set off fireworks after their game. Unfortunately, the pyrotechnics ended up igniting a fire in the trees beyond center field:

Incredibly, this isn’t the first time this has happened. The team had a similar fireworks mishap a little over two years ago. So the next time you hear someone describe the Mets as a Dumpster fire, tell them, “Nuh-uh — brush fire.”

(My thanks to the many readers who brought both of these situations to my attention.)

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ITEM! Uni-versary patch finally available: After a few production glitches (don’t ask), I’m happy to report that the Uni Watch 20th-anniversary logo is now available as an embroidered patch!

The patch is four inches across. The price is $9.99, plus $1 for shipping (or $2 for shipping outside the USA). To order, send payment to me via Venmo (use @Paul-Lukas-2 as the payee), Zelle (plukas64@gmail.com), or Cash App (plukas64@gmail.com). If you want to use Apple Pay or a paper check, or if you’re outside the USA and can only use PayPal, shoot me a note.

Once you send payment, be sure to send me your shipping address. Thanks!

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What Paul did last night: The block on our street to our immediate south is a dead end. It’s just a few dozen yards from our house, but it’s a completely different world, in part because dead ends are their own little worlds, their own little subcultures. On a dead end, for example, you can block off the lower part of the block on the Fourth of July and spend the night setting off fireworks in the street, which is precisely what our neighbors were doing last night:

It looked better in person, honest. Eventually, of course, the cops came. They made some perfunctory noises along the lines of “Break it up” and “You’re all done now, right?” and then went on their way, at which point the fireworks show resumed. To my knowledge, no fires were started, so maybe the Port St. Lucie Mets could hire these guys.

The fireworks show was the culmination of a really good day, which included a picnic in the park and a barbecue at our favorite local bar. Today we plan to take the ferry to Rockaway. However you’re spending your holiday weekend, hope it’s a good one!

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That’s it for today. Sorry, no Ticker, because the entire Uni Watch team had the day off. Phil will have his usual weekend content tomorrow and Sunday, and I’ll see you back here on Monday. — Paul

 
  
 
Comments (30)

    For the record, the minor league Mets are just the St. Lucie Mets (named for the county they play in) even though they play in Port St. Lucie.

    Hey Paul, love the site, been a loooong time reader…. But

    You might wanna check out your template or plugins to see if anyone has managed to inject something there’s not supposed to be, this site is going crazy constantly fetching and loding js files (scripts from unauthenticated resources according to chrome), in 3 minuts sitting here it’s sent 7146 requests using up 164mb of bandwidth. Somethin aint right and my laptop fan spins wildly.

    Here in FL any type of exploding fireworks (or anything that leaves the ground) are illegal. Period. Oh wait, if one is willing to sign a waiver stating they are buying them to scare birds, or illuminate a quarry they can buy all they want. Amazing how many liars live in FL (and in my neighborhood).

    link

    Ohio used to have a law that if you bought fireworks here, you had to sign a waiver stating that you would not set them off in-state. And of course thousands signed it, then turned around and fired them off here. And nothing was done about it. Oh wait, the one thing they did was to eliminate the waiver in order to save paper. Sigh.

    I just watched the fireworks on TV last night. Safer, less crowded, more comfortable. And legal.

    That is a beautiful patch.

    1) Dimensions?
    2) Who made it? (Those lines look crisp and the handle outside the circle couldn’t have been easy.)

    Sorry, meant to include the diameter, which is four inches. Was match by Stitches, the same place that does the Mets/Yanks/Islanders sewing.

    At this point, does it even make sense to refer to the American and National as “leagues”? Shouldn’t they take a page from the NFL and just call them “conferences”?

    Apologies if this has been mentioned, but the Seattle Mariners went with their blue road alternate at home yesterday. Anybody know why this was the case? Something to do with the 4th of July festivities? My best guess is they wanted to go with an alternate but don’t currently have a home alt that would have matched the special caps.

    I agree you’re right why the Mariners sported the blue road tops. They haven’t got a home uni that looks good with a red/blue cap except the blue road. They did wear these other times, maybe once or twice, at Safeco…..err I mean T- Mobile.

    “Hey, if we slap another bumper sticker on there, even more chumps will buy this!”

    I am one of those chumps. Not this particular hat, but last year I saw a Braves New Era hat with the NL patch on the side and I had to have it. Maybe it was a longing for my childhood when leagues DID still matter, but I like it. I did remove the New Era maker’s mark off of the other side. So, I guess I’m not a complete chump! The July 4th weekend hats are all hideous, though.

    I should put “Not a complete chump” on my Twitter bio someday…

    Slap an AL or NL logo (the correct one, please) on a *regular* cap and I’d consider increasing my chumpness a bit. Even better if it replaced the New Era logo.

    Joey Chestnut threw out the first pitch at a Mets game last week wearing a Mets jersey with #74 (equal to his hot dog eating record).
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    I bought last year’s Independence Day cap. I really like it. Does that make me a chump? Phil called us fools a while back.

    I haven’t liked the Mother’s Day and Father’s Day caps, or any of the Military Appreciation caps, so I didn’t buy any of those. But I really liked the Independence Day cap.

    (I wore it yesterday to the game in St Lucie. That was quite a fire.)

    Like I told Phil, MLB and the Mets never took a dollar out of my wallet I didn’t want to give them. I purchase things I like. That doesn’t make me a chump or a fool.

    I bought an MLB umpire stars and stripes hat from last year and don’t consider myself a chump or fool either. I mainly got it because it was one of the few MLB ump/batterman hats that gets sold to fans and I wanted it since I am a baseball fan on top of being a fan of my team (Dodgers).

    No one in the real world thinks you’re a chump. If you really care what a blogger, one that craps on anyone that wears a teams jersey , thinks of you, you have problems.

    I am fine with honoring Independence Day with some type of small uniform detail. July 4 and Memorial Day are the two holidays I am OK with altering the uniform in a small way. A poppy on the cap for Memorial Day and a small flag for Independence Day would work for me. I don’t even care if they sell replicas of these items for fans. Baseball is part of society and should be interactive with the community.

    What I hate is the extension of this to every Hallmark holiday and to the garish displays solely designed to sell merchandise that are used.

    The Independence Day caps this year are just ugly. There is no need to wear them four days either.

    I am off my soap box now. Thank you.

    So you won’t provide them their indepedence to choose their caps when you are honoring Independence Day.

    Got it

    I’m one of those “chumps” who bought the Independence Day caps for the O’s (I liked the design and wanted something from the Orioles that had a different logo, the block B was intriguing). However when Fanatics mailed it the back said HOUSTON ASTROS. I guess I should have expected it.

    I wonder if you ordered a Twins stars and stripes hat online in the 7 1/4 if you would receive the hat with the NL patch on it

    Hey I went to a ft worth cats summer league game about 10 years ago, and the fireworks didn’t work, ended up burning the field outside the stadium!

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