[Editor’s Note: Paul is on vacation and will return to the site on March 9. Today’s content is by assistant editor Mike Chamernik.]
By Mike Chamernik
The NBA was very standardized with its uniforms for many years. Aside from a few teams in gold, everyone wore colors on the road and white at home. Color-color matchups were unheard of.
There was an aberration, though. The Baltimore Bullets wore orange uniforms at home during the late 1960s, particularly in the 1968-69 season.
The orange shade was different enough that road teams wore their standard color uniforms. Bullets home games were tremendous in color but a confusing mess in black-and-white.
Kenny Kaplan tipped me off to this and helped me find as many photos I could. I also found this video that shows clips of the Bullets in orange against the Sonics. Kenny remembers the 1968-69 season pretty well.
“The Bullets got new uniforms that year which consisted of blue on the road and orange at home,” Kenny says. “Since many of us back then still had black and white TVs, it was an unusual choice as it was hard to tell the difference between the teams. In fact, I specifically remember watching a Knicks-Bullets game on Channel 9 when the Knicks announcer commented how the Bullets got new uniforms and while they look really nice, it’s really hard to tell the difference between the Knicks and Bullets on the TV monitor.”
Wanting to know more, I reached out to a few guys that played for the Bullets. I got in touch with Jack Marin, a forward that season.
“I loved that uniform,” Marin said. “It was the first one I wore in the NBA. It was highlighted with blue, the complementary color, and looked terrific. Its successor was bizarre, to say the least.”
Marin didn’t specify any color-vs.-color memories, though. I also called Kevin Lougherty, a Bullets guard, and while he remembers the orange unis (he liked to pair orange sneakers with them), he didn’t recall the color-color matchups. Dang.
The Bullets soon returned to conventional thinking. The next year they wore their orange uniforms on the road and went back to white at home. The blue uniforms were phased out.
They didn’t completely scrap the color-color matchups, though. The Bullets sometimes wore orange in the following seasons, including in November 1969 and in the 1971 preseason.
Pylons Displaced Red Flags: Metaphorically speaking, the end zone is the safest place on the football field, maybe in all of sports. The moment that the ball carrier crosses the plane, all violence and chaos stop. The drive is over, and points are put on the board. The job is done. Really, it wouldn’t be a stretch to put barcaloungers and coffee tables back there.
The end zone was quite different a half century ago. Goalposts were directly on the goal line, which often times was problematic. Instead of using padded rectangular pylons to mark the end zone, the NFL used flags with pointed tops.
I wince every time I see an old clip. I could only imagine a running back sprinting toward the corner, extending the ball out as he’s being tackled… and landing eyeball-first on the flag stick. Ow!
Gola-tending: Wearing personal accessories during a game would seem like a relatively new thing, but it’s not.
From what I’ve found, Hall of Fame guard Tom Gola was one of the first players to regularly wear a necklace during games. He wore one in college at La Salle in the early 1950s. Then, he had one in the pros with the Warriors, including in the 1956 NBA Finals, and with the Knicks. He wore several types of necklaces, including one that looks to be a dog tag (he was a US Army specialist).
Gola was predated by Vince Boryla, though. I didn’t find any game photos, but Boryla had on a necklace during a photo shoot with the Knicks in the early 1950s. He also wore one when he played for Notre Dame in the mid-1940s.
Mike’s Question of the Week
As a player or coach, have you ever chosen your team’s uniforms, colors, or logos? Did you design the uniforms yourself? What went into your choice? How were the uniforms received by players and fans?
Back when I was 14, my youth baseball team needed a name. Teams in our league took their names and logos from the MLB. We were in suburban Chicago, and the Cubs and White Sox were already taken. A few of us older players wanted our team to be different, so we ended up choosing the Blue Jays (the Expos were our other choice). We wore Blue Jays jerseys and caps, which we thought were pretty neat.
Share your answers in the comment section.
The Ticker
By Mike Chamernik
Baseball News: The Yankees and Pirates wore dark jerseys yesterday. The Yankees were in their road “New York” jerseys, but OF Aaron Hicks had on the home “NY” top (from Mark Grainda and Robert Brashear). … Some Indians players in Spring Training wore jerseys with red numbers, instead of the white ones with the sublimated designs on them (from Ben Dodds). … Team USA shortstop Brandon Crawford has an American flag-themed glove (from Brandon Arnold). … Team Israel is rallying around its mascot, “Mensch on a Bench” (from Phil). … A news station in Cincinnati used an old Reds logo during a report on Spring Training weather in Arizona (from Mike Neuhaus). … A Rockies beat reporter discussed the team’s new shade of purple with a baseball fan at Spring Training (from Perry Sailor). … The Salt Lake Bees and the Albuquerque Isotopes will play a throwback game in June (from Phil). … New uniforms for Endicott, a Division-III school (from Liam Burke).
NFL News: Baltimore Colts quarterback Bert Jones wore an Orioles cap while tossing the football around before a game in 1975 (from Ferdinand Cesarano). … A Reddit user created a redesign concept for every team in the league.
Hockey News: New mask for Blackhawks goalie Scott Darling (from Marc-Louis Paprzyca). … Black Hawks goaltender Denis DeJordy wore Rangers pants during a game against the Canadiens during the 1964-65 season. “I don’t know the explanation for this wardrobe malfunction except that during the 1964-65 season, DeJordy played 30 games for Chicago and seven games for the AHL’s Buffalo Bisons,” says Kevin Vautour. “I believe the Bisons had players from both the Rangers and Chicago on their rosters and had uniforms similar to New York.”
NBA News: Chicago wore Los Bulls jerseys last night. … The Hawks wore their blue Pistol Pete throwbacks at home against the Warriors, who were in white. … LeBron James wears No. 23 during games but No. 6 in practice. That forced new Cavalier Andrew Bogut to wear No. 6.5 during shootaround yesterday (from Phil). … A pair of socks in the Celtics online shop show Al Horford in a No. 24 jersey. He actually wears 42, and previously wore No. 15 with the Hawks (from Colin Tierney).
College & High School Hoops News: New postseason uniforms for nine Adidas schools. … A player on Northern Kentucky has some very short shorts (from Robert Hayes, via Phil). … A high school team in Michigan wears pants as part of its uniform (from Jordan Elwart). … Bill Kellick says that a few teams wore garish camo unis at his son’s recent basketball tournament. … A high school basketball player in Utah is named Stockton Malone Shorts.
Soccer News: During yesterday’s match against West Ham, Chelsea’s Gary Cahill’s shirt was stepped on and torn. The ref had him tuck it in and play continued, during the next stoppage he was given a replacement shirt with his name on the back (from reader Vivek).
Every year that I coached my son’s baseball team, I chose the team based on what we would wear. One season I wanted to wear orange, but the Giants were taken quickly, so we were the Astros. Last season, I wanted to wear black, so we became Pirates.
That Bullets “successor” uniform to the orange isn’t bizarre. … it’s amazing… love the stripes! :)
“Orange You Glad That the Bullets Switched to White?”
…Don’t you wish everybody did?
I always enjoy seeing old pictures of the Baltimore Civic Center, with the stage and temporary seating on one side of the court, and the arena name in small letters in the center jump circle, oriented to be legible from the other side. The teams are easily to distinguish in the black-and-white photo; the numbers on the visiting team’s uniforms (Milwaukee) are legible.
OMG! That clip from the Bullets/Sonics game was the first NBA game I attended.
Aren’t those road uniforms black, not blue?
An interesting note to the old flags used for endzone markings, is that they had a spring at the bottom from just above the ground for a few inches. The flag would then bend if hit and spring back into place. Worst thing in the old football days were the first down distance markers with a spike on the bottom to push it into the ground. All have nubs on them these days.
Also note that there are rings on top of the flags, so they aren’t as pointy as claimed.
Black Hawks goaltender Denis DeJordy wore Rangers pants during a game against the Canadiens during the 1964-65 season.
In 1964-65, Glenn Hall wore number 1 for the Black Hawks. So, assuming the photo is indeed DeJordy, it has to be after the 1967 expansion.
“LeBron James wears No. 23 during games but No. 6 in practice. That forced new Cavalier Andrew Bogut to wear No. 6.5 during shootaround yesterday”
well that didn’t last long since he broke his leg two minutes into his first game with the Cavs
Why does LeBron wear 6 in practice, anyway? I know he wore it with the Heat, and am pretty certain he did so with Team USA, as well. Superstition/habit, I presume?
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I have coached several aau basketball teams, in the Cleveland Ohio area, My go to color is always Carolina Blue as much of what i coach is the Carolina Style of play and of course sky is the limit. There have been a few times i had to use the Carolina Blue as an accent, which surprising goes well with almost any color.
“LeBron James wears No. 23 during games but No. 6 in practice. That forced new Cavalier Andrew Bogut to wear No. 6.5 during shootaround yesterday”
that didn’t last long since he broke his leg two minutes into his first Cavs game
opps.. got an error message the first time i tried to post this comment
“A news station in Cincinnati used an old Reds logo”: Dal Maxvill strikes again!
“A player on Northern Kentucky has some very short shorts”: Player covered himself with compression pants/leggings, though.
Israel WBC team (and mascot): After hearing about Israel’s success in the tournament so far, I don’t know how they’ll keep the momentum going to 2020, when baseball and softball return to the Olympic Games.
QOTW
Ended up running a beer league hockey team after “temporarily” filling in for a meeting; ended up running the team and making up the jerseys.
Story here on the jerseys here:
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Jerseys were generally well received by the team.
The fans? let’s just say players on the ice generally outnumbered than fans in the stands, and I never heard their opinion.
maybe the sky’s the ceiling, or the ceiling is the roof.
Considering you like the carolina blue and carolina style of play, maybe you can explain.
” A news station in Cincinnati used an old Reds logo during a report on Spring Training weather in Arizona”
Love that Reds logo.
That old Reds logo is the best Reds logo. They should go back to using the Running Man as their primary logo.
I can only say that I envy those kids who got to wear replicas of Major League uniforms.
When I was in little league, our teams had generic uniforms, and had the names of sponsors. So I played for “Jon Gordon” (a clothing store), and our biggest rival was a team called “Mark’s Lumber”. It would have been a lot nicer to have played for the Tigers or the Cardinals or whatever.
Though if I had ended up on the Red Sox, then I, being a huge Yankee fan at 10 years old, would surely have quit rather that put on that uniform.
Me too! We never had team nicknames. Just short colors by neighborhood.
That’s all well and good when the kid’s coach gets to pick a good, or at least good-looking, team. Five summers of my youth were spent wearing either a rainbow-gut Astros jersey or a dark-brown Padres pullover. Either jersey borders on child abuse when adults force kids to wear it to play a game against other kids. I used to pine for my coach-pitch days when my team had generic yellow shirts with the league logo and the Bottle N Can sponsor logo printed in white. Nominally we were the Mets, but I’d have taken a generic colored t-shirt over those Astros and Padres jerseys every time.
The Little League that I played for had MLB team names, but the colors didn’t match, other than the Orioles who were actually orange (this was a rural area near Baltimore). I played for the Giants that were blue, and the Rangers that were black.
Sigh. “Paint N Stuff”. With purple no less. And crappy trucker caps.
ed
Picked the basketball uniforms style out of the catalog. Did some custom changes. We went from t-shirt style to sleeveless and went over well once they saw them in person. Added gold to the blue & white colors.
Loved the orange of the Baltimore Bullets. They were my favorite team back then.
Agree with you 100% on the goal posts & end zone flags. Wonder if that ever happened. Before my senior year right before the season started I cut the barbed wire at the end of our west end zone. As a receiver I didn’t want to run into that. It was right next to a railroad line- no one ever fixed it.
My first two years in anklebiters, the team name was voted on by the players.
Year 1, we were the Warhawks because our high school teams were the James Madison Warhawks. When I got to Madison, my American history teacher explained that Warhawks wasn’t an ideal nickname for James Madison. All Vienna Youth Inc. teams wore white helmets (gray facemaks) and black or white jerseys with white pants. That year, we had a block W on the helmet.
My second year the team voted to be the Chargers. The coach that year would keep that name as his son grew up through the divisions. We had a red bolt on the helmet and black jerseys that year.
I went to JMHS as well. Class of 2002. Nice to see a fellow Warhawk on Uni Watch.
You’ll notice the picture of the Bullets during the 1971 preseason shows the player on the left with the lettering that uses the small “b” and hands on the “l”s whereas the other two Baltimore players have the old lettering.
When I took over as the Head Football Coach at a high school I go to design the new uniforms. There was a lot of planning that went on between myself, the principal, the athletic director and the uniform company. I was limited in that the school decided to go with this company before I got hired so that ruled out any big name brand, the company did a job designing. The school had gone through a lot of changes and struggled with the color teal through the years. Changes went from teal jerseys to black and gold jerseys with no teal, to “Full Teal” including the helmets. Most of the schools uniforms until recently never could get all 3 colors to work quite right. Mainly because most generic uniforms offer a main color and an outline color.
The school administrators wanted a few things to change, almost a rebrand of the program. The school colors were Teal, Black and Vegas gold. The administration wanted 3 things.
1. Replace Teal as the primary color with black, but keep teal very prominent on the uniform.
2. Replace Vegas Gold with Steelers Gold.
3. Emphasis the schools “Newish” logo.
The initial design I got from the manufacture was too busy but had potential. They tried for too many gray accents and to sublimate some kind of Panther print on the jerseys and stripes on the pants. After some redesigns we came out with a great looking uniform. Pants looked like the Jaguars black pants, jersey was black with teal/gold numbers with a “sweatback” design. For the helmets we added a center stripe and changed the logo. Turned out to be a great looking uniform.
What’s the BA in the first line?
Probably a typo for NBA.
Oh jeez… off to a good start. I fixed it.
QOTW: When I played little league baseball, our league was made up of a bunch of neighborhoods and other unincorporated areas within our rather large & spread out rural township. Our area was know as Carbon. Most of the teams in the league had MLB nicknames, but rarely did the uniform colors ever match those of the MLB counterparts (for example, we were always green & yellow, as the same uniforms were used for a number of seasons). One year we had the bright idea that we wanted our team name to be Carbon Dioxide. The coaches thought it was pretty clever, and the league was fine with it too. To take things one step further, we even customized our hats. They were yellow “trucker” hats, with a green “C” on the front. We took green markers and added “O2” to the C. I can’t honestly remember if we did a subscript 2 for scientific correctness, a large 2 for better visibility (or just plain ignorance), or if it varied from player to player, since we all decorated our own hats.
Helped my dad design our little league baseball unis one year in the 80s. Our sponsor was gold and black, we went straight Pirates unis with the pillbox striped hat. Loved those unis and had fun helping pick them out – sitting in the back room of a now-defunct local sporting goods store with catalogs everywhere.
Forget about the ‘Mensch on the bench’; gotta love those ‘Jew Crew’ T-shirts, with their own take on the Milwaukee Barrelman. I truly laughed out loud when I saw that.
Paul, thanks for noticing the “Jew Crew” shirt. I was lucky enough to design it for them. The picture shows Cody Becker wearing the shirt who recently got signed by the Milwaukee Brewers. Ironically he had to ask his fans who Barrelman was when he first got his Brewers hats. lol Go #TeamIsrael
I’m guessing that if you want to write this up, Paul would be thrilled to run it.
I may do that BurghFan. It’s ironic because I work at a Jewish art museum but Cody Decker (not Becker, thanks Neeko) didn’t know that. Thanks again for the suggestion
*Decker
My team chose and bought our own uniforms when I ran track and cross country (D-3) in college back in the early 1980s. In hindsight it is still rather unbelievable.
The track and XC teams were pretty much bottom-rung when it came to any sort of funding, and we were wearing some very old, heavy durene tops and shorts while the rest of the running world was moving on to more modern (and much lighter) materials. When the athletic department finally took action the situation got worse because they bought what must have been basketball practice tops, which were heavier and actually abrasive to run in. A recent graduate (and runner) donated money to buy modern unis, giving it directly to the team. We ordered modern unis in a traditional design in school colors with the name on the front. Unfortunately, the unis were delivered to the athletic dept office (rather than the coach) and they were quite upset, and came up with all sorts of excuses why we could not use them. Ultimately the only way they would release the unis to us was for each of us to pay for our own uni. Kind of crazy. But the cool thing is that I was able to keep my uni (without swiping it) and my older son, who is running for the same college, has a true throw back top to wear.
That’s 3 straight home games for the Hawks wearing color:
Mar 3 – Hawks (blue) vs. Cavs (gold)
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Mar 5 – Hawks (red) vs. Pacers (white)
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Mar 6 – Hawks (blue) vs. Warriors (white)
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When coaching my daughter through t-ball, coach-pitch, etc in summer Park District leagues, each team was given a different color t-shirt and hat as the uniform, and we let the kids vote on the team name based on the color. Two memorable occasions: we were issued ‘Key Lime’ uniforms, and the kids voted to be the Pies; and another year we were issued red uniforms and one of the kids suggested that we be called The Blood-Soaked Corpses.
He spent a lot of time in right field
Forgot about the orange for the Bullets. So for around 4 years they had the same colors as their rivals the Knicks. I like now when the Suns wear their orange “PHX” uniforms at home. Orange is one of the best colors for a “color-on-color” game. Like I’ve said before, it’s not about wearing different colors during a “color-on-color” game, but rather the contrast. The USC/UCLA football game wouldn’t work if the UCLA blue was navy, or even a darker royal blue. And quite frankly it looked better when the Bruins wore a lighter shade of blue back in the 60s through early 80s.
That lady who said the Cards unis are bad is like people saying the Beatles are overrated. It ends the conversation before it even starts.
But, unlike the Cards’ uniforms, the Beatles really *are* overrated.
I’ll answer that the same way I always do.
OK.
Agree. There’s no point in explaining why they are wrong ( I don’t use the word argue here because an argument implies there are merits to each side of the conversation but since the Beatles cannot be over rated, anyone who says otherwise is wrong and there isn’t anything to argue about. Just explain why they are wrong.) I mean how can the best of anything be over rated? It makes no sense. I get that maybe sometime one might want to hear the Rolling Stones or even Kool Moe Dee,but they aren’t overrated and don’t suck.
He’s not wrong, you know.
Can’t “argue” with stupid…
QOTW:
I captained a softball team that was started from fellow MA and PhD students in Medieval History at my grad school.
We’d taken a course in paleography at the Newberry Library together as a group to read manuscripts. One day the instructor was talking about Caroline Minuscule (the basis of our modern Roman fonts) replaced most of the other regional scripts beginning in the 9th century. She coined it a “Carolingian Steamroller.” I thought that had such a marvelous ring to it, like the old NFL team the Providence Steamroller. When time came to choose the softball team name “Carolingian Steamroller” was an easy choice.
For our T-Shirts I drew up a script that had “Carolingian” in Caroline Minuscule with an underline containing the word “STEAMROLLER” just like the 60’s-70’s White Sox road script.
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After a few years of assistant coaching in out youth soccer association I was made a Board member. One of the first things I proposed was to change our teams’ colors from teal and purple to, well, anything other than teal and purple. Our ‘change kits of white over purple shorts were fairly nice but the teal/purple/teal as our primary look was awful.
I met almost unanimous resistance to any change due to ‘tradition’. I got samples of red/white, green/yellow combos and others. I remember that I really loved a black and white set with touches of red. But in the end I was outvoted.
My kids grew up and we left the association behind but a few years later I saw a kid in Wal Mart wearing his uniform….. red/white/red.
A few years back my beer-league softball team lost our sponsor so we had to come up with a new name. We became the ’94 Expos and got powder blue tops (not era correct for 1994, I know) with the Expos logo and many of us bought hats to match. The feedback from other teams that played in our league and the park overall was beyond positive, every week people would comment on how they loved the idea.
Liked the Yankees gray caps. Can’t understand why the Pirates’ shirts have gold numbers in front and the names and numbers in white on the back.
I think all the spring training unis have white numbers on the back because of the sublimation. link
I know they want to sell jerseys, but the allure of a spring training specific jersey eludes me.
Question of the Week:
When a bunch of friends and I played slow pitch softball, two of us decided we ought to get uniform t-shirts printed, and came up with ThunderBats, which was pretty much just the ThunderCats logo with the ThunderBats name underneath. Anyone of approximately our age who watched ThunderCats as a kid would usually compliment the uniforms.
I coached a boys baseball team in the 90’s while in college. I chose the Cubs, because we were all Cubs fans (my group of friends). Most of the teams used MiLB teams and logos. I had a friend with a screen print business help me out. I took the Bullseye C and added the Cubbie Bear logo in the dead space, but modified it slightly (there were not as many restrictions back then on copying). I found some white full button jerseys, screened on the left with the C logo, red number on the right panel, a’ la Dodgers, and wore white pants with belts, blue stirrups and Cubs hats. Good look, classic and crisp. The kids loved it.
Gola and Boryla , both Catholics were probably wearing religious
medals on chains. One photo appears to be showing Gola wearing a
scapular.
Paul. I think you are absolutely correct. I just spoke to a man who knew him well. I just asked him, “Did Tom Gola wear a necklace during games?” He literally turned to me an said, “No”…but he was known for wearing a Scapular.” :)
QOTW:
TEAM names and logos? No
BAND names and logos? YES!! LOL!
I was involved in the travel baseball program in Somers NY. We found out that the uniform supplier would give us a huge break if the different aged teams selected the same uniform type. I was given the job of selecting style etc. They just had to be Red and Black/Grey as we were called the Somers Red Storm. A mom suggested grey instead of white as grey hides dirt better. I was crazy about the Anaheim Angels Faux sleeveless uni’s of that time, so I came up with a Grey Henley with red sleeves, Somers in script with a serif tail on front, Gray pants, red socks, and a red crown hat with black peak and the old Lake Elsinore Storm Logo on front. We looked smokin’ hot!
Humorous exchange last night during the GSW-ATL game. Bob Fitzgerald asked his co-commentator Jim Barnett (who played in the NBA in the 1970s) his thoughts on the ATL throwback unis, though no specifying them as throwbacks. Barnett gave a semi-rant about how it was weird that they weren’t the Hawks’ colors and how a team could just pick any old color. Given that Barnett actually played against a Hawks team that WORE those colors in the early 70s . . . Some announcers don’t even remotely GET IT, even ones who played. Reminiscent of the comments Harold Reynolds made during a playoff game between StL and SF, when he didn’t understand why the Giants were wearing apparently dirty uniforms. They were in fact wearing their home creams.
I am the PA Announcer at Scottsdale Stadium, where the Indians played yesterday against the Giants.
The Indians players pictured with red numbers are guys who were called up from minor league camp for the game.
Because the Indians had a split squad, and were missing some players for the WBC, a number of minor league camp guys were called up for the game.
Typically in minor league spring training, teams either have a jersey that is similar to the MLB jerseys made or, in this case, they wear MLB camp jerseys from previous seasons.
Always nice to get info directly from someone who knows. Thanks.
I was the “marketing manager” for my club lacrosse team. I polled the team as to what they wanted on the jersey and the three main replies were the star, representing “central”, like on a map, the U.S. flag and “OTFG”. Which was a common phrase among our team because if you took a shot, it better be “on the f#$^ing goal”.
I also designed the wrap for my helmet to match. Mock up and final product photos in the link below
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Great responses, everyone!
Second to last year in little league my team was the Mets. All teams were named after big league clubs, and standard issue was a color mesh pullover with the big league logo and snapback big league cap. Player was responsible for belt, undershirt and socks/stirrups. Our coach told us to go with either black or blue undershirt/belt to go with our blue (with white trim) Mets pullover. Being the young uni-watcher I was, I went to the sporting goods store and bought the orange sleeve undershirt and orange belt knowing it would complement the NY cap logo and distinguish us from the two other blue pullover teams – Dodgers and Braves. The orange was a hit, and for the second game the entire team had gone to orange accessories.
Would the orange Bullets be acceptable if they wore Tampa Bay creamcicle orange? Is that light enough to go with white, yellow and silver (Spurs) as a home color in the 1970s? I remember the Cavaliers wearing beige in the early 80s.
After Tampa Bay’s first season, the orange was too light to be a number color so they went with red on the white jerseys.
The road uniforms for the Bullets and the trim on the orange ones
looks more black than blue to me.
Mike’s question regarding uniform choices and the responses to it reminded me of something that our local Little League used to adhere to: No local teams. When I grew up, you could not be on the Cubs or the White Sox. If they would have had those two teams, every kid would want to be on them and would be really bummed out if they weren’t on the team.
I just started coaching in that same little league last year and the Cubs and White Sox are back. Sure enough, EVERY kid wants to be on either of those teams and if a kid isn’t, they are always disappointed whenever they have to tell someone what team they were on. I would love the league to go back to no Chicago teams being available.
Just my share…..
“they are on”
These NBA teams need to quit this crap with away alternate uniforms at home if the colors don’t match the court.
As to the question of the day: When I played as a kid everyone had the same uniforms, Gray Flannels. the only difference was the hat and stirrups. Different colors and the teams were named after whomever sponsored them. My first Year I played for RELIABLE LIFE INSURANCE …a power house in the SYB league for years. ( Suburban Youth Boosters) No one had numbers either ..on the back of your jersey was a big Square patch with the sponsors name. Your Mom or whomever had to sew it on for you. We had Black stirrups and hats, plain black hats. The next year we switched and became WEBSTER GROVES TRUST …and went to Navy Blue stirrups and hats.. The key was getting those stirrups as high as you could…stretching them out. I was always jealous of kids who got NUMBERS..much less team names!
In youth soccer, baseball, and basketball growing up, all my teams were named after the local businesses who sponsored our team uniform (t-shirts). Colors were determined by the league, but it seemed most colors were kept true to the business who sponsored the team (i.e., blue=pharmacy, black=doctor’s office, red=grocery, yellow=another grocery). I don’t remember a team that had the same pharmacy sponsor wear a different color shirt, no matter the sport.
Great pictures and great memories of the Bullets – who were right up there with the Orioles and Colts in my youth. But our dumb arena with its dumb stage lives on. Now known as the Royal Farms Arena – aka The Chicken Box.
Does anybody know exactly for how long the NFL put the goal posts on the goal line? This seems like such an incredibly stupid idea that one wonders how it even got past the rules committee stage.
RE: QOTW
I am an amateur graphic designer at heart, and have designed several baseball uniforms and caps for various recreational teams. I have evolved my adult baseball team’s uniforms whose colors are orange and black and named the Hawks. When I first joined the team, our emblem was the cartoon Oriole of the Baltimore Orioles because it was one of the few bird mascots available to replicate easily. Since then, we’ve created custom Hawks images and lettering for our uniforms to have a more aggressive, predatory look, while also transforming from the 80’s pullover tops to a more traditional, button-down style. Our cap is my proudest part of the design, which was inspired by the creativity of the Milwaukee Brewers “ball in glove” logo. Perhaps in the future I’ll send a pic via Paul’s email address.
I have also designed my son’s travel baseball team’s uniforms. Unlike my adult team, we started from scratch but adopted the name Warriors since the kids voted on the team name to be the same as their recent, local heroes, the Golden State Warriors. Despite the basketball inspiration, we have made our team’s logo to look similar since our town has a bridge as the GSW logo does. Our team colors however are green and black, to represent a color from each of the local MLB teams, the A’s and Giants.
In a past career stint, I also designed uniforms for a United Airlines tournament baseball team.
That NBA footage also contains a rare view of the San Diego Rockets and the then fairly new (opened 1966) San Diego Sports Arena.
What’s hard to believe in that era, with at least 2 million less residents (county-wide) there were 3 major league franchises in that market. Now, there’s only one. That makes little, if any-sense.
Makes perfect sense to me. San Diego is full of military and, therefore, full of transients.
Played in Sunrise Beach MO in 1970-72 for “Zack Wheat”. At 11 years old thought it was a cereal brand. Once in awhile we would meet Mr. Wheat after a game at a tavern. Yes, different times. He played checkers. I got beat by him in 4 moves. Wish I would have been collecting signed baseball’s.
Can Chicago PLEASE stop with Los Bulls? I can kind of understand unis like “Los Mets” because “Mets” isn’t really a word. And maybe some translations would be somewhat confusing. But pretty much everyone would recognize the meaning of “Toros”. Heck, it would probably even sell better.