In today’s Ticker, we’ve got a new look at the Royals’ powder blue throwbacks, new kits on tap for the Irish national teams, and more!
Uni Watch News Ticker for March 3, 2023
Posted in:
Baseball
MLB
- The Royals will wear these amazing powder blues on Opening Day. Here’s hoping that’s not the only time we get to see them this season! (From multiple readers)
- Here’s a really amazing aerial shot of Yankee Stadium from 1923. It’s hard to imagine the Bronx having that much open space! (From @BSmile)
- Rangers P Andrew Heaney was wearing his belt upside-down during yesterday’s Cactus League game. (From John Giesler)
- Padres SS/OF Fernando Tatís Jr. will wear this pink glove on City Connect Fridays for San Diego to honor his mother. (From Michael Ortman)
- The Rays’ website URL ads on the backstop are going to need a refresh before Opening Day. (From Jordan Oster)
- English cricketer Harry Brook has been named an official MLB Europe ambassador and will sport the MLB logo on his bat this season. He made an appearance at Cardinals camp yesterday with the bat. (From R. Scott Rogers)
Minors
- The Kannapolis Cannon Ballers, Single-A affiliates of the White Sox, will wear these pig-inspired uniforms from May 5-7 to celebrate a local pork barbecue festival.
Softball
- Florida State will unveil a new uni combo today. (From @VictoryCB)
More
- New logos and unis for the Nashua Silver Knights of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, a wood-bat league in New England. (From Steve Tilders)
Football
NFL
- During a press conference yesterday, Jets coach Robert Saleh wore a hoodie with “AGNB” — “All Gas No Brakes” — in the style of the team logo. (From @stickyjuan_)
- Various personalities around the NFL Combine were asked which team has the league’s best uniform. (From Chris Dougherty)
College
- It appears that Notre Dame is now selling ad space on their coaches’ titles. (From Brian Holmsted)
Hockey
NHL
- The Flames will wear these warm-up sweaters tomorrow to celebrate Indigenous heritage. (From Wade Heidt)
- New Penguins FW Mikael Granlund has been issued No. 64, becoming the first Penguin in team history to wear that number. (From L.J. Sparvero)
Minors/Juniors
- New playoff logo for the Western Hockey League. Old one here. (From Wade Heidt)
Soccer
USA
- EA Sports will add the NWSL to FIFA 23 this month. (Thanks, Jamie)
- Also from Jamie, new second shirt for USL League One’s Richmond Kickers.
- The USL appears to have reduced the size of its league sleeve patch.
International
- Ireland: The new kits for the Irish national teams were revealed earlier today. (Thanks, Jamie)
Auto Racing
- Here are the liveries for this weekend’s IndyCar race in St. Petersburg. (From Tim Dunn)
Comments (35)
English women’s cricketer Issy Wong is also an MLB “ambassador” and will display the MLB logo on her bat, but her league commitment in India doesn’t permit her to come to the US during Spring Training. Brook is more known for his batting, and Wong for her bowling (pitching).
Brook did just take his first wicket in the second NZ Test though. Didn’t look terrible at all. But yeah, his batting stats are absolutely insane.
Totally! (As an aside, that was the very first test match I’ve ever watched pretty much start to finish and holy cow, I’m wondering if I should even bother watching any more.) Just noting that in addition to having a men’s and women’s English cricket “ambassador,” MLB is also emphasizing the pitching/bowling vs hitting/batting duality of both games.
That Test was amazing. I love when they play in NZ because it’s on in the evening in the U.S. I’m lucky as I work from home most of the time so in the summer I can watch the whole English season, both the national side and County cricket.
Those Royals throwbacks are AWESOME!!!
I agree, they need to be worn more often than just Opening Day.
If they were properly tailored, they’d look even better. That sloppy, baggy look has got to go. God, I hate pajama bottoms.
That Irish soccer jersey is not actually the new national team jersey. It’s just Irish sportswear company O’Neil’s cashing in on a bit of nostalgia with their own fauxback design, but it’s not in the least bit official. link
Wow, that’s stupid. Sorry about that (since my name’s on it now). I was literally about to check the FAI Twitter to make sure, but couldn’t immediately find it then got distracted and figured there was no need.
Also, the Notre Dame item isn’t really an ad as I understand it, it’s just another opportunity for rich donors to put their name on something. Virginia has something similar for the football and MBB head coaching positions.
It’s an endowed position. The donor(s) gets their name(s) on the position and donate a sum, of which the annual interest earned from it pays the position-holder’s salary.
I think there’s an element of O’Neills being deliberately vague to cash in on the speculation with the kit supplier situation at the moment. For example, calling it the “The Ireland Premier Jersey” (capitalised for no practical reason) seems to be an attempt to make it sound as official as possible without getting sued (even though it’s a completely meaningless phrase). The fact the blurb pretty closely resembles the type of narrative marketing shite the official releases usually come with similarly seems to be intentionally blurring the lines. To top it off, it’s the kind of overly twee design, overburdened with nostalgia, that only works as a piece of viral marketing anyway.
Personally, I’d take Ireland’s Rugby Kit before their soccer kit. But that’s because Rugby is more awesome than soccer!
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It appears that Norte Dame didn’t just start doing that.
They started back in September of 2019.
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As a huge IndyCar buff, I’m so excited to see so many entries every week this year. Lots of good looking liveries too, but it’s gonna be reaaaaal hard to tell Ilott and Canapino apart in real time lol
I was thinking the same thing. Only difference is the rear spoiler…one is green over black. The other is black over green. And Canapino’s white 78 on a green background doesn’t show up very well…
I do major gift fundraising for a University, so the Notre Dame thing doesn’t strike me as odd. We can quibble about whether or not its an ad or something else, but what Notre Dame is doing is not out of the ordinary in university fundraising, and especially athletics. Families will create an endowment which spins off a certain amount per year to pay that coach. It likely doesn’t cover the whole salary, but it’s tied to that position, hence the name. In normal parlance, you wouldn’t say that he’s the Mohr Family QB Coach at Notre Dame, you would just call him the QB coach. But for donor stewardship purposes, this graphic makes all the sense in the world to me. And honestly, to go back to the “ad” part, I think this is pretty inoffensive were it to be compared to something hypothetical like “Steve Sarkesian, University of Texas Head Football Coach Presented By HyVee.”
Universities use the same language with endowed professorships. While awkward and pretentious, I wouldn’t call it an ad, since the name reflects the donor.
At my university we have some faculty chairs that are endowed by industry donations. That does feel like it’s getting awfully close to an advertisement. But then, there’s also a wall of industry partners in the lobby of the building…
We also have some endowed coaching positions, but I don’t care what the name is if it means less coaching salary coming out of our operations budget.
Awkward and pretentious indeed. It’s definitely an ad for someone’s ego, in that an entity gave money to an organization, the organization used that money to pay someone in the organization, and in return the organization agrees to promote that entity and their donation by attaching it to something so that the entity’s name is mentioned amongst or in front of people who may be interested or impressed. Every step along the way offers opportunity to blur that like but it is what it is.
Now it’s certainly not tantamount to the replay review brought to you by Toyota, unless they actually start referring to these people by these sponsored names during the games or press conferences, or mandating these people to introduce themselves by mentioning their sponsor.
It’s pretty innocuous, as it currently exists.
Now, if only the Royals will all wear stirrups and sanis with those sweet powder blues.
Hopefully for FSU softball, they either bring back the pinstripes or bring in a N7 turquoise uniform.
Are there other examples of one sport buying ads to promote its self in an other sport? I know Chelsea fc and Sauber f1 team had a mutual agreement where eachother’s branding appeared at events, but I assume there are other examples too
I don’t know if there was any branding for it per se, a quick search brought no results… but last year the NFL and NHL planned their Pro Bowl / ASG weekend somewhat together.
They were both acknowledging the other event (both in Vegas) on their respective broadcasts and it was made sure the different events were not overlapping.
I don’t see it being official, maybe just a soft partnership, which makes sense, where both leagues simply are aware of the existence of the other.
The Brewers have advertised on the Milwaukee Admirals’ jerseys for many years (I believe the two teams share ownership):
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Also, several pro golfers are paid to wear MLB or NFL apparel.
Does that count…?
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Also, when Youppi! celebrated his 40th birthday, a few colleagues showed up, including a former rival from his baseball days (Awesome!!!) :
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Harold Ballard owned the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (CFL) and had their logo at centre ice at Maple Leaf Gardens
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A fan joined in on the “fun”
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For context, Harry Brook is absolutely incredible. He’s kind of come out of nowhere, and looks like he could become an all time great cricketer.
Having played both cricket and baseball, and following both, I’m kind of surprised more marginal baseball players, especially if fielding was their downfall, don’t take to T20 cricket. I find batting in cricket much, much easier and the T20 (ultra-short) version has a batting strategy much more similar to baseball.
I personally prefer First Class/Test cricket which is the original and much longer format, but their is money to be made in T20 and a much more similar skillset offensively to baseball.
Ever since I discovered T20 cricket, I cannot understand why it is not played in the US with the surplus of baseball talent available between the North American mainland and the Caribbean. Most matches are done in 2.5-3 hours and, with limited overs, every ball means something. Hopefully Major League Cricket will do well and grow the sport here.
One reason T20 is not a bigger thing drawing from the US’s vast reserves of skilled young athletes already well trained in baseball/softball is that USA Cricket deliberately eschews exactly that as a basis for growing the game in the US. USA Cricket chooses as a matter of policy to prefer players who’ve been committed to cricket as long as possible, and preferably players with dual-national eligibility. Not young adults brought up with other sports who can’t quite cut it at the NCAA D-1 level in base/softball. Our U-19 men and women’s teams could be world-beaters if USA Cricket would adopt the attitude of looking for the best available athletes and training them in cricket, rather than looking for the best available cricketers and training them in athleticism they clearly don’t have.
In terms of raw numbers, there are about 200,000 registered cricket players in the US, including men and women of all ages. Whereas the US has about 15,000,000 youth baseball players, and about 8,000,000 youth softball players. So for every 1 cricketer in the US, there are at least 115 base/softball players. The best of the bottom quartile of young base/softball players are statistically bound to be better athletes than all but a handful of the best young cricket players.
I don’t love T20, but I really hate the franchise leagues. They’re ruining cricket. I hate hate HATE the IPL and The Hundred especially.
I feel like white ball and red ball cricket need to do what rugby did. Union & League are less different than First Class from T20 and the two rugbys are considered different sports. First Class and T20 really should be seen in the same light.
I agree, baseball players who can hit and hit for power would kill it in T20. Probably not so much red ball because it’s a different goal. Almost like, in white ball, the batting team is on offense (like baseball) but in red ball, the batting team is in a way on defense. Certainly a more defensive approach to batting.
ODI/List A is a bit redundant, if it weren’t for the World Cup it’d be dead.
My sister-in-law, a certified barbecue competition judge, needs one of those Kannapolis caps for her judging duties.
That pig looks way too happy considering he may soon end up as dinner. Or maybe he’s a cannibal? Either way it’s a cute hat and I “need” it.
Too bad they didn’t use the Q for the cap.
Initially I was not pleased that Kannapolis moved away from the Earnhardt branding, but I’ve come to like those look.
I wore stirrups one year playing little league football. Very uncomfortable. Dont see the nostalgia in it.
I never thought I’d see George Brett in pajama pants but here we are.
Quasi uni-related
In the NHL, two brothers, Nick and Brett Ritchie, were traded for one another today. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before. Have you?
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Anyway, funny to think they technically could simply swap jerseys, although there’s no way that happens. They may use each other’s locker though, who knows.