Mike Hersh has pointed out some really interesting memorabilia items — many of them dating back more than 80 years — in some recent online auctions. Let’s take a look:
• Love the Matty illustration on this candy box (here’s the full auction listing).
• Here’s a nice set of postcards featuring women’s baseball teams (full listing).
• Baseball and meats: two great tastes that taste great together (full listing).
• I never knew Pepsi had issued baseball cards (full listing).
• Even better: these die-cut Coke cards (full listing).
• Speaking of die-cut items, look at this tremendous CCM ice skate sales display (full listing).
• Still more die-cuttery: a complete set of Detroit Tigers figurines (full listing).
• Holy moly, look at the detailing on this 1890s baseball doll (full listing).
• Here’s my favorite single item from this batch: a 19th-century baseball pocket watch (full listing).
• On second thought, maybe this is my favorite item: an exquisitely designed 1911 Cubs ticket pack (full listing).
• I’ve never seen this before, and I bet you haven’t either: a banana bat (full listing).
• What are these? According to the item listing, “In the teens, tobacco companies issued quite a few sets printed on silks or felts, featuring a variety of subjects. These ‘fabric cards’ were intended to be used as the building blocks for quilts, pillow cases, blankets, tapestries, etc.” Faaaascinating!
• Speaking of cloth, check out these old pennants (full listing).
• Hey, check it out — Kareem’s high school yearbook photo! The full listing also includes his class ring.
• Speaking of yearbooks, did you know Vince Lombardi had been a chemistry teacher? I didn’t (full listing).
• I like how this Packers charm bracelet features two different “G” icons — neither of which stand for “Greatness,” natch (full listing).
• Speaking of the Packers, check out this awesome letterhead. And gee, ya think Vince could’ve worked any more clichés into that letter? (Full listing.)
• You don’t have to be a hockey fan to appreciate this Montreal Maroons beer label (full listing).
• Two great items in one: a CCM sales display that includes a photo from the famous Ace Bailey all-star benefit game (full listing).
• You know I love old baseball sweaters. But I’ve never seen one like this (full listing).
• We all know that many of the National League teams wore pillbox-style caps in 1976, and the Pirates wore pillboxes for the next few seasons after that. But I hadn’t been aware of any pillbox action taking place around 1960 — even on the merch or souvenir level — until now (full listing).
• Finally, Mickey reminds you to play it safe (full listing).
Collector’s Corner, by Brinke Guthrie
Collector’s Corner rolls into May with another eclectic mix. Find any good stuff? Send it over! Just make sure the auctions you submit have more than a day or two left to run, or else they’ll end before the next installment of CC.
Here’s this week’s haul:
• Anyone from Cincinnati knows Skyline is the chili, but that didn’t keep Pete Rose from pushing the competition.
• Staying with the Redlegs, how about this 1940s Reds patch?
• Here’s an absolutely terrific Cubs decal. [Wow — that’s sensational. Anyone know if this was part of a larger MLB-wide series? — PL]
• PF Flyers for $700?! Go on, you know you want to look.
• Really odd facial expressions on this fantastic old MacGregor sign.
• Check out all the old soccer and hockey pennants this guy is selling.
Seen something on eBay that you think would make good Collector’s Corner fodder? Send your submissions here.
Dark Horse Chronicles, continued: Reader Jason Greening has been heroically wasting a week of his life that he’ll never get back poring over Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News microfiche, hoping to find a definitive resolution to the mystery of the Broncos’ early-season 1962 helmet logo color.
Alas, it’s turned out to be a quixotic quest so far, as he’s come up empty. Here’s the closest thing he’s found:
As you can see, much like the caption to the photo we discussed last week, the short item Jason has found mentions orange, blue, and white but has no mention of brown. Then again, there’s no mention of the helmet, so it’s hard to be sure.
Bottom line: We still don’t know which color Old Paint was.
IMPORTANT reminder! I lost the little sheet where I wrote down who was wearing what at the St. Louis Uni Watch party last Thursday night. So if you were there, please shoot me a note and remind me what you were wearing, so I can match your name to the photos I took and prepare a proper party report. Thanks.
And they won’t even boo him (probably): Longtime Philly-area reader Morris Levin is organizing a series of informal baseball presentations in Philadelphia. The first one will take place on May 26 and will feature Bill Henderson — the man behind the definitive double-knit era jersey guide — talking about the Phillies’ uniform history since 1970. Full details here.
If there’s sufficient interest, Morris says he’s willing to host an informal Uni Watch party at a local bar prior to Bill’s presentation. If that appeals, contact Morris directly. Thanks.
Uni Watch News Ticker: The Wizards will unveil their new uniforms today at 11am eastern. While you wait for that, here’s a slideshow of the franchise’s uni history up until now (with thanks to Mike McLaughlin). … Also from Mike: Earl Weaver is auctioning off a bunch of memorabilia ”¦ Who’s that with the GE-sponsored suit? It’s none other than Walt Disney. That shot is from a 1964 World’s Fair promotional video (fascinating find by John Crozier). ”¦ This is pretty funny: a video of Jason Varitek playing Wiffle Ball with local kids while wearing a Jason Varitek replica jersey, complete with inappropriate home NOB. “You’d think he could’ve just worn one of his regular jerseys,” says Ben Marciniak, although I imagine the organizers wanted Tek’s name to be visible for all to see, even if it doesn’t really belong on a Bosox home jersey. ”¦ Okay, so it was only practice, but couldn’t Phil Jackson have worn matching socks? (With thanks to Mark Kaplowitz.) ”¦ In a really odd development, the Cowboys want to handle Ohio State’s merchandising (with thanks to Chris Flinn) ”¦ Kelly Hellman went antiquing the other day and found an old 1937 issue of Look magazine with an absolutely spectacular football uni on the cover. ”¦ Durham Bulls and Indianapolis Indians played a throwback game last night. Here’s what the Indians wore; haven’t seen a photo yet of the Bulls’ uni (with thanks to George Carpenter). ”¦ “I hadn’t before seen triple-digit uni numbers in youth sports until now,” says Jake Elwel. “That’s Concord-Carlisle (MA) youth lacrosse at UMass last Saturday.” ”¦ What’s even stupider than a camouflage baseball shirt? Two camouflage baseball shirts (plus a pink Tooth Fairy necklace). That’s Heath Bell, brought our way by Eric Hill. ”¦ The awesome Fleer Sticker Project has put together a nice post on those 1970 Brewers prototypes that we’ve occasionally discussed here at Uni Watch. ”¦ Avi Miller reports that all of the pink shoes we saw on Sunday were Under Armour, and that all players with UA shoe contracts were more or less required to wear them. ”¦ Here’s the story behind the Altoona Curve’s on-field rally cap. … I had been told — and had reported — that the Braves and Phils would wear Negro Leagues throwbacks for this Sunday’s Civil Rights game. According to this item, however, they’ll be wearing 1974 throwbacks, to mark the season Hank Aaron hit No. 715 (no word on whether they’ll wear Adidas-striped shoes). I believe the plan is for the Negro Leagues uniforms to be worn the day before that, on Saturday. … If you have a kid who plays high school football, you need to read Alan Schwarz’s latest piece on the concussion risk associated with particular helmet models. Further info on the NFL implications here.
Jason,
Much thanks for the Bronco research, but a tip…
You might want to hone in on editions when the Broncos switched from colored horse to white horse during the 1962 season. You MAY run into a byline that says something like, “the Broncos are changing helmet decals from the (color) insignia to a white one…” Seems to me that the word “logo” was seldom used back then. Words like insignia, decal, emblem, etc. were more common than logo.
Good luck!
@Glenn: I’ve poured over that, too.
Since the call went out, I’ve spent my evenings on campus pouring over every day’s sports section in the Rocky Mountain News and Denver post in August, September and October, looking for even a MENTION of uniforms. I found a good 10-15 mentions of the orange uni, a couple more of the blue color on the away jersey, but *nothing* about the helmet.
As it is, I was able to find the definite game which the change took place (dark at home against the Raiders on Oct 5 and white on the road against the Raiders on Oct 14) and I checked each and every page of both papers from the 5th to the 17th, with zero mention of the helmet.
At some point this summer, I may start looking at fiche from April-July, but with work and a full slate of classes, time is tight.
Also, as of this morning, I have a letter in the mail to an old Bronco, Austin “Goose” Gonsoulin, to see if he might be willing to say anything/remember, but that’s the next best step I can find at the moment, so we’ll see. :)
Sorry Timmy. :) Saw Glenn’s name, got it stuck in my head. *heh*
As it is, I was able to find the definite game which the change took place (dark at home against the Raiders on Oct 5 and white on the road against the Raiders on Oct 14) and I checked each and every page of both papers from the 5th to the 17th, with zero mention of the helmet.
Hey, we at least solved WHEN the change occurred!! One problem solved!!
THX, Jason!
Regarding the colored horse thing, a pic of that article which originally appeared in the September 7, 1962 Rocky Mountain News was mentioned link last week, although the picture you have of it today is much better than the one I was able to get
We appreciate your research, and Jason’s too. Hopefully, one of you will find the definitive mention. (Even if you don’t, the old papers are usually fascinating.)
I guess Chicago & the Cubs either forgave Mrs. Murphy & her cow, or believed it was really the O’Leary’s. . ..
It was one of those people, that’s for sure.
It’s hard to express how grateful I am that Mike Hersh has decided to waste his life on our behalf. That cavalcade of stuff this morning makes me unreasonably happy. Honestly, I say to myself: Why do you enjoy this so much? Give me some pages to fill and I might be able to come up with a turgid explication or two, but there’s something mysterious at the heart of the delight I feel looking at an antique CCM sales display.
Anyway, good on you, Mike, and thanks a million, Paul.
Paul, I think you meant to link to picture 5 of 22, which shows Phil Jackson with one striped sock with his legs up on the wall; the link took me to picture 3 of 22, a kneeling pose (which looks like he’s got matching socks).
Pic in question – link
Now fixed. Thanks.
Maybe it is Phil’s way of knowing his right from his left.
Been spending some time poring through old Rocky Mountain News microfilm, and hopefully soon will get back to look through some Denver Post. Amazing how LITTLE press coverage there was, depending on the day, regarding the Broncos.
Given how little attention anyone in Denver seemed to pay to the club at the time, it makes sense. Raises the persistent question, though, of whether the fact that nobody in Denver cared about the football team drove the weak newspaper coverage, or whether the weak newspaper coverage drove the lack of fan interest.
Even though there was a push to move the team after the first couple of years, and it was really the Phipps brothers who kept the team in Denver, I’m more inclined to believe from all the history I’ve ever read, is that it was more weak newspaper coverage than anything else. I’m thinking it was a combination of the Broncos not being strong out of the gate, along with the fact that the AFL at the time was still seen as a “junior” league, which probably affected the media portrayal more than anything else. The fans themselves have always been here.
The fans themselves have always been here.
As long as by “here” you don’t mean “in the stadium, attending games,” then agreed. Press accounts seem to indicate that the team had abysmal attendance until about 1965-66. Similar kind of thing happened with the expansion Senators here in Washington; fan interest seems to have been pretty wide, but not deep enough for anyone to actually buy a ticket and attend a game.
once the Phipps brothers committed the team to staying in Denver and they didn’t move to Atlanta, the attendance really started to improve.
Thanks for noting that, Scott.
Was going to do some digging on the subject, because the Broncos were hardly knocking ’em dead at the box office the first couple seasons. The Denver, Oakland and New York franchises most were definitely the AFL’s weak links in the early going.
Just more reason all this mythical “love” for the brown, for retaining it to “help fans through the transition to orange and blue,” is absolute bullshit.
They had a party to burn those unis (the socks in particular, but symbolically it was the entire brown and gold set going up in smoke), for pete’s sake.
That why I will continue to say I can’t imagine they retained brown on the helmet horse and that no one noticed.
In that atmosphere, SOMEONE would have asked, “Jeez, why BROWN?” It would have totally flown in the face of every public stance they were taking, and simply would NOT have been overlooked.
Ultimately, the bigger mystery will be why on God’s green earth some chowderhead ever reasoned, 30 or 40 years after the fact, that it was brown.
To continue the parallel I’ve made, I’ll contend that, despite it being totally out of context for the times, all of Abe Lincoln’s stovepipe hats were purple. There now, that makes it fact (or at least gives it credence) and everyone else has to prove me wrong. Right?
To continue the parallel I’ve made, I’ll contend that, despite it being totally out of context for the times, all of Abe Lincoln’s stovepipe hats were purple. There now, that makes it fact (or at least gives it credence) and everyone else has to prove me wrong. Right?”
Ricko, I love ya man, but seriously. Not only do we have plenty of photographic evidence, numerous color paintings and drawings, and specific contemporaneous written accounts for the color of Lincoln’s hats*, you can go to any one of several major museums across America and see one of Lincoln’s surviving hats for yourself. The actual, 150-year-old artifacts. The whole point here is that we have a conflict between several long-after-the-fact folk memories but no direct, definitive evidence. You make a strong argument based on reasonable assumptions and suppositions, and you’re probably right. But having reasonable assumptions and being probably right is not the same thing has proving a simple question of fact.
A brown horsey makes less sense, absolutely. But the world is not so ordered that the more sensible option is always the one chosen.
*Though as far as I know, the color, and even shape, of the hat Lincoln wore on the final leg of his train journey to Washington in the spring of 1861 remains a matter of uncertainty. There were no photographs and very few witnesses, their accounts are neither contemporaneous nor in agreement, and as far as is known the artifact itself does not survive. So maybe it was purple.
“A brown horsey makes less sense, absolutely. But the world is not so ordered that the more sensible option is always the one chosen.”
And, beyond any design concept, part of “sensible” would have been to not retain any vestige of the wildly unpopular brown.
In the context of typical 1962 uni design, teams pretty much never strayed outside their team colors, even for more realistic depictions of an image, and then was normally only the likes of a yellow bill on a jayhawk or cardinal, flesh tones on a person, or a red tongue on some beastie…or, yes, keeping a shamrock green. A brown silhoutte horse on that particular uniform, in that particular situation, would have been almost as far afield as Abe choosing a purple hat.
I was, I hoped we’d notice, pointing to those somewhat relative unlikelihoods…and to the absurdity of inventing something so unlikely so long after the fact.
“In that atmosphere, SOMEONE would have asked, “Jeez, why BROWN?””“
i donno…maybe because, for the most part…horses ARE brown
that’s the ONLY argument i can think of as to why no one remarked about it being brown…because THEY ARE BROWN
other than that, everything points to the blue pony
Just a quick note on that, it looks like Broncos games were always front page on the sports sections. So they town tried, but the team honestly just sucked. In the midst of 1962, they sold out a couple times while they were winning.
Surely there’s a program cover, ticket stub, pennant, or local resident that was alive during that era?
Yeah but program covers from that era typically used illustrations of mascots and/or generic football art. Accuracy wasn’t exactly a concern.
The concept of “helmets as alternate logos” wasn’t quite around in 1962 (largely because helmet logos were barely started on the road to being universal), and there sure as hell weren’t color photos on tickets.
All part of the frustration.
Unless a local resident is one who Gets Itâ„¢, I doubt they would recall a detail like this. We’re so used to the way WE look at the sports world that it’s easy to forget how many sports fans DON’T notice the small details…
-Jet
So much has been said about this horsey over the last few years, so I’m not even sure what all has been said.
I cast my vote for brown.
Horses are brown. Why switch from blue to white so suddenly? Blue was a new color. Did it look so bad?
Has this point already been made?
If so, forgive me.
In that very first auction item: Mathewson was, of course, a righthander. Maybe they flipped the negative on that drawing.
Varitek’s jersey in that video is definitely not a retail replica. If you look close at the 0:08 mark, you can see that the lettering is outlined in blue just like the numbers and team name on front. On the retail replicas, the innapropriate player name on back would be plain red w/ no blue outline. Also, there’s a green/yellow patch on his left shoulder. I’m assuming that was for the organization putting on the event.
The replicas do have the link.
Most of the replicas I’ve seen at stores look like this.
link
Yeah, MLB upgraded their replicas last year to more accurately reflect team styling – correct fonts, outlines, etc. Shame they didn’t take that change to ditch the NOBs.
Much uni-greatness going on in the link. Upper left, that Wisdom uni is terrific. My hunch-gut makes me wonder if that’s a Jewish team. On the other hand, the boardwalk and the big, flat panes of glass look more like a location one beyond the great centers of the American Jewish diaspora. One way or another, there’s an interesting story there.
Upper right corner, appears to have some kind of complex insignia stitched on opposite the “R.R.V.” lettering. I’d love to know what that is. An eagle or a hen? Heck, I’d love to know what the arching script says. “Grants Park”?
And the one bottom-center, with the three uniformed women in front of a porch. Great uniforms, with the jaunty open collars and the contrast pocket, but there’s something about the attitude in those women’s poses that reminds me of the farm women in my grandparent’s generation on my mom’s side.
Grants Pass?
So would that make the RRV for Rogue River Valley? I like that theory, since the only Grant Parks I know of are Grant, singular.
Good thought. That didn’t even occur to me, but the only Grants Pass I’m familiar with is the one with the Rogue River running through it.
It’s amazing how hard it is to identify colors in black & white photos.
I’ve been skimming a few black & white shots of other teams whose colors we know… if the Broncos’ horse was blue, I’m starting to think it was closer in color to the Lions rather than the Colts or Cowboys. The horseshoe and star always seem to look a bit darker than our one good shot of Denver.
“It’s amazing how hard it is to identify colors in black & white photos.”
Yeah, it’s a bitch, isn’t it.
As much as a uni geek as I’ve been since the mid-1950’s, I didn’t know those Notre Dame jerseys with the gold numbers and shoulder loops (’62, was it?) were kelly green until about a year ago when I saw a Playboy All-America color team photo. Thought they were navy. All I had to go by at the time were b&w images, both TV and photos…and I guess I never heard an announcer describe the unis. Cuz I sure would have noted it.
As long as the Broncos are being discussed today, I’ll recount that my thought when I first saw them on ABC in 1960 was “orange and navy”. Wasn’t ’til the second time they were on that the brown and gold were described for us.
This is the jersey I’m talking about (there’s a shamrock on the helmet, too; which I thought also was navy)…
link
Color on color, too.
USC cardinal vs. Notre Dame kelly.
Wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion.
This is the dark jersey they’d worn the preceding two seasons…
link
Ricko said: “until about a year ago when I saw a Playboy All-America color team photo.”
Sure, that’s the reason you were looking through Playboy. Love them articles, dontcha? ;)
-Jet
Hey, was posted here at UW. :)
i agree with paul’s analysis of the broncos unis (in that no helmet is mentioned) but with each passing mention of blue, orange and white (and none of brown), i lean more and more to a blue pony on the helmet
still, without that one color photo we need for definitive proof one way or the other, we cannot just assume it’s blue (or brown) … most signs point to blue
agree with tim’s thought that the best proof might come later in the season when they actually switched decals (apparently this happened in the game following the sept. 30 game — so any clippings from that week might finally turn something up)
That’s where I need to check other sources, as nothing I’ve found so far in the articles in the weeks following when the change actually occurred even acknowledge that any change had happened. That’s probably just as frustrating, if not moreso, as the lack of mention of the decal in the first place when the uniforms were announced earlier in the year.
I’d tend to agree, Phil, but the other part of me says, “Why change the horse to white, then, if it wasn’t the ‘wrong’ color to begin with?” Blue and white have roughly the same contrast with orange, so I’m not convinced it was necessary for visibility reasons, but if the horse was brown, I could see a need to change it to one of the new team colors. Who knows?
You’re kidding, right.
The dark horse barely shows up in the day game photos from the Polo Grounds that Phil dug up (look at the lineman on the ground in front of Tripucka; you can barely tell there’s anything on his helmet at all, other than the white stripe, which stands out like crazy).
You’re thinking about how it looks in color, thinking 2011.
Think 1962 and black and white. That was the TV issue they likely focused on.
The photo I’m talking about.
Look at that lineman. Stripe shows instantly. Logo not so much (even when you enlarge it)…
link
And the other photo Phil found.
Shoot, it even sorta disappears on Tripucka’s helmet (most ertainly in comparison to the white stripe)…
link
Those are black and white photos. You of all readers should know that colors and contrast don’t show true in black and white photos. Orange is very much a middle ground between blue and white, unless the orange is quite dark or the blue quite light, then they get muddy. I’m assuming the decal was similar in color to, say, Colts blue, which is a nice, deep blue, and the helmet was a standard orange, like Syracuse, rather than like Tennessee or Texas.
“Blue and white have roughly the same contrast with orange, so I’m not convinced it was necessary for visibility reasons,”
That was the statement I was contesting, because it just isn’t true. They aren’t even close. White shows up far better on orange than either blue or brown would, even if the blue is navy…in black and white. On b&w TV white is far brighter and, visually speaking, actually appears to increase the size of the the white object because of the light it reflects. In print, any orange or blue (unless under extreme glare) will have a signifcant dot pattern when screened for a half-tone. White will have little or none…for a similar reason (the white areas will be the thinner portion of the negative). Again, we’re only talking black and white.
And those two photos pretty much prove it (as demonstrated by the white helmet stripe).
So I was saying the switch most likely was to make it show up (and improve the definition at least a little) in black and white photos and on TV. Wasn’t discussing whether was blue or brown, in this instance, only the 1962 context reason for the change.
Ooops, the thicker portion of the negative.
Ah, I see what you were saying now, but I wasn’t referring to photography when I said it wouldn’t need to be changed for visibility reasons, because white does not show up significantly better than blue on an orange field in real life, only in black and white photography. I just wasn’t looking at it in terms of photography, but rather in terms of actually seeing it from the stands. Blue or white would have been six of one, half dozen of another.
“…because white does not show up significantly better than blue on an orange field in real life”
Wait, what? I don’t even… really? o_O
I totally see the brown horse.
I was able to confirm the swap happened between the Oct 5 vs OAK and Oct 14 @ OAK games.
Checked all papers in those weeks, nadda.
yep, I got the same thing, found the pictures illustrating the change from the dark to the white, but never even a mention in any game recap or anything else Broncos related about them even making mention of the change
Some interesting stuff on that Packers letterhead:
1. The letter is dated 1963, but the championships listed at the bottom don’t include the 1961 and 1962 championships.
2. It also lists the Packers as members of the “National Conference.” In 1950, when the All-America Football Conference shut down and three teams were taken into the NFL, the Eastern and Western Conferences were changed to American and National, respectively. They were changed back after three or four years.
3. So this is an old letterhead, right? Well, it does list the 1960 Western Division (not Conference, interestingly) championship. And…
4. The drawing of what was still called City Stadium shows it with the 1961 expansion in the corners of the south end zone.
The Packers were still pretty cheap in those days, so it would be like them to use old letterheads until they ran out … but it’s strange they had updated some things, and not updated others that seemed to be directly in conflict.
Great observatiions…
-Jet
Here’s a gallery of photos from the Bulls – Indians game last night in Durham. It was a throwback, because they played at the old DAP (Durham Athletic Park, home of “Bull Durham”).
If you haven’t been, it’s a royal treat. Completely renovated by MilB and serves as a national training center for umps, facility managers and groundscrew, as well as home to NC Central University and county schools.
Plenty of pix to enjoy!
link
nice slideshow- pinstriped jerseys with plain white pants for the Bulls. Was that what the Bulls really wore? Or did they not want to spring for pinstriped pants too?
*bonus in the slideshow- lots of Clay Aiken pics
RE. collector’s corner. The link for the Macgregor sign goes to the PF flyers URL.
Most of the penants are soccer & not hockey.
Now fixed, thanks.
The MacGregor piece is really amusing:
link
Why don’t we just accept this and call it good. link
Pfft. No. The truth must be uncovered.
No one’s debating that they settled on white.
Hey Paul,
Guessing you probably meant the informal Uni Watch party in Philly would be held in a bar, not a car. Or are they expecting a light enough turnout to be able to contain folks in a Chevy Impala?
Oops. Now fixed. Thanks!
“The new Chrysler Imperial – the car that thinks it’s a house!” – Tom Servo, MST3K #512 “Mitchell”
Tom Servo is my God!
Can anyone think of a way to add explosions of some kind to the Denver Broncos horse color question? If we can make it explode, we can get the Mythbusters to solve it for us.
The Durham Bulls wore this for the throwback game, parental advisory suggested:
link
Regarding Skyline Chili in Cincinnati, if you have eaten Dixie Chili, Gold Star Chili, Empress Chili or Camp Washington Chili, you will see exactly how Skyline is NOT the best chili in Cincinnati and pales in comparison to the others mentioned here.
Skyline Chili are a lot like the Chicago Cubs.
They really aren’t very good, but man-o-man do they have a fantastic PR department to make you think they ARE the best in town.
So it’s sort of like cheesesteaks in Philly. Pat’s and Geno’s get all the media attention, but they’re actually mediocre tourist traps whose marketing has been so effective that even many Philadelphians now accept the notion, which was heresy as recently as the 1980s, that Cheez-Whiz is an acceptable cheesesteak ingredient. (A heresy which seems to have gained currency due mainly to an error-riddled 1986 New York Times travel article.)
Cheez-Whiz? Seriously? Wow…
Wait what?
The ONLY thing Cheez-Whiz is good for is crackers and cheez.
In the truck after a loooooong day waterskiing.
Man, 13 seems like ages ago.
Once again, drinking the MSM Kool-Aid, I thought that Cheez-Whiz was just part of the sandwich.
Was it made a different way? I know you can get peppers and onions, but my question was about the cheese.
White American cheese was the standard when I was a boy in Philly circa late 1970s & early 80s. At the time, white American (and white cheddar) was rare outside of Pennsylvania, which had uniquely strict food purity laws. As a result, if you ordered a cheesesteak elsewhere in the country, they were likely to put Swiss on it, since people understood that a cheesesteak had white cheese. Witness John Kerry’s infamous attempt to order a cheesesteak with Swiss in Philly during the 2004 election.
I mean, the cheesesteak emerged in its modern form in the very early 1930s, but Cheez-Whiz wasn’t produced until 1952. Either someone has a time machine, or Cheez-Whiz is a bastardization of the true cheesesteak. But certainly, better wiz than Swiss!
Are you from Philadelphia? Because I can assure you, I haven’t been “duped” into thinking Pat’s and Geno’s are good. I can appreciate a cheesesteak from anywhere, sure, but give me mine wiz wit from Geno’s.
Yeah, I was shocked when I saw they actually used cheese whiz! I mean the sandwhich was good but really?
What about provolone? When I get my cheesesteaks I get a choice of provolone (gotta be sharp), American, or Swiss.
I’ve eaten them all during my travels to Cincinnati.
None are them are anything to write home about in my opinion.
I make better stuff at home…
It is funny that on every forum that I read, politics, sports, comedy, home repair, guns, etc., when the topic of food comes up, it is a 110% bet that somebody will post that, no matter what the food is, they can make it better at home.
Nah, Skyline really is that good. Course, it’s been about 12 years for me..
Wizards uni preview…
link
Expect red, white and blue – probably some old Bullets design elements (stars prominent in the emails to fans) – current Wizards logo will be revamped but the name is staying the same.
The Tiger cutout figurines are interesting in that the players listed look to be from a c.1926-28 roster while the collared jerseys and cap profile look older, from the Cobb/Crawford/Jennings era.
Can anyone tell me what the flags used on Opening Day of baseball are called, or where I can purchase them?
Are you talking about link?
That’s it! Thanks.
Kyle K, I believe you are referring to “bunting”, and you can get it on the internet at lots of places…. link for one.
Frank
Brand new Arizona State uniforms across the board (and no more Sparky):
link
Covered on here not too long ago.
I notice the Indians did not wear a throwback cap for the game last night, but the new cap doesn’t look bad with the old jerseys. Maybe Indy should make this a full time uni?
Meant to add, they would probably need to make the outline black instead of blue to do that, but still a pretty good look.
… “Indy”?
Short for “Indianapolis.” It’s what all the hepcats are calling it these days.
I doubt it’ll catch on with the squares, though.
Okay, Indianapolis Indians… I skimmed past that part of the ticker, so out of context, when someone just says “Indians”, I just think of the major-league team over Lake Erie way. My bad…
Maybe I should have gone with Nap Town? Although that’s probably my least favorite nickname. I’d probably go with Circle City before then, although I’m not sure how well known either of those monikers are.
Ever watch “Parks and Recreation” by any chance?
The one thing that drives me nuts about that show is that any time one of the characters refers to the state capital, they always call it by its full name. They should be calling it Indy (except for Tom — he’d definitely be the type to go with “Nap Town”).
I actually have never watched “Parks and Recreation,” and I have no good excuse as to why. I’m usually pretty keen on shows set in Indiana, and I like the team that makes the show. I guess I’ll get it on DVD at this point.
But, yeah, nobody calls it “Indianapolis” in conversation.
link
Was it ever noted that the Bulls logo on their home shorts were outlined in white?
Now it is in black:
link
Okay, so Icethetics won’t let me leave this comment but has anyone noticed that the Tampa Bay Lightning completely stole their new logo from the Electric Sunglasses Company? If you don’t know what that logo looks like, just google it.
why won’t they let you post it?
idk, i tried a few times over the last few weeks but each time my post didn’t go through, it’s probably because i linked the sunglass site to the thread.
There’s a queue process over there, which also requires a Captcha-type entry.
Anyway… link and link seem to have enough differences to me. In addition, the Lightning logo comes off to me as link, while the Electric logo seems to me to be derived from the link.
Uniform-related oddity spotted on the AL scoreboard yesterday:
link
No, not the fact that every game had one team scoring five runs, but rather the fact that in every game except the Indians-Angels matchup, the uniform numbers of all the pitchers of record shared a digit in common.
The Angels should have let #36 Jered Weaver pitch; it would have completed things!
Another Brewers prototype from The Milwaukee Journal 4/1/70.
link
I’ve been looking for that! Thanks!
DW, I’d like to give you link. Let me know how you’d like to be credited, either here or leave me a comment on the blog.
DW from UniWatch is fine by me.
I’m glad you could use the picture.
link
nba store leaked the new designs early – first impression, as a DC native, i love it.
those are pretty sharp. home white with the extra blue stripe definitely has a leg up on the road red.
link
nevermind, just saw the correct road uni with that white stripe. nice
It’s after 11 ET now, so it’s not that early.
They’ve updated their website, as well: link
That is a sharp looking update to their identity. Well done, Ted!
jim vilk would wear it
Jim Vilk concurs most heartily!
Especially the road uni. They’d better make a t-shirt replica of that.
Well, for now this is a close as it gets for t-shirts.
link
As a Bullets fan from the 70s, I’m happy. The old “DC” alternate logo was among the worst I’ve ever seen; love the new “DC.” I do wish they had scrapped the awful “wizard holding ball” mark completely, however.
I don’t think the old Wiz-holding-ball logo is awful, but it sure doesn’t fit with the new identity, and they’ve designed themselves at least two excellent alternatives that do fit with the new identity. If the moon-man doesn’t fit, you must acquit, or something.
I’m loving how they took the old hands-and-ball motif of the Bullets script and found a way both to include it and to extend it with the Washington Monument spire in the “d” in “Wizards” and the “h” in “Washington.”
I agree that the new alternatives are very good, and second your take on the incorporation of the “hands-and-ball” and Washington Monument. Nicely done.
BTW, it looks like the Wizards store has two different versions of each jersey–the youth jerseys seem to have one less stripe, as does the jersey featured on the front page of the store (right side, “Shop by Player”).
i really like most of this to, the uni’s especially. I like the dc and monument logos, but the old wizard doesn’t fit. he wasn’t a bad logo (maybe a little dated/90s looking), but he seems totally shoe horned in. Like “crap we forgot a wizard logo, i got it, we just recolor the old one, excellent idea!” And I like that it totally has a Capitals feel to it to. This is a much better relation then the blue/black/copper stuff they used to share.
They’re gorgeous. And thank God no more gold top/black shorts.
Actually, the gold top / black shorts was the only redeeming quality about the Wizards…until now.
Oh. Wow.
C.N. said it best – the new look is gorgeous. I don’t even mind the number font. Still hate the wizard logo and I still don’t like the name, but everything else is Simply. Gorgeous.
The new dc logo is awesome.
Has anyone tried inquiring to NFL Films about the Bronco helmet?
Can I ask a serious question?
Is all this research about the Broncos helmet decal being blue instead of brown or white, with no other documentation that the colors of the decal was brown and then changed to white being done because 1 poster/reader *thinks* it was blue after 49 years?
I must have missed more to the story.
Can somebody please fill me in?
We know that the original decal was dark, and replaced with a white one mid-season. The only question is what color was it?
Retail reproductions have it as brown. But where did that come from? Not from any actual evidence, so far as anybody can tell. But someone made an Internet mockup somewhere, decided the logo was brown, and that was picked up by an eBay helmet seller, who customized one to sell to Broncos fans, and that was picked up by somebody else, and so on and so on until it became common wisdom.
I think Tiki Barber recently proved quite conclusively that just because something’s all over the Internet, it ain’t necessarily true.
Forgot to mention – Ricko was actually there at the time, and while I don’t want to speak for him, he remembers it quite clearly as blue.
So we’re all looking for evidence to either back up his memories or disprove them once and for all. Personally, I think he makes a lot of sense, but this is the InterWebTubes. If you don’t have a picture, it didn’t happen.
The Broncos changed their colors to orange and blue, made a big deal out of getting rid of the gold and brown.
That’s documented.
Not orange and blue and brown.
That isn’t.
But THAT was the contention made 40 years after the fact.
You are probably right about it being blue – link
But team colors of “blue and orange” doesn’t have to mean those are the only colors worn… see the green of Notre Dame, the red & blue on the Steelers logo, or the brown (oh it’s not brown it’s just really really dark orange) logo of the Texas Longhorns.
In fact, there we go, the horse wasn’t brown, it was “Texas Orange”. *snicker*
Heck, maybe the reporters just saw that it was brown, chuckled at how lame the AFL was, and didn’t report on it or say anything. Ignoring the elephant in the room, as they say.
You touch on one aspect I’ve long maintained points to it NOT being brown. AFL lameness was fodder for pro-NFL writers. They’d have been all over a team that was dumb enough to keep a supposedly hated color around all the while they were trumpetting that everything was new in ’62, starting with orange and blue.
Somewhere, mention of that folly would have been reported (“Hey, we should we expect from a team that would wear uniforms the colors of a stable floor, and with vertically striped socks, yet”), and it’s hard to believe those reports wouldn’t have survived.
Has anybody checked team photos from that era?
Sometimes they place the helmets in front of the front row on the ground.
mike stanhope over at his board has a few photos of the dark horse … and he’s pretty much of a helmet expert — he claims it is brown as well
Unfortunately I think Mike Stanhope’s credibility as an expert has to be questioned a bit as he also has an old Raiders picture labelled as a “white shield version” and we’ve since discovered that it was in fact a silver shield at the time.
i didn’t say he was infallible
He also says the ’62 Raiders had a white stripe on their helmets.
Not so. Was Cheddar.
Every b&w photo I’ve found (no color has ever surfaced) that isn’t a bit overexposed shows plenty of dot pattern in the stripe, often right next to a white jersey at the same angle to the light source for comparison.
That’s also based on watching them live on b&w TV for three hours at a time, more than once. If a team is wearing a black jersey with cheddar numbers and stripes and white pants…you can tell whether the helmet stripe matches the pants or the numbers/stripes, believe me. I’m gonna guess he can’t say, “based on watching them live on b&w TV,” etc.
For example…can we tell, in black and white, that there is a difference between the color of the Packers’ helmet and its center stripe? Or that the “G” is white and not cheddar? Of course we can.
Did he determine it was brown, based on any evidence, or is he just repeating the Internet’s “common wisdom”?
This may be totally wrong and its coming from my memory, but I remember the Broncos owner wanting the orange color to be a burnt orange like Texas. The uniforms had a much brighter orange and being cheap they just kept the color. So the Burnt Orange decal might not be too far off, but I think it was blue as well.
So far, I have found three websites with verbatim descriptions, talking about brown being “the only carryover” etc.
They’re repeating each other, and no one brings anything new to the table. No explanation of why, as if it was perfectly natural that the Broncos would “carry over” something from the old color scheme…which, of course, it most definitely was not. Not in Denver in 1962.
This certainly suggests that none of them apparently has a CLUE concerning the circumstances surrounding the color (and uni) change…except what they find on the Internet.
Wizards Home Jersey
link
Wizards Away Jersey
link
Wall in Home Uni
link
I like that. Looks like a perfect combination of their 70s & 80s features.
I really love the look – especially nice when you see the uniform on the player. As a team on the floor, they’ll look sharp.
Minor gripes… the shorts look kind of boring. And I probably would have stuck with a more strict presentation of this look link (minus the plum smugglers though)
I would have used a consistent stripe from the arm pit down the shorts. Put some stars in there somewhere. And maybe the more consistent red jersey stripes at the top with a blue number and slightly smaller “Wizards” across the front.
Early grade B++
Like the Away more than the Home, but maybe I’m just too prejudiced against that “Wizards” name… If there’s anything that I don’t associate with DC, it would be wizardry…
I’m a big fan of some of the little details (as I’m sure Paul will go into tomorrow…). My favorite: check out the “d” in “Wizards” and the “h” in “Washington”; the long stroke on those letters is the Washington Monument! I also really like the Monument/Basketball logo below the collar on the back; many times better than the Capitals’ Eagle/Capitol logo.
I look forward to seeing these jerseys on the floor…perhaps the team can change their standard of play to match the upgrade in their look.
oh, and on the shorts: the fact that the star and the notch in the hem make a blue “W” at the bottom…subtle, yet excellent
For me, all that ‘cutesy’ stuff in the wordmarks ruins the whole look. And those numerals are atrocious. Give me a blank jersey in that template (love the stripes) and let me adorn it myself, and you have a winner. As is, it’s stumbling at the finish line.
I’m with H.B. – the monument in the wordmark makes the set for me.
Yeah, that number font is one thing that does bug me a little. Seems a lot of teams want to be “creative” with their numbers, but sometimes they forget to factor in legibility; while classic varsity block numbers aren’t always perfect, they’re generally easier to read overall.
I guess the monument in the ‘d’ and ‘h’ would be okay on the logo, but in my opinion, lettering is lettering, and *in most cases* it doesn’t look professional when you start to morph the letters into graphic elements or incorporate graphic elements into the lettering. There are exceptions. Love the Cavaliers wormark with the feather tail. Love the St. Louis Cardinals’ lettering. For the most part, though, I prefer the lettering to be pure when it’s on the jersey.
I also think maybe the ‘dc’ secondary would be better if the ball was spinning on the index finger of the hand, or if the hand was cradling the ball as if going for a layup. The jump ball/tip-in pose just isn’t doing it for me.
I also loathe the spike serifs all over the wordmarks. Looks really clumsy. A typographer’s nightmare. The sports industry is notoriously lacking in typographic specialists. A lot of designers simply don’t know how to make effective, attractive type. It’s becoming one of life’s ‘lost arts’ I suppose.
All of the “effective, attractive type” fonts have been made already.
Or, it’s an eye of the beholder thing. Look at how many people claim to hate Comic Sans, yet it’s freakin everywhere. Obviously some people like it.
Nice effort, but too disjunctive for my taste. Suddenly, I have a craving for spumoni, though.
I’d like to know a little more re: the guy who said the horse was brown. Seems like since this thing blew up all over UniWatch I’ve read nothing about the actual source of this contention.
It’s on some website regarding the history of the Broncos and, of course, is given credibility by the mini-throwback helmets that created one with a brown horse (guessing the manufactuer took his cue from the website, which is where, btw, that nonsense about it “easing the “transiton” for the fans is proffered).
I’ll plead to Internet-tardedness, but I haven’t been able to find the website again.
Okay, I took another shot.
Here’s one of them. Goes on and on about how unpopular the brown and gold were, then routinely says the first helmet horse was brown, the “only carryover” from the previous uni. But it apparently never occured to him to ponder why, in that climate, they would do such an inconsistent (from just about any conceivable angle) thing. Shouldn’t any decent uni and football historian ask, “Why the hell would they do that, and if they did, how come it’s never been mentioned? Anywhere.”
link
This site makes no mention of it being anything outside the new color scheme.
link
They’ve got it right. Faulkner wanted Texas Orange, got typical Orange, NOT “creamsicle” Tennessee Orange.
Also photographic evidence that all the other trim was blue.
link
Just for the record, those mini helmets are made by Riddell and date back to the late 90’s. They may predate the website, or possibly have used the same printed source as the site, assuming there is one.
All part of the mystery that, I firmly believe, will eventually be proven to be a colossal (in uni world, anyway) screw up based on one person’s uniformed rewriting of the Broncos’ team color and uni history.
I still can’t find the website that claims that, for one season, the Broncos wore orange and brown. That’s likely the culprit. Why? Because we KNOW that isn’t true.
You mean “uninformed”, right, Ricko?
It’s true, though, that the internet can propagate inaccuracies. One minor peeve of mine is that link of the Detroit Cougars’ 1927-28 wordmark is link link link by font, and it’s not even accurate to the Wings’ link link, yet it’s appeared on “officially licensed” merchandise with that squished Helvetica.
I still can’t find the website that claims that, for one season, the Broncos wore orange and brown. That’s likely the culprit. Why? Because we KNOW that isn’t true.
But we don’t actually know that to be untrue. If the Broncos did indeed take the field with a brown horsey on their helmets, then they would in fact have worn orange and brown for that one season. Mostly orange and blue, yes, but if a team actually wears orange and brown helmets onto the field, of play, it is a true statement to describe that team as wearing “orange and brown.”
The frustrating thing for this observer is that the arguments against the plausibility of the brown-horsey theory all take the form of using fragmentary evidence that doesn’t directly bear on the question to induce general principles, then deducing from those general principles the conclusion that brown is impossible. That’s bad reasoning based on bad reasoning.
Fortunately, the poor quality of the pro-blue arguments has no bearing on the likelihood of either theory being true. What we do have is a weak evidence claim in favor of blue, and a much weaker claim in favor of brown whose evidentiary value is, at the moment, beyond our ability to assess, but signs point to it being much weaker than the claim for blue. Everything else is just arguing Superman-versus-Mighty-Mouse.
That’s like saying the Cardinals wearing yellow on the bat and the bird beaks makes it a team color.
When someone says that for one season, “the Broncos wore orange and brown” (and in that context) he is pretty clearly indicating he believes those were the defined team colors. I remember when I read it, thinking, “Where the hell did he get THAT bit of fiction?”
Because it never happened. They went from gold and brown to orange and blue…and made a HUGE frickin’ deal about it. I simply can’t imagine anyone in Bronco management (Faulkner, especially) seeing a design including a brown helmet horse and NOT saying, “No way. NO brown.”
Granted, ain’t proof. But someone please, PLEASE, supply any kind of rational 1962 logic for it to be brown…something that Faulkner, who was in charge and the leader of the orange & blue movement, would have bought into.
somewhere, like ricko says, one of the 62 broncos was quoted as saying the helmet was originally orange with a brown horse
that’s probably where ALL of this controversy comes from — when you have an actual player saying the horse was brown that pretty much trumps any and all who say otherwise; might have been frank tripuka as well, but i thought it was a lineman
point being, until we have photographic evidence one way or the other, the people who make mini helmets and who write blogs and other stories will use the eyewitness PLAYER who said they were brown
besides the fact that horses ARE brown (for the most part), that one supposed personal recollection is all that is keeping me from saying it was blue
I believe those Frank Tripucka/Gene Mingo interviews are on that website I can’t find, the same one claiming the Bronco team colors were orange and brown for one season.
In both instances the questions are phrased like, “They changed the brown horse to white, right?” (or something in that vein).
And no “control question” is asked, such as, “So the horse was the same color as the numbers on the road jerseys and stripes on the pants?”
It reads like someone maneuvering to claim confirmation for the brown horse without ever really, truly getting it.
Damn, wish I could find that site.
Taken in its entirety, it just feels…shaky.
Wouldn’t any player with an IQ above room temperature point out that it wasn’t brown?
“So then they changed the brown logo to white, right?”
“What brown logo? It was blue. …and yeah the fans couldn’t see it so they switched to white.”
Assuming he even noticed (or cared) what color it was in the first place, of course.
If he didn’t (and that wouldn’t surprise me) he’d likely just follow the questioner’s lead so as not to look stupid.
Saw Via Sikahema on the NFL Network the other day talking about “10 Greatest Return Men” saying of Billy “White Shoes” Johnson’s nickname, “Nobody was wearing white shoes. I don’t think white shoes were even available.”
Ummm… wrong. By Johnson’s rookie year maybe half the players in the NFL (and a team or two) were wearing white shoes.
Doesn’t prove anything, but does show that players, most of them, anyway, aren’t inclined to think about unis and such, making them usually less than reliable sources.
Johnson, btw, got his nickname in high school (or maybe college). Either way, was when white white cleats WERE harder to find. If only once in a while someone wouldn’t assume his is an NFL “handle” because he must have been one of first pros to wear white cleats. As I said, by the time he came into the league, was no big “trademark”.
See?
While “White Shoes” was still in college, the Cowboys (for one) already had gone to white shoes.
link
“…A LOT OF the Cowboys.”
sorry.
if anyone shoulda been nicknamed “white shoes” it shoulda been joe willie…
course, that was cuz, as ricko will tell ya, he was so heavily spatted/taped up with the tide that them shoes only LOOKED white
and a trademark look was born, no?
in fact, rick DID tell us about him, back on new year’s day
Rob S. — did the NHL actually use that squished-Helvetica Detroit Cougars wordmark for licensed merchandise? I just thought that version was peculiar to the Creamer site because I’ve noticed other logos there that are “off” and I always assumed that Chris had the site up for “reference” purposes and couldn’t always use the exact versions for copyright reasons…
-Jet
This brown horse / blue horse thing is near-pointless and very enjoyable.
Jet, I’ve seen it used on “timeline” stuff, where multiple historical team logos are used, such as link (which is also inaccurate on the link).
“Go Mystics!!…. (Go Wizards AND Mystics)”
– Greg Bibb – Exec. VP of Business Operations at the conclusion of the Wizards press conference.
Hilarious.
I’m sure somebody will complain about them (e.g. they have a public transportation feel) but I like. This is what Pollin should’ve done once he decided to change the name. I like the way the Monument is worked into the secondary and home wordmark.
Regarding the Wizards – the Warriors should take note, THAT’s how you do a classy yet modern update of a classic uniform. The road jersey’s the weakest link, but everything else is very nice.
Also, that Washington Post slideshow is woefully inaccurate – they’re missing at least 4 uniforms…
How so? I think the Warriors have a good touch to their unis without copying way too much of the original.
Improving the logo would be a good start for the Warriors. The linework and typeface are not done well.
loving that cubbie ticket, but the gem of the day is the tobacco quilt, and the gears are grinding on the later for sure.
paul~
i am not sure how many holes you have to fill in the name game from cocked hat, but if there are significant gaps, rather then use any real names, assign everyone bowling monikers like “spare rib”, “pin monkey”, “spare change”, “gutter fingers”, or “OJ”(since he was, um, framed). or just outright bowling related full names like “moe gutters”, “timstruck turkey”, “les pickups”, or “denny mc lanes”. that way nobody would be crushed to the point of cyanide or asps because the guy with the C on his bowling shirt forgot their nombre. just a thought brown bag.
~natty bagger
Re: the Earl Weaver auction items…
Who is writing the descriptions for these things????
link
It’s listed as a mid 80’s jersey…come on! They didn’t even use that style script until 95, and that style jersey is a fashion jersey…the team never actually wore that. I think we made some of those for O’s Fantasy Camps, but never for real use.
Another auction: if the Cubs are going to wear gray jerseys on the road, THIS is how you do it:
link
Yep.
1) that sleeve patch needs to be brought back.
2) I don’t understand why they insist on sticking with the red numbers on the road. Blue numbers with red outlines would look so much better. The same goes for the NOB and wordmark — replace the white outlines with red.
I actually kind of like the fact that the number and the NOB are different colors — well, as much as I can like a jersey with any kind of NOB, which is not very much — but blue with a red border looks so much more fitting on a Cubs jersey. And of course the heathered gray of flannel looks infinitely better than the boring dull gray of polyester.
And the “CHICAGO” wordmark on the front has just the right amount of heft. The one they’ve got now is a little skinny, and the link that they were using for the “Chicago” when they first went back to gray doesn’t fit at all.
I can live with the numbers/NOB being different colors.
I don’t really even mind the white outlines on the blue letters because I think cool colors against the gray doubleknit looks terrible (Dodgers, Red Sox).
I think the white borders on the red numbers ruin the jersey, though.
that is pretty sharp, and the no white would be nice. call me a kook, but i am a little partial to this one, totally take out the red on the road except the hat C and squatchee. it ain’t my team though, and that can lead to bad choices. bottom line, that cubbie on the sleeve is far and away the best one they have ever used.
~zach galifianakis
Wait, what’s a squatchee?
I actually thought of something else I like about the differing colors for NOB and number: it parallels the colors on the front, with the blue CHICAGO and the red number. And dull gray jerseys need numbers on the front; otherwise they look too dull.
Moose, you only linked to today’s Uni Watch article…
Mark, the “squatchee” is the name given the button on top of the cap. It’s been covered before how that name came to be used, but I can’t remember it myself. I just know that’s what they’re calling it these days.
Bob Brenly is at least partially responsible for the proliferation of the use of the word “squatchee.”
this is a squatchee
daaaaaang phil, nice find. i need to make that T available, or at least send some people some for the holidays.
sorry i was linking the link.
Agreed, Mark. This Cubbie uni is so good it makes my eyes water…
-Jet
That is the most beautiful roadie in Cub history. The trim around the collar and sleeve-ends has a classy look; I wonder why more teams don’t do that. Beats the hell out of the ubiquitous headspoon.
They’re missing a good bet by not bringing that cubbie-head sleeve patch back immediately.
One minor unmentioned detail in the Wizards’ new uniform – There is a star on the side shorts stripe that forms a “W” at the bottom.
link
link
The link you posted was the one after this one…
That is a nice, subtle touch there, though, working with the split in the seam to create that effect.
I was going to go down to Invesco and do a little searching there as well, hoping the Colorado Sports Museum (inside the stadium) might be of assistance. Sadly, closed today, limited hours/days of operation, dammit.
Glenn,
I used to work at Invesco in my early 20’s when the stadium opened, and I can remember leading tours in the CSHoF. Everything they have is white decal, sadly. No mention of the dark one.
Of course, they could have added stuff since ’05, but I doubt it…
I doubt it too, but I’m hoping if I asked around, they might point me in the direction of someone that might have more definitive archival information/access, one way or another (blue or brown).
Full pictures of Durham and Indianapolis unis at link (now proud to have pictures of over 100 MLB throwback games, plus NFL and other sports to come)
never mind, after reading the comments, I see you guys have seen the newsobserver.com gallery
While I like the new Wizards Unis I still think this is where it’s at…
link
Money money money money money… MONEY!
Yeah, Tim, it’s very cool.
sarcasm? I honestly can’t tell. stoopid internets
No. Not sarcasm. I love ’em.
I don’t think the Wizards new uniforms look very “wizardy”. I guess the look fits for a team in DC, but it doesn’t seem very magical or mystical or… anything I’d associate with wizards.
Do link look “bullety?”
Probably not… what’s up with their being 2 different uniforms in that shot anyway? Please tell me they didn’t actually wear both blue and white shorts at the same time.
Explanation link (scroll down to the “Temporary Challenges” section.
That was exactly the point. Run away from everything associated with ‘Wizards’ even though they can’t change the name.
I fail to see why they can’t change the name. Why not change to something else? We don’t want to be the Wizards, we “can’t” go back to being the Bullets, so let’s come up with something new. Or would the NBA actually block a name change? I just don’t see why they would. If you’re going to do a full color change & redesign, a new name isn’t really an issue, is it?
Instead, they’re still the Wizards, but now they’re wearing Bullet costumes. Is that really better?
Better than Wizards in the old Wizard costumes? Yes.
I agree that they absolutely should change the name, though.
Jeff, I couldn’t agree more with your statement. We started seeing political correctness seep into sports in the 90s, and the old Bullets and Marquette Warriors are examples of this.
Marquette could have easily kept the Warriors nickname and removed the Indian connection. The old Bullets uniform was perfect, with no obvious bullet seen. Abe Pollin simply made a reactionary, ill informed decision based in part on the death of a personal friend.
Owner Ted Leonsis has said something along the lines of “it’s too late to change the name for next year”. Besides, the only name fans really want is Bullets.
why not the federals?
tim e. o. nailed a pretty sweet uni and name (although these aren’t too bad — perhaps they’ll get stale quickly, tho)
The Jeff, according to Leonsis, the difficulty isn’t in league approval, but in the intellectual property issues inherent in changing the team name. The uniforms he could get the league to sign off on without an issue, and did, but at best it’d be up to three years to get the IP issues cleared up. He wanted to do something right away to signal change, so he went with this. The name change may or may not happen, but it looks like it’s not being ruled out.
link
Leonsis said today changing the team name could take up to three years because of all the legal/business issues. He also was quoted as saying that the changes announced today took a year to finalize…
well shit…i see tim e. o’b has already taken care of that in the comments below
have i mentioned i still hate this comment system?
How ’bout “Dum Dums”?
Good grief, every time you post this amazing auction stuff… wow…I practically get misty-eyed.
-Jet
Serious, that lot was pretty sick right there. A certain item that I am contemplating buying that I won’t mention?
The old timey edition wasn’t too shabby either.
Invaders jerseys found their way onto Puck Daddy today:
link
Yours are easily the best ones on there. Too many of the other ones are based on really bad puns.
Although that tighty whities logo is pretty good.
thanks jimbo! and i agree, tighty whities is pretty awesome (but who wears tighty whities these days?!?! lol. kidding).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the Wizards’ link (Wizard Girls? Really?) also have a link.
The triple-digit numbers on those lacrosse jerseys are because it’s a summer recruiting camp. They aren’t individual teams. Each player at the camp has to have a unique number so any college coaches/recruiters in attendance can identify them.
I believe this is fairly common at recruiting camps for other sports like basketball, also, no?
Here’s a link to the on-field hats for the Civil Rights Game on Sunday:
link
jeez, 37 bucks apiece
Considering regular authentic 5950 caps retail for $35, an additional two bucks isn’t bad, although it does seem gratuitous.
Not much chatter today about the Civil Rights unis, though I probably missed any earlier conversations. Tonight the Braves TV announcers mentioned they’d be wearing the 74 feather unis on Sunday, which I love.
Saturday they’ll be wearing Negro League unis…the Atlanta Black Crackers. Back in the late 90’s they wore one version of the ABC uni, with block letters on the front. Perhaps Saturday they’ll wear a different version.
Those triple-digit numbers on the lacrosse players look more to be pinnies rather than actual uniforms. Based on the players standing around, it looks like it may be part of a camp rather than an actual game.
I like the new/old Wizards/Bullets uniforms, however this adds another red, white, and blue team to the league. I know there is history there, as well as with the 76er’s, however in the past two years two teams have reverted back to red, white, and blue. I do like the uniforms, I just wish there was more of a variety of colors in the league. Now 23 of the 30 teams in the league have a shade of red, or blue, or both.
With this large percentage of teams with red or blue, there are a bunch of colors that are going largely unused. With the T-Wolves pretty much taking the green out of their scheme, there are now only three teams that feature green. Also in a game where the object the teams are trying to control (the ball) is orange, there are only four teams that feature orange. It just seems like there is a major lack of color diversity in the NBA.
Then may I suggest you link…
As for link, I could find link who could use that as a link.
And link is way link.
link:
Leonsis said it was intentional that the new designs and logos make no reference to the theme of Wizards other than the actual name written across the home jersey. The next step, it would seem, would be to go ahead and change the nickname back to Bullets.
Leonsis has looked into a name change and didn’t rule it out, but he described it as a laborious process that can take up to three years because of intricate intellectual property issues.
Maybe I’m just being too… me, but how can there be that many issues with going back to Bullets? Doesn’t the NBA still own the rights to that name & associated logos?
It seems more like a case of the fans want the change, but he doesn’t, so he’s hoping this uniform change will satisfy them.
Then again, as completely screwed as our copyright laws are, maybe it does take a few years.
Well, not just copyright stuff, they would have to change every window that has wizard etched on it, they would have to get new websites, servers, they would have to change contracts, letterheads, etc. And all of that would be easier if they were just up and moving somewhere where they could start fresh. Staying in the same city and arena probably makes changing the team name harder rather than easier…
Good point, I forgot about all the other junk they’d have to change. Probably explains why they kept the goofy recolored logo when it doesn’t really match anything.
IIRC, the NBA charges a somewhat substantial fee to a franchise that changes (as opposed to re-coloring) their primary logo. That’s why the Hawks and Jazz (and now, the Wizards) re-colored their primaries. That said, a franchise can adopt new secondary logos to their heart’s content (for example, the classic Jazz wordmark is a secondary logo for the team, and they use it almost everywhere).
Abe Pollin changed the name because he didn’t like the association with violence and there’s a lot of sentiment on respecting that decision. And after the whole Arenas incident, that probably slammed the door on Bullets returning.
well…shoot
link
Then just turn that into a logo and call them the Bullets (as in bullet trains for people who don’t comprende), it skirts around the original intent of the Bullets name far better than the new color scheme skirts around the fact that people still want the team name to be the Bullets.
Bullet train? That’s downright un-American. But how ’bout a link?
Not a bad idea about the bullet train, I don’t know if one of those type of trains is coming to the Washington area in the future.
There are always creative solutions around problems, and getting around the old meaning of bullets could be one of them. As for the IP issues and work required to resurrect the bullets name, it’s still very doable, and not exactly brain surgery.
The other positive aspect to bringing back the proper name would be the connection to Washington’s NBA winning tradition. This was a NBA world championship city, with other multiple appearances in the NBA Finals. We’re talking about roughly a decade of winning basketball with hall of fame players.
Bottom line, those fans in Washington need to organize and put the pressure on ownership to fix the mistake. If it takes the older fans to lead the way, then so be it. It would be great if some of the old Bullet players, like Elvin Hayes or Wes Unseld would support this movement.
That 1937 Look magazine cover is screaming “fahhhk monochrome!”
Hey Paul, would I be banned from the site if I submitted a request for membership that involved a slight bit of Umbro logo creep on the card?
If so, I have a second design in mind.
Banned? No. But we’ll decline that request.
Back to idea number two, then. Thanks for clarifying.
Holy ASS Umbro, did you make ANY Man United shirts in the 90s that didn’t have logos on the numbers/sleeves/sublimated into the BACK of the shirt?
And we thought Nike was bad.
“And we thought Nike was bad.”
Adidas is even worse: (link)
Quote from RS Rodgers back on March 22nd:
“In fact, if we define logo assault as simply the overly aggressive placement of manufacturer logos, then what Addidas does goes far beyond mere assault. There’s a difference in kind, not degree, at work here: Addidas does not merely place an oversized logo on its products. It incorporates its logo into the fundamental design of its products, to the same extent that sleeves are a fundamental part of a jersey’s design, or that a team’s colors are a fundamental part of its uni design. So if logo creep is like simple assault, and logo assault is like manslaughter, then Addidas is engaged in logocide.”
TERRY (Simply Moono) SPEAKING: In fact, I think Adidas intentionally split the sleeve “stripes” into two segments on the long-sleeved shirts just for the sake of having two MORE “///” logos. The fuck? (link)
USC Black Helmets: link Sad…
I don’t know if this really confirms or deny anything either, but here are to Sports Illustrated articles about the Broncos in early 1962:
From 1962 preview 9/10/62 (with a picture of 1961 uniforms)
link
From 10/22/62 issue:
link
It says they had a ceremony before the season to burn the brown striped socks, and that their colors have switched from “losers’ golden brown” to “winners’ orange, blue and white.”
That would seem to me that there was no brown at all anywhere in their 1962 scheme, helmets not being mentioned, not-withstanding.
We’ve pretty much worked over the SI articles from that time frame so far. But the only thing going for them is the *absence* of information regarding the logo color.
My personal opinion is that it was blue, to be honest. In some of the pics from the papers after away games, looking at the jerseys and the helmets, they seem to have the same negative density, and that *could* correlate them, but in no photo are we able to get that unknown color next to a *known* brown (like an old 1961 uni) to compare.
But like I said up near the top, and as I passed on to Paul, I’ve got a letter out to one of the players from 1962, and he’s been known as a very friendly, open guy who still loves to work with and for the Broncos (Goose Gonsoulin) and maybe he’ll either have insight, or another lead for us.
To be honest, it’s almost enough for me to just head down to Dove Valley (15-20 min from home) and pester folks down there to see, since there isn’t much else to do… *heh*
Oustanding. Thanks for digging those out.
I have ’em both…somewhere…and it’s good to reinforce the idea that nobody, nowhere, no how, noticed anything about the horse being incongruent with the new color scheme. And that the OLD color scheme was, in the team’s mind, not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.
Note: They did NOT present things as, “winners’ orange, blue and white…well, except for a losers’ brown horse decal.”
link
nice touch to the new Wiz unis I just noticed, see how the star and shorts cut make the blue area into a nice W. Hope that was intentional…
The Jaguars never wore link, did they? Probably a photo shop?
It’s #4 on one of those link.
Uh.. lol?
Yeah that’s pure photoshop. The Jags have never worn anything but a black helmet on the field. They’ve also never used any jersey that wasn’t teal, white or black. The guy who wrote that list is quite obviously not a football fan. He probably did a google search for “ugly football uniform” and picked from whatever he found.
not that there’s anything of value on that list worth defending, but the author never did explicitly say they wore that getup — just that:
“4.Jacksonville Jaguars – first season to current. No words necessary, another team wearing teal”
in other words, every uniform from their first till today is the 4th worst overall…although it wouldn’t surprise me if he thought that was actually worn on the field
Great column today. Some of those old baseball items was a blast. So much to go over today.
i dont know if someone said this already, but is it me or is the new “dc” logo a ripoff of the pacers old logo? link
i think the new colors and logos are definitely an improvement and look better, but i think they couldve been a little more reative with the dc logo
Also is kind of “half” of this…
link
link
they oughta change the name back to bullets.
wait—I’m not an NBA fan.
Never mind.
Wizards – tops are beautiful. Probably one of the top 5 tops in the league. The shorts I’m not sure about. The design in and of itself is good, they just don’t seem to match the top. Maybe it’s just me. But all in all, a HUGE improvement! I think they got this one right.
Weather-related uni note.
Golf ball sized hail at Target Field right now.
Players just took batting helmets out to the security guys ringing the field during the (so far) 22-minute delay for their protection.
So much large hail littering the field there is some issue as to whether play can be resumed.
At to think, a week ago there were snowflakes during a Twins game here. Today, near 90 and the field is in a tornado warning area. But, they still may have to figure out to play with ice chunks on the field.
They are now using a cart with a heated blower, driving around the field to melt and blow the hail in “gatherable” piles.
Just quoted the groundskeeper. “We don’t really have a plan for hail removal.”
So, what have here is ice all over the field…and it’s still 88 degrees at 9 p.m.
They could use one of those carts for gathering up golf balls at the driving range.
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