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Come on In, Make Yourself at Home

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For a couple of years now, webmaster John Ekdahl has been telling me — and I’ve been telling some of you — that we’re going to give the site a major design overhaul. Big changes, a completely different look, a serious makeover.

This is not that redesign.

It is, however, a good first step and, we hope, a major upgrade in the site’s security, functionality, and public face. We still need to tinker with a few things, but overall we think we’re in pretty good shape. Here are some highlights:

• As many of you are aware, we’ve had trouble over the past 10 days or so with viruses, malware, and the like. It turns out that it wasn’t just us — this same problem affected scores of sites that use WordPress (our blogging software) and are hosted by Rackspace (our web host provider). John has taken the appropriate steps to remove this problem, plus he’s also upgraded the site’s architecture in all sorts of ways that I don’t understand but that he assures me should improve our security.

• The new logo you see at the top of the page was designed by Scott Turner over a year ago (I bet he’ll be surprised to see it there today). It’s sort of been creeping into some of our ancillary designs, like the Uni Watch Twitter page, and I’m really happy to finally have it here on the home page. I love the magnifying glass theme, which sums up Uni Watch so perfectly. Meanwhile, an echo of the old stirrup logo can be found hanging at the beginning of each new entry (that was Ek’s idea).

• Another thing about the new logo: It’s clickable. So if you’re on any other page within the site and want to get back to the home page, you can simply click on the header logo. Of course, you could also click on the “Home” tab, which leads us to”¦

• We finally have normal-sized (and normally positioned) navigation tabs. You’ll see we’ve added a tab for our ongoing research projects, like Tim Brulia’s “White at Home in the NFL” listing.

• The “Categories” listing, which used to take up, like, a mile of space in the right-hand rail, is now a housed in a pop-up menu. Much better.

• Just below that, you’ll see that the site’s archives are also accessible in a pop-up menu.

• The “Links” listing (or what other sites call a blogroll, but I’ve never liked that term) is now called “Uni Watch Recommends.” Unfortunately, we can’t put it in a pop-up menu, so for now it’s just one huge collapsible list. But we’ll try to organize it into several sublists — baseball, football, etc. — soon.

• The center text column is now about 10% wider than it was before. John chose to do this because so many people have bigger, wider monitors now. It does mean that some of the site’s previous entries may look a little funny (a photo that used to fill the entire width of the text column will no longer do so, for example), but I’m not going to worry about that for now.

•  You know how annoying it gets when you get a huge, nested thread of quoted comments? The new commenting functionality should help avoid that, because now you can reply to a specific comment within a thread. In other words, you don’t have to reply to the entire thread — just to the most recent comment in that thread. Or at least that’s the idea. I’m eager to see how that works.

Those are the biggies. Go ahead and poke around, get used to the new set-up, etc. I’m sure there will be some initial hiccups, plus there may be some little things we’ve overlooked, so if you spot a technical or functional problem with the new design, please tell me, and thanks in advance for your patience with any glitches that crop up. And if anyone is still getting virus warnings, definitely tell me, and please send along a screen shot of the warning message while you’re at it.

Okay, then — onward, upward, and all that.

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Mr. Met Paternity Update: Got a note on Tuesday evening from a kid from the Mets’ PR office, proudly telling me that he’d solved the mystery of Mr. Met’s creator. After consulting with an old AP beat writer, he said, he’d determined that Mr. Met’s creator was the sports cartoonist Willard Mullin, who illustrated most of the Mets’ early yearbook covers. Ta-da!

But as I immediately pointed out to him, Mullin always signed his work, and his style was nothing like the style of Mr. Met. After checking with a few other sources, the PR guy said, “It appears my Mets historians agree with you. Back to square one.” So if not for my own familiarity with the subject, the Mets PR office would now be telling the world the wrong story about Mr. Met’s origins. Great job, guys, just great.

Meanwhile, that same night I got a note from reader Steven Presser, who’d been trying to find the answer by looking through his large collection of rare Mets publications:

In 1965, the Mets produced a coloring book, which appears to have been illustrated by whoever created the Mets mascot. [I disagree — these look like they’re patterned after the original style but not by the original artist. — PL] I was sure that this coloring book would have credited the illustrator, but no credits were given anywhere.

Another publication I have is a Mets Sing-Along book published in 1967. While this book is illustrated throughout, the drawings appear to be by someone other than Mr. Met’s originator (since when does Mr. Met have nostrils?). Of course, these pics are credited, to someone named Doc Calhoun.

So no answers yet, but at least we’ve gotten to see some cool old publications.

Uni Watch News Ticker: Question: When the Maple Leafs unveiled their new jerseys the other day, at least one person mentioned in the comments that they had a new NOB font. That would be a major development — their recent NOB font has been awful — but I haven’t seen any rear-view photos of the new design. If anyone has access to such images, please fill me in. ”¦ Johan Santana was using a baseball-patterned bowling ball at a charity bowling event the other day. ”¦ The Orioles have added retired numbers to the left field upper deck. “They’re a welcome addition, as the only place retired numbers had previously been acknowledged was in the plaza outside the warehouse with the Babe Ruth statue,” says Ken Levin. ”¦ Here’s a brutally negative assessment of the Warriors’ new logo. ”¦ William Yurasko notes that the cover photo on the new Henry Aaron book shows Aaron wearing a cap with a logo patch, not an embroidered logo. ”¦ Not sure if this is a Photoshop job or what, but Warren Humphrey sent along this odd shot of an old Hawks/Sixers game with one player wearing some sort of helmet. Anyone know more? ”¦ Rob Ullman — who I’m finally gonna get to meet in early July, after digging his work for several years now — has done his first soccer pin-up illo. ”¦ I’ve noted several times that Victor Martinez uses a first baseman’s mitt when catching Tim Wakefield’s knuckler. Here’s an article about that, along with a companion piece about R.A. Dickey’s catcher’s mitts. ”¦ Here’s a decent piece about Bethanie Mattek-Sands and her on-court look. ”¦ A pair of European soccer fans are trying to make the world’s biggest soccer shirt (with thanks to David Pealing). ”¦ New logo for Italy’s Serie A soccer league (with thanks to Jeremy Brahm). ”¦ Nearly 10 minutes’ worth of sensational deadball-era video video footage available here (awesome find by Marc Swanson). ”¦ Guess who collects throwback jerseys? Rex Ryan. ”¦ Someone on the Chris Creamer site spotted this image on a sneaker site — could that be the 2011 NBA All-Star uni? As several other folks pointed out, it matches the font from the logo, which had already been released. ”¦ Remember that Sharks anniversary patch we got a glimpse of a while back? Here’s a much better version. According to this article (which credit’s the patch’s designer — wish more teams would do that), the patch will be worn “on the left sleeve underneath the player’s number and above the stripe.” That led someone on the Chris Creamer board to do this mock-up, which looks awfully busy, no? Has there ever been an NHL patch positioned in that spot? Meanwhile, you can see the rest of the team’s anniversary branding here. Another Chris Creamer participant says the second one from the right will be the center-ice logo next season. ”¦ Andy Malonis and I bouth want to know what’s up with those fuzzy pants John Wooden was wearing in that SI cover photo? ”¦ Kudos to Josh Neisler‘s sister, who made him a birthday cake based on a Mark Price Cavs jersey. ”¦ Also from Josh: “Check out this nifty Chelsea FC classic kit archive. Conveniently, you just float over each kit and a larger image appears.” ”¦ Terence Kearns is taking suggestions for how he should customize a Mets jersey. ”¦ Two weeks ago I noted that Edwin Rosario was wearing an undershirt with the MLB logo on the front neckline. Now Eric Swartzwelder has spotted Jamie Moyer wearing the same thing. I’m fairly certain these guys are not wearing their undershirts backwards. Instead, this marks the return of an undershirt design that several players wore last year, including Mark Teixeira. ”¦ Back in the 1950s, SI used little action figures — or “manikins,” as they called them — to help preview upcoming games. Larry Bodnovich has gathered a bunch of these images into this gallery. ”¦ The good news: The Grafton Lake Sox, a Massachusetts summer-league team for players 16 to 19 years old, have an awesome sock design. The bad news: Those are bogus two-in-ones, not real stirrups (with thanks to the team’s GM, Joe Kuras). ”¦ Mariners infielder Jack Wilson, who recently had a rehab stint with the Tacoma Rainiers, was still wearing a Rainiers logo on his batting helmet when he rejoined the big club on Tuesday (good spot by Adam Lawrence). ”¦ Everyone’s saying John Axford looks like Rollie Fingers, although I suspect they’d look nothing like each other if you shaved off both their ’staches. ”¦ Ever wonder what the grooves on a record would look like under an electron microscope? Me neither, but it’s pretty damn amazing (thanks, Kirsten). ”¦ Latest player to make the case for abolishing button-front jerseys lose a grounder in his jersey: Brooks Conrad (video capture courtesy of Matthew Robins). ”¦ Brilliant catch by Grant Goldman, who noticed that new Yanks call-up Colin Curtis has been wearing a road jersey with a blue/white/red MLB logo, instead of the blue/white/silver design being used this year. And since he’s wearing No. 27, that means they gave him one of Joe Girardi’s jerseys from last year. ”¦ Months ago I ran this photo of the Reds’ experimental “air-conditioned” cap. Now it looks like one of them is up for auction (good find by Bruce Menard). ”¦ Decent video survey of Islanders jersey history here. And if you look closely, you’ll see what appears to be their new road jersey. ”¦ Here’s an analysis of which soccer kit colors win most often. ”¦ Ebbets Field Flannels is looking for investors. ”¦ Two more from Grant Goldman, who noticed that the laundry tags on Dontrelle Willis’s socks were showing last night and that Blaine Boyer was wearing a camo under-undershirt.

 
  
 
Comments (148)

    Glad to see everything back up and running, and I love the new look and banner logo!

    Now, can someone PLEASE explain to me what the purpose is served by wearing a black vest with a black undershirt? (Colorado Rockies, I’m looking at YOU!)

    I second this guess. I had sweats in college that the insides looks exactly like this. Maybe they had a logo or something on them that the photog didn’t want in the shot and had Coach turn them inside out.

    I’ll third this. My high school basketball coach would wear jogging pants inside out, so they looked like toweling pants. He used to claim it was more comfortable. Then again, he was the same guy who thought we’d look good in 2-tone uniforms (red/white jerseys, black shorts).

    I have a full page color portrait photo of Aaron from SPORT magazine (in my files at home) wearing one of those patch logo hats. Those things were extremely common for teams in spring training in the mid- to late-’50s.
    link

    —Ricko

    If UniWatch was judging its own changes:

    “Different but not too different. A few things are made bolder, and although the colors are the same, changing the main logo from arched to straight is a bit jarring. The magnifying glass-7 logo is OK, but I was glad to see the old stirrup used as a secondary logo.”

    Re: the VAL axing, I would have written:
    The most puzzling change is the departure from the long-time signature vertically arched wordmark. In its place is a lame mixed-size all-caps wordmark. Woof!

    It’s funny – I just figured out that it was a hanging stirrup yesterday, even though I’ve been reading since Day 1. I always thought that it was a weirdly drawn basketball jersey.

    The masthead change is a bit jarring, but the site looks great!

    Agreed. I was angry about the masthead change until I saw the hanging stirrup was incorporated into the headings. I still have some questions though… Why 7? Why not Just magnify one of the letters to reveal chain-stitching. If the 7 has some significance I am unaware of then I fully support the masthead, but if its just arbitrary and only in use because 7 is a nice number, I cannot support that. I think the UniWatch community would agree that it is all in the details. If there is a story behind the 7 then that makes the masthead even more expressive of what UniWatch is all about.

    The best upgrade has to be the flannel texture applied to the green borders on the sides of the page. A subtle detail I missed initially, but the kind of wonderful detail that can make a good uniform (or webpage in this case) great.

    I happen to be a notorious photo-shopper, but the Hawks vs. Sixers hockey helmet image is original and untouched. I would like to know the history. Anyone with an Atlanta newspaper archive account could help!

    Warren Humphrey

    Nice upgrade. Really digging this. Nice job to all.

    Also, I’m weirded out that that the NBA All-Star jerseys will apparently say “THE EAST” and probably “THE WEST.” I do like those, tho… slightly less garish than past All-Star uniforms.

    Caught a bit of Rays-Padres on my lunch break. Some Rays (Longoria, Upton, others) are wearing a new stirrup design. Just arrived for today’s game. Navy w/ columbia and white stripes. Announcers made a big deal about it. Looks pretty sharp.

    Sorry to keep gushing, but I absolutely LOVE the new reply system, which is used for a couple other blogs I read. No more quote-tag messiness! No more scrolling up to figure out what people are replying to because they messed up their quoting! Self-contained arguments! Woohoo!

    I thought this would be a good improvement, but after a little time, I’m not so sure. The good part is one can see what people are replying to because the replies are nested together. But on the other hand, new replies to previous topics don’t appear at the bottom, so one would have to keep revisiting the entire list of comments to see what is new. That problem wouldn’t exist if you just read them at night, but those who pop in throughout the day will have to hunt for the new stuff within all the previously read stuff. No more jumping to a comment number/time and picking up where you left off earlier in the day.

    I like where this is going! The new banner is giving my eyes a fit with the magnifying glass, but other than that, it’s awesome!

    Man, I wish I had some extra cash to invest in Ebbets!

    Yes, I agree… can’t wait for my very own commission from Rob that is currently in the works!

    On that page about the Warriors’ new logo. I’m 99 44/100% sure they’ve got the original Phila Warriors’ jersey all wrong. Royal Blue and Gold were always Phila’s colors with the Red being used as a trim or accent color. That looks like a late-’60s Sixers jersey. I wish these yahoo writers would check out their facts a little better before writing or showing something that most people will consider to be gospel.

    Were these changes good or stupid?

    I’d say… all good! The commenting system seems much more fluid and stable, which is nice. No more spam-detection thing for me to forget about before hitting “submit!” I like the wider posts and the little magnifying glass logo (dare I say, it’s cute).

    As for a little substance – that Deadball Era footage linked in the ticker is really cool, but you might want to note that it’s all from Ken Burns’ Baseball.

    Like the new look here, especially the touch with the stirrup beginning each post. Very well done.

    For those who want that sneak peak at the Islanders possible new road jersey without sifting through the video, at the bottom of this post there’s a screen shot.

    link

    This game won’t make the 5+1 list, but this proud Slovak will give it an honorable mention:
    link

    On to the second round! Arrivederci Azzuri!

    Thumbs up on the new design all around. One point I’ve made before, and I’ll bring up again since you’re in re-design mode.

    It would be nice if you could separate the ticker items with something bolder than an ellipsis. Maybe a big dot or square?

    The ticker would be so much easier to read- especially considering most people probably skim over the items they’re not interested in.

    I’m somewhat stubborn about sticking with the dot-dot-dot format, as a throwback to the old days of agate type and such. Dot-dot-dot journalism has a proud history, and I like honoring it.

    But I hear you. Maybe one day soon. Not today, though.

    That’s cool, never thought of it as tradition. And that fits the site.

    Still, I do think something bigger would be more readable.

    Very minor point, the new look is absolutely an upgrade.

    Some folks are already asking me about what happened to the comment numbers. I agree, it would be nice to retain them, but the new software doesn’t appear to like them. We’re working on it — I do want the comments to be numbered if at all possible.

    But if it isn’t possible, you can still keep track of where you left off in the comments by noting the time stamp.

    Ooh, snazzy.

    I like what I’m seeing so far. Now it’s time to read the actual post.

    Nice to see the new paint on the walls here! I look forward to checking everything out. I miss the arched name/logo though. It looked like it was an actual piece of a uniform, but only the 7 on the new one looks like that. Minor complaint, but we are obsessed!

    WHY are you asking the METS about their “MR. MET” History? WHY would you ask the METS about ANYTHING related to their History? The METS probably know MORE about Walter O’Malley, Walter Alston and Walter Brennan than they do about THE METS!!!!

    Please. I hate the Wilpons, but the notion that they’re more interested in the Dodgers than the Mets is silly. I never had any issue with the Jackie Robinson Rotunda — it’s a tribute to an important part of New York (and American) history. What, you think the Wilpons are rooting for the Dodgers when the Mets go to L.A.? This type of nonsense detracts from the more legitimate complaints about the Wilpons.

    Now, their PR and marketing offices have been scandalously clueless for years, and their inability to i.d. Mr. Met’s designer speaks to that. Then again, many teams are clueless about their own design history — sad but true.

    But please, give up on the “Fred Wilpon has a boner for the Dodgers” crap — it just drags down the discussion.

    Anybody know where I can find good inexpesnive replica USA World Cup Jersey? I poked around online and found what look suspiciously like counterfeits for $22. I don’t really feel like shelling out $99 for the Nike official jersey. Any advice out there?

    Images of the Leafs jerseys here:

    link

    As I mentioned in the comments the day those were posted, the old font was the same as the font used in the main logo. At one time, the rear numbers were also in that font.

    Site changes look great. The comments will be much easier to follow now.

    Not liking that logo at all- the UNI WATCH text is brutal with the U and W in larger caps- and the 7 seems to come from left field. Looks like you went backwards rather than evolved.

    The 7 with the magnifying glass logo works well all by itself as seen on the facebook box on the left.

    For the banner it looks like the UNI WATCH was just hastily added on to it- all big and clunky letters next to this detailed 7 that you’re trying to get a closer look at with the glass. The two elements compete with one another.

    Another way of looking it it might be to say what would happen if the glass were taken away- what you’re left with is a disjointed wordform with a random number in there.

    Maybe it would work better if you lost the number and were magnifying a letter in the wordmark- dunno.

    The older arched lettering logo was far more refined. Just my opinion.

    I see what you’re sayin’ Mark, I guess it’s the magnifying glass logo that I really like. If they went back to the old font I probably would not mind that at all either. Although, I do like the boldness of this new font, it’s the UNI WATCH that reminds me of these alphabet blocks I used to have. Hope that doesn’t sound like a dis, cuz I loved these colorful blocks. :o)

    San Jose needs to ditch the number on the upper right chest. It’s ridiculous to begin with and that would be a much better spot for the XX year anniversary patch. The placement on the arm seems like a giant fail to me.

    Also, I must take some of the pint glasses from my bar and create my own stirrup glasses. Brilliant!

    Actually, ALL teams need to ditch the upper chest numbers. Looks like total crap. If they all dropped down to the front right thigh on the breezers, it would look better, though soccer-ish.
    Fun fact: all three EDGE Stanley Cup Finals have been upper chest number-free. Coincidence? No.

    Agreed – the chest numbers have to go. Totally unnecessary. Now if they went back to numbers on the skates that would be totally cool.

    Jeremy said:

    “What did you think of Greece-Argentina? looked like an intra-squad scrimmage to me.”

    Yeah, a little too similar. Probably not the worst matchup, but very mediocre.

    But mediocre may be good enough to get send off, as the wrong 1 in the 5&1. FIFA actually has a brain, dictating all uniform combinations. So no atrocious clashes. Every matchup “works,” but some work better than others.

    Good point. It’s a lot harder to pick the “+1” here, than it is during college football season.

    US will probably wear white as the home side on Saturday so we should get to see Ghana’s red & yellow stripes link
    or possibly Puma’s Africa Unity kit since their the last remaining side from the continent? link

    The Maple Leafs new NOB font is believed to be the same one they used from 1992-98.

    The veined leaf shoulder patch is the same one they wore on the jersey of that time period, as is the new numerical font.

    Other then the positioning of the sleeve stripes and the shoulder patches, and the new tied collar(and collar colour on the blue uni), the new jerseys are the jerseys of the 1990’s reformatted onto the edge pattern.

    OK, I’m gonna have to say that I don’t like the new comment-reply feature.

    It’s too hard to figure out if comments I’ve read already have been replied to. Or am I just missing something?

    If the original comment would get moved to the bottom along with the replies (is that even possible?), it would make things much easier.

    I hear ya. Ek and I just talked about this. Unfortunately, there’s no way to make a thread go to the bottom of the stack when someone adds a reply to it.

    I see advantages and disadvantages to the new system. Not gonna make a final decision now. We’ll stick with this for today at least, but I definitely hear what you’re saying and share your concerns.

    I suppose it’s easy enough to scroll through and see which comments are nested. That might get a bit cumbersome when the comment count gets above 150 or so, though.

    I might have a solution to make everyone happy. I added a sidebar widget that appears only on individual post pages. It shows the most recent comments, so you can easily check to see if you missed something.

    Everything looks great, I’m sure I’ll feel more comfortable once I get over my “I hate change” predilection.

    I just wanted to point out that in the dead ball vid, at 5:20, a hot dog vender pops up at the bottom of the frame, wearing a sign on his back that reads, “Red Hots” at the top. Pretty cool.

    Nice new look and sure we will all get used to it rather soon.
    Good to see UW is back

    Nice work on the site, guys! It’d be nice to have the little HTML cheats on top of the Comment window again, tho.

    link of Mr. Met seems to be the exact opposite of link.

    I’m pretty sure the Atlanta Hawks’ player wearing the football helmet is Joe Meriweather.

    I agree with Mike. The style of Erving’s uni is consistent with what the Sixers wore in the ’76-’77 season. The only player on the Hawks’ roster that year whose number ended in “5” was Meriweather. Also, if you look closely, you can see the end of his name curling around toward his armpit, which makes sense given how long it was.

    Now, who can explain *why* Meriweather wore the helmet?

    Also, based on the teams listed on the scoreboard, this game took place on November 20, 1976. (Sixers won, 123-106, for what it’s worth.)

    And it still remembers who I am! Very nice. I like it! I don’t know if it’s possible, but one of my other preferred sites (bleedcubbieblue), registered readers see new comments in color, comments that they’ve already viewed (or at least that were shown on the page last time they were there) are have a white background. It makes it easy to figure out what you need to catch up on when formatted like you have above.

    I, too, find the new masthead a downgrade, but it’s still good. I really liked the old vertically arched wordmark. The graphic up there also seems to lack crispness and clarity. It looks a little soft and blurry, which is probably an issue with the image file itself.

    I think it would be neat for UniWatch to have a series of 5 or 6 logos that rotate upon refresh, so you get a random one every time you visit the page. Maybe one is the classic vertical arch, one is an old script, etc. Maybe they have a little stitching detail or some twill/flannel texture, and I think the magnifying glass is a great element that could and should be carried throughout all of them. I’d be glad to help out in any capacity in the interest of developing the UniWatch brand, by the way.

    Regarding the stirrup tumblers: a trick we use in ceramics to make stripes is to place the cup on a rotating platform, give it a spin. All you need to do is lightly touch the brush to the side of the cup as it spins to deliver the paint and make a perfect stripe. Much nicer that doing them freehand, for future reference.

    But, the idea gave me another idea. Wouldn’t it be great to find a knitting company that would make a beer cozy in the shape of a tiny stirrup?

    A turntable — what a brilliantly simple idea.

    I actually did consider some kind of stirrup beer koozie type thing but I figured it’d be too unstable when you set your can/bottle down.

    Rays postgame show just talked about the guys wearing the new stirrups today. Upton, Zobrist, Longoria, Sean Rodriguez, and Shoppach were a combined 9 for 18 with 4 runs scored in the 5-3 win. The other six guys without them were a combined 3 for 17.

    But stirrup-wearing manager Joe Madden was ejected for arguing a balk call in the 7th.

    Asked whether the new fashion would be a one-day thing, Maddon smiled and said: “We’ll find out.”
    link

    Ek said:

    “I might have a solution to make everyone happy. I added a sidebar widget that appears only on individual post pages. It shows the most recent comments, so you can easily check to see if you missed something.”

    where might one find this technological wizardry?

    Huh …

    It was there 5 minutes ago – I swear! (right side, below all the other stuff)

    Pffft. All I see there is a batter in jammy pants hitting the ball to a pitcher in jammy pants and a softball jersey — on Opening Day, no less. Said pitcher then kicks said ball, chases it down, flips it between his legs to a first baseman in a softball jersey and jammy pants for the out. Running down the line to back up the play? A catcher in a softball top and jammy pants.

    aight i found it…

    still not liking (not because it’s not good, just because it’ll take a lot of getting used to) not seeing the comments sequentially…

    while i DO like not having the endless repeated comment strings, it’s a HUGE pain in the ass to go back up and see who’s replied to what…

    guess there’s no way to have the most recent comments appear at the bottom of the page

    I’d like to see the most recent comment return to the bottom, but ONLY quoting the last comment from the string being commented on.

    Easy for me to say not being the one writing the code, I know.

    It personally drove me crazy that comments here weren’t threaded. Much, much better.

    fwiw, never been a fan of threaded comments. it makes it so that you have to scan the whole list for new replies instead of just scanning the bottom. imho.

    Not sure I really understand the vehemence behind that guy’s criticism of the Warriors’ new logo. I think it looks pretty good myself, but I suppose your mileage may vary.

    From a purely graphical design standpoint, his reaction is appropriate. The new logo is sloppy and amateurish.

    Is it that much worse than any other logo in the NBA, though? I mean, I’d much rather wear that on my chest than the Mavs logo.

    Paul-

    A suggestion in moving forward with further site upgrades is how SBN blogs handle their commenting. Comments are nested like those above, but additional functionality allows readers to see the difference between unread and read comments, and allows readers to skip to the most recent unread comments by simply pressing the letter Z. Pressing Shift-A unmarks all new comments if there’s a lot you don’t want to sort through.

    I suggest this because your threads basically get 100+ comments.

    I visit link on a daily basis and it’s funny because I constantly try to use the letter Z function on other non-SBN blogs, much to my chagrin.

    Just a thought. Not sure if you can use it on a wordpress platform, though.

    Love the new look/elements. Really helps to streamline things.

    Eric

    link

    just found this looking for a Ralph Kiner jersey – Kiner’s wife is wearing his #4 as earrings

    Put a gun to my head and I’d vote for the vertically arched logo. But it’s not my site. Now you can do your own throw-back.

    The stirrup divider is a nice touch – your own up-turned Mr. Redlegs collar, if you will.

    As I’m an old man, my eyes may be deceiving me, but is the type size smaller in the comments than previously? If so, I’d suggest bumping it up a point size or so.

    I was digging the coding on the comments the past few days. Linking photos was much easier that way, especially for those of us who are coding challenged.

    I don’t mind the threaded comments but my gripe is: when I click on a link in a comment and then click “back”, it takes me to the UW main page and not where I left off in the comments thread. Also, would prefer it if links in comments would open in a new window, would that help the problem? I thought it used to back in the early days. I guess we’ll get the kinks ironed out, I appreciate the new look too. It’s not change just for the sake of change.

    Yea, we need the numbers back, just too difficult to follow all of the topics here. I feel if we had some sort of color at the original post that could be very helpful as well, break things up a bit. Otherwise, I really love the new environment/format.

    are the rays going to wear striped socks last night bj upton was wearong blue socks with stripes… i do not believe they were stirrups
    link

    so you think zippers will lead the players to wear their jersey’s half open?

    good point…but there’s nothing stopping the brewers from doing that now with buttons

    we don’t need a uni police, but it might be nice if bud would consider handing out fines for untuckedness and buttons undone, like the nfl does…of course, what’s 5 grand to a guy who makes that in 3 innings?

    Nice clean front page, much easier to follow comment section (I’ll get back into reading it now, I had stopped) and maybe best of all…. no malware pop-up warning from my Avast program.

    Very good news!

    Can we have the tab’s title have Uni Watch before the topic of the day’s title? Would make for consistency in the long run.

    The draft caps for tonight are the worst caps I’ve ever seen for any draft. Yikes!

    The whole Jerry West logo in front of the team wordmark just magnifies this whole thing of promoting the league above the teams. It just feels wrong.

    Very very impressed with the new site. Comment section is much easier to read. Kudos to Paul and John!

    Adam Richman was wearing No Mas’ “I Still Call It the Jake” on this week’s episode of “Man v. Food,” which was appropriately in Cleveland.

    On another episode he was wearing a “Keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn” tee, also from No Mas.

    Cool. I just noticed there is a new little browser link toolbar button thingy. I like. Hey, it’s the little things that make life worth living.

    OK, I gotta say it. The more I look at those Rays’ stirrups, the less I like them.

    I think the “Cardinals” pattern is a mistake with their color combo. The Columbia blue just kind of gets lost in the white.

    The “Red Sox” pattern might have been a better choice, or even just a basic triple-stripe pattern (a la the Giants) of columbia blue on navy.

    not hangin with you on that one jth. I really like um. Better than the three stripes too. The jammy pants are still dreadful, and the XXXXL shirts are just as dreadfuller too.

    All the hanging stirrups reminds me of the socks on the door knob back in college. Oh, those were the days, my friend.

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