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Now the MLB is Threatening Ugly Jerseys to Match the Ugly Fourth of July Hats

Dan Fuller - June 11, 2015

My God! It's full of stars! (from MLBShop.com)

My God! It’s full of stars!
(from MLBShop.com)

Why “threatening” you ask? Because an almost identical July Fourth design showed up last year around this time, June 11, 2014, to be exact.. The difference? Last year’s was a “replica” jersey (in quotes because the official dilineation is “replica” for retail only, “authentic” for “on-field and retail), and this year’s is categorized in the on-field category. They have the correct on-field style tagging (bottom-right), and they’ve devoted copy explicitly saying these will be worn on-field. And speaking of explicit, look at these things. Yikes. It looks like a 6 year old’s Trapper Keeper. All it’s missing is the Lisa Frank signature.

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The 2015 Phillies Fourth of July Hat is Here, and It’s Something

Dan Fuller - June 11, 2015

from lids.com

from lids.com

After years of Stars and Stripes hats, then camouflage hats, then 2013 introducing separate hats for Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, we arrive at something a little different for once. It seemed like MLB was running out of spots on their baseball hat template to swap in red, white, blue, or camouflage panels, so the Fourth of July brings an all-new design with what looks to be the first appearance of dye sublimated printing (think the pattern on the Seahawks numbers) on MLB hats.

Interestingly, the design for the Fourth of July hats leaked a month ago on uni-watch.com, but only the Dodgers version. A few other teams had trickled out in the mean time, but the Phillies’ design finally showed up this week. The uni-watch.com write-up mentions batting practice hats for the Fourth of July as well, but the Phillies’ is nowhere to be found as of today.

At this point (and for the last few years), spending any time saying that they’re ugly is a waste of time (note: this has never stopped me from spending that time), but these are uniquely ugly. Good or bad, say what you want about the previous designs (see below), but these are the first that don’t look like on-field MLB hats.  That dye sub (industry lingo!) pattern moves it from “ugly but has a place on-field” to “random Phillies hat on Amazon that your six year old nephew would love.” (My six year old nephew likes the Star Wars Clone Wars TV show more than the original trilogy. He has awful taste. And he’d love that hat.) And even though camouflage on the hats was a big change in 2012, the concept of camouflage on a baseball uniform wasn’t a new one; the Padres had been wearing camouflage with varying frequency since 1996(!), so it was far from an all-new term in the MLB uniform design language. (that Padres picture is from Delaware County’s own William Henderson’s Game Worn Guide to MLB Jerseys which just had the release of its 7th edition. If you’re at all interested in this stuff, it’s a must-have.) Continue Reading

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The Phillies 2015 Memorial Day Hats and Jerseys are Here

Dan Fuller - May 8, 2015

images from MLBShop.com and Lids.com

images from MLBShop.com and Lids.com

Each year, I have less and less to say about these. They’re here to stay, and each year, it seems like “What’s left for the camouflage treatment?” This year, it’s the brim (last year was the crown of the hat). Next year: the button (“squatchee”) on top? And because this is the internet, I’m not done complaining. In previous years, a neat detail of these hats was stitching the special flag or camouflage pattern in the batterman logo. They’re just using the normal team colors this year. Boring.

batter_comparison_rev1

Another interesting detail is on the jerseys; last year, the “camo’d” jersey was the pinstriped home version. 2013 and this year are the grey aways. Oddly, the 2013 used white stroke around the “Phillies” wordmark, like the normal away jerseys. The 2015 uses red stroke. I’d hate to think that this is solely to make them different than the 2013s, and this is a marketing exercise. I’d certainly hate to think that. And, it’s a visual mess because it doesn’t offset the camouflage from the grey the way the white does.

it doesn't get any better with time

they don’t get any better with time

With all these variations of hats, we now have a continuum of “bad.”  2008, 2009, 2011 get passes as they basically look like regular hats drenched in sweet, sweet, freedom (red’s already a team color, navy is close enough to blue, also a team color). 2010: yuck. Among the camouflage options, 2013 Memorial Day has ended up looking the best, as it’s fully committed to the look. The 2015 gets the slight nod (hats, get it? ugh) over the 2014 due to the marginally subtler application of the camouflage concept. 2012 is so subtle that it just looks like  a dirty “P.” Wrapping up the flag designs, 2013 gets points for originality, and 2014 is just a mess.

Even these are a sad reminder of good years past and ever distant. (click to enlarge)

h/t: uni-watch

h/t: @fittedelphia for reminding me about the pre-2008 design last year.

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Phillies 4th of July Stars and Stripes Hats Unveiled

Dan Fuller - June 2, 2013

Staying true to their threat promise that there would be three different “Stars and Stripes” hats this year, the second iteration of the program was unveiled by New Era and the MLB today. I would expect a unique jersey will be paired with it, and purely guessing, I expect they will fill the Phillies lettering with the blue field of stars from the inside of the “P.”

Across the league, it’s the same design with either a blue or red brim and a white or grey crown depending on whether they’re home or away. They look like the “ice cream man” hats from the 2010 Stars and Stripes program.

They’re ugly, but I have to give them credit for being uniquely ugly compared to the Memorial Day camouflage hats. On the bright side, at least red is one of the Phillies colors, so it’s not like the A’s who will be mixing red with their green and yellow color scheme.

For some trivia, the White Sox used a blue fill with stars pattern in their logo in 1917 for the World Series, so this is not the first time it’s been done. (and look at the flag patches…maybe related to World War I?) A closer look at the pattern here from the Hall of Fame .

See all the teams’ hats at New Era’s Facebook page.

h/t to Uni-Watch’s Twitter feed today

The Reading Fightin Phils Re-Branding is a Beautiful Mess

Dan Fuller - November 20, 2012

Screen Shot 2012-11-20 at 12.24.24 PM

To be clear, when George W. Bush talked about how "terrorists hate our freedom," he was talking about apple pie, Coca-Cola, and Minor League Baseball. He was talking about giving a cartoon ostrich a bad attitude and making it a team's logo. He was talking about using an "F" with fists as an alternate logo. He was talking about a tough-looking hotdog as another alternate logo. And he was talking about the concept of having two completely unrelated alternate logos.

Terrorists would hate the new Reading Fightin Phils uniforms, and that's why they're awfully amazing (and amazingly awful).

 

What's Amazing

The standard "Home" uniform and everything about Bunbino (including his name and bad attitude), and the anthropomorphized "F" who looks like he's had a few too many and he's ready to mess your world up are great. The feathering of the letters and logos to keep the ostrich theme going is a nice touch. The whole thing, even the components I don't like, is "fun." Sure, it has the slight odor of "branding exercise," but I think families (read: kids) will love this stuff until they need to replace some of it in a few years when the gimmick wears off. Yes, I realize "gimmick" is probably the most dismissive term I could use, but Minor League Baseball's marketing currency is gimmicks.

Home_1

The other "Fightins" uniform:

Fightin_alt_2

What's Awful

The fact that nothing is integrated between the two "Fightins" designs and the two "Baseballtown" designs doesn't help things. Essentially, the away uniforms are just a hodgepodge of branding, as if Brandiose, the marketing firm paid to realize this re-design was given a "things unique to the Reading Phillies" bulleted list, and simply wrote "OK" next to each item. The away uniforms saying "Baseballtown" instead of "Reading," because it apparently "resonates" (more on this later) with fans in other cities when Reading is the visiting team, is ridiculous (in a bad way). The "our color scheme is every color" color scheme is the worst kind of compromise. Why isn't the "Fightins" solid blue jersey navy instead of "Iris Blue?" Implying there's anything "classic" about either of the "Baseballtown" jerseys is painful; they're just a mess of kitchen sink uniform design, which, of course, might be not unreasonable for a minor league team.

Away_1

Black_alt_1

Ostrich

You. I don't like you.

The Ostrich. If there had been some historical moment where there was an ill-advised and poorly planned petting zoo at a pre-game event in Reading and something ostrich-related happened (mass bitings, the infield being torn apart in a turf war between two competing ostrich gangs, a first baseman getting kicked in the head, etc.), sure, play into that history once enough years have passed, and it's "funny" instead of "civic embarassment." Tying the semi-primary logo to the admittedly ridiculous (in a good way) crazy peanut vendor is a stretch. I actually liked the concept of the logo/mascot more before I read about its inspiration. I hate those damn birds. (I prefer my flightless birds cute and cuddly, thank you very much.)

[If the Reading Phillies ever institute an ostrich race as between-innings entertainment, consider me to be the first volunteer.]

 

What Straddles the Line?

The name. I need to be fair here; I was concerned that anything other than "Phillies" would be completely absurd and simply wrong. "Fightin Phils" is about as good as it could possible be… if it's considered necessary to make a change. I don't love that the official name is two abbreviations, and teams with long names, such as the Diamondbacks, have simply abbreviated the name on jerseys to address the obvious spacing concerns, but, oh well. Their press release establishes that the team will be known as "The Fightins," though the actual success of the name will be determined by whether fans take it up or just continue calling them the "Phillies." The fact that they claimed the re-branding would help the people who apparently think they're in Philadelphia when they pull up to a 9,000 seat stadium… in Reading… is disingenuous to the point of being insulting to anyone in earshot.

Much more, including general thoughts about their re-branding and a Press Release Takedown (PRT? Kyle, can you make this a recurring thing?) [editor's note: done], after the jump.

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Major League Baseball Continues to be Run by a Bunch of Greedy, Out of Touch Jackasses

Kyle Scott - September 11, 2011

Mets_tribute

Photo via this Twitter account

Unbelievable. Just when you thought Major League Baseball couldn’t get any more ridiculous, we find out that the Mets were denied their request to wear NYPD and FDNY hats for Sunday night's game, even though they did something similar on September 21st, 2001. That day, they were also told by MLB not to wear the caps, but they did it anyway.

Today, they were strong-armed by the league: [NY Times]

“I think it’d be a nice gesture,” said Josh Thole, the Mets’ player representative. “What are they going to do, fine us? I don’t know.”

 

Minutes later, Thole walked back to reporters and said it was a no-go, MLB was pretty adamant about their ruling.

Ah yes, the ruling. Former Yankees manager and current MLB VP of Baseball Operations explained it to reporters: [Huffington Post]

"Certainly it's not a lack of respect," Torre said. "We just felt all the major leagues are honoring the same way with the American flag on the uniform and the cap. This is a unanimity thing."

 

Torre told reporters that he used his experience from the 2001 World Series to establish a precedent. That year, his players wore the hats during batting practice (like the Mets did tonight), but donned their regular hats during the games. It’s a unamimity and precedent setting thing, he said.

There are a few problems with that.

Torre was talking about the precedent set during the World Series. As much of a show of support it would have been to wear the caps during the World Series, it’s reasonable to expect a team to wear their full uniform during the league’s championship- merchandise sales, branding, recognition, etc. are all valid concerns since Major League Baseball is a business. But applying that precedent to the 10th anniversary of the tragedy for a meaningless game between two teams who have nothing – other than to provide a gathering location for the thousands most closely affected by the tragedy – to play for? Well, that’s ridiculous.

Few would argue the 10th anniversary of 9/11 sets a precedent… for anything. Obviously, a player can’t (and shouldn’t) wear hats supporting his favorite cause on just any given night, but wearing supportive hats on 9/11, in New York? Different story. There is not another event that elicits reflexive, near-unanimous emotions like 9/11 does. It’s a very special circumstance. The “they did it for 9/11” argument would work for almost nothing.

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Philadelphia Eagles Shop

Kyle Scott - September 16, 2010

Eagles_logo

Right now you can save 15% off orders (including jerseys) by entering code UNWBTF15 at checkout! Get the replica 1960 throwback jersey for reg. $100, for only $85!

Philadelphia Eagles Authentic Jerseys

Philadelphia Eagles 1960 Throwback Jerseys

Flyers Eastern Conference Champs Gear

Kyle Scott - May 25, 2010

Carter_richards_tropy

Get 10% off Flyers Eastern Conference Champs Hats and Tees here.

Typically, locker room hats and t-shirts are cool because we see the players wearing them, but they usually lack a certain element of design.  The ones the Flyers were wearing last night were actually nice. The black hats match the Flyers color scheme, and the t-shirts are simple and clean looking.

And as always, we found you a code to save some dough on them.

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