UW pal/contributor Walter Helfer has been busy this week! Yesterday, we showed off Walter’s design for a “Property of” Uni Watch t-shirt, and earlier this week we took a look at Walter’s “red/blue” uni color flips he calls Red Pill, Blue Pill. That looked at the NFL, while his previous post looked at Hockey red/blue swaps.
Today Walter is back with some redesigns for MLB.
I’ll include Walter’s introduction from the first part with this article as well. Here’s Walter…
Red Pill, Blue Pill
by Walter Helfer
America’s colors are well chosen: Similar in value but chromatically dissonant. Ever since pundits started coloring their political maps with red or blue states, we have been conditioned to think of the relation of the two hues as binary, nearly as much as black and white.
Blue is cool; red is hot. On paper, blue is relaxing and stable, but red vibrates. Yet in the dark, the relationship is reversed: Red light is clear and easy to see, but blue is mysterious and fuzzy-edged.
In this spirit, I want to take a new look at teams that have chosen this color scheme, and flip the results. I hope this exercise gives insight into the designs teams use, and satisfy an urge to investigate how things would look had they made the opposite choice.
Today I am going to look at baseball teams, with basketball to follow.
ATLANTA BRAVES
The Braves had three different uniform designs with American Flag colors. I’ve chosen the first since the other two balanced red and blue pretty evenly. IMHO, blocks of blue and red would have yielded a jazzier, more retro uniform but that falls a bit outside the purview of the assignment.
CHICAGO CUBS
Since I could simply guess what the front looks like, I chose to show the back. I really like what’s going on with the numbers and pinstripes. The blue outlines jump right out. As for the hat, I dislike the way a dark “C” looks against the red backdrop. So I use a white “C” with a blue outline.
LOS ANGELES DODGERS
Everybody has to be curious how this uniform comes out, right? Unsurprising, but still beautiful. The best detail is the white squatchee on the red hat, and I really regret the Phillies’ decision to retire this feature. If anything, this idea makes me really appreciate the Angels’ uniform and the binary relationship they have with Los Doyers.
MONTREAL EXPOS
In the 1990s, Les Expos retired a balanced, European-looking design and adopted a blue uniform which owed a lot to the Cubs. The most upsetting detail was a flabby-looking “Expos” script which looked klutzy and irregular. And the beautiful numbers were gone! That being said, Montreal looks good in red. I resisted the urge to unretire the Indianapolis Clowns’ cap, with its alternating red, white and blue panels. That will appear in a future article, “Walter Takes an Axe to Every Major League Team”
PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES
The lone red team in this essay gets a blue makeover. Looks strange, doesn’t it? It needs the Liberty Bell on the stirrups, because the flashes of red are few and far between.
TEXAS RANGERS
Are they a red team? Are they a blue team? Why not both? It never hurt the Expos. I had a choice: When Nolan Ryan pitched for Texas, their uniforms were never bluer. When they moved to the Ballpark at Arlington, they were resolutely red. However, the red uniforms are a design the Rangers are still using (or at least a descendant of it). The 1985 Texas uniforms stood out for their starkness, an odd sartorial choice for the Lone Star State. The red-for-blue swap is as big a change as you can make. The home uniforms would look a lot like the Cardinals’.
Coming up: The NBA.
Thanks Walter! This has been a fun project — looking forward to your take on the NBA.
Readers? What say you?
The Phillies uniform looks like the evolution of what their 1940s-era Blue Jays experiment could have been. The Cubs look like the early 1970s White Sox, which is an underrated uniform IMO. Meanwhile, I imagine the Cardinals would look a lot more like the Dodgers with a blue/red flip.
St. Louis was perched at the cusp of my cutoff (navy blue or dark blue?) but then I realized the birds were a stumbling block. Do them wrong, or leave them unchanged? A bind I chose not to address.
I actually like the fact that the squatchee on the main Phillies cap is blue with the red background and the white monogram P. The only blue in the uniform is there, the stars on the “i”s and the Liberty Bell on the hosiery (for those who partake). Similarly, the red squatchee on the alternate blue cap is nice but the red on the brim and the cap logo makes it stand out a little less, but a blue (or white) squatchee wouldn’t look right IMO.
Nice work on these concepts!
Glad you liked them! More stuff in the pipeline.
DON’T EVER DISRESPECT DODGER BLUE EVER AGAIN!! IT’S BLASPHEMOUS AND HIDEOUS, EVEN THOUGH IT’S A CONCEPT.
I was wondering when the Orthodox among us would finally chime in.
I love your art style.
Credit goes to a lot of comic books; especially Archie, Richie Rich, and Love and Rockets.
Really good stuff, Walter!
I really like how you added sleeve numbers to the Phillies ; )
And you nailed the shade of blue, too!
1980’s ChrisH quietly rooted for the Cubs since that had a lot of former Phillies on their squad – but I’m glad Dallas Green didn’t acquire the red pins from Philadelphia.
Your red Expos hat (they used those for BP/ST IIRC) looks great, as does the Braves cap.
Chief among them Ryne Sandberg, but I remember Bob Dernier and Dick Ruthven. There were some uniforms I could have riffed on, including the 1984 Cubs’ road uniform, and the Phillies maroon and pastel blue road sets.
Broke my heart seeing Bowa (my fav Phillie) in Cubbie Blue – though those blue-over-white roadies were just sensational.
A mod-P blue hat would be a hit throughout the Delaware Valley – put those CC lids (very popular ‘round here) to shame.
Red pinstripes vastly underrated
Do you know I have never seen green or orange pinstripes? The 1977 Pirates were so focused on gold pinstripes, they outlined them in black to make sure everyone noticed.
Red pins put the player in the pink – never liked them for that reason. YVVM.
The process is everything; I hate the look of sublimated pinstripes. They have to be woven into the fabric. For this reason, I always liked the stripes on the 1985 Padres’ uniforms.
I like the Rangers in red, reminds me of the mid-late 90s Juan Gonzalez-Pudge era set that was a breath of fresh air at the time.
I’m happy that the Rangers finally broke through and won their championship. It must have been an excruciating wait.
what have you done to my cubbies?!
Nothing that can’t be undone.
Slaughtering sacred cows is fun!
When the Braves first designed those “feather” uniforms they were predominantly red, most probably like the drawing here. They showed them to Hank Aaron, who suggested they flip flop the red and blue.
I think the design is very effective when you use colors, instead of white (like the Padres did). In another feature, I’d like to render the uniforms in blue and red.
Another fact about the blue:red balance I’ve discovered is that a 50/50 split is okay, but if there’s an imbalance, err on the side of blue. The only team to successfully buck this rule is the St. Louis Cardinals.