The Minor Leagues are always a fun watch, partly because so many teams adopt alternate identities, or alter egos, which of course means new uniforms and caps. Two of those MiLB teams have unveiled alternate identities for 2025: the Altoona Curve and the Fresno Grizzlies.
The Altoona Curve — a Double A affiliate for the Pittsburgh Pirates — will have three new caps and jerseys for the 2025 season. They were recently unveiled via this video:
Unfortunately, the club did not provide any still images for the new looks, but I’ve made some screen grabs which will have to suffice.
The first new jersey and cap shown in the video will be a new bronze jersey, an alternate the team will wear on both home and road. It will be paired with a new red/bronze cap.
The second jersey shown will give the Curve an alternate identity: it’s a fauxback/ode to the Altoona Rail Kings, a former Independent baseball team that existed for just two seasons (1996-97). The jersey is white, and will be paired with a new green cap. This uniform will be worn for Thursday home games.
The final jersey, which will be worn over a special weekend series in July, creates another new identity as the Blair County Crickets, which per the team is “an ode to the rich baseball history at Cricket Field.” The cap design is retro, with soutache and an interlocking “BC”.
The Grizzlies play in the California League and are the Single-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. (The Grizzlies were established in 1998 as members of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League [PCL]. They won the PCL championship in 2015, making it the only league title in franchise history. Fresno was transferred to the Low-A West in 2021, but this was renamed the California League in 2022.)
Per the team…
The uniform’s rebrand focuses primarily on the taco truck in a return to the roots of the Fresno Tacos moniker. The original idea to take the field as the Fresno Tacos was born out of the organization’s world-famous taco truck festival, Taco Truck Throwdown. The Central Valley is the birthplace of the taco truck, whose lonchera truck origins arose from the 1942 Braseros Act and a need for a way to feed laborers in the fields during World War II.
“Playing as the Fresno Tacos has always been about the Taco Truck,” said Derek Franks, president of the Fresno Grizzlies. “Paying tribute to the hardworking men and women who run these small businesses is the cornerstone of our Tacos alter ego, and we feel this year’s rebrand brings the attention back to them.”
Jerseys are pinstriped, and feature red color-blocked sleeves. A “alter ego” patch marking the “establishment” date of 2015 for the Tacos is on the right sleeve.
Here’s a look at those new uniforms and cap:
The cap is silver-gray with a red brim, and features a depiction of a taco truck as the cap logo.
The Grizzlies will debut their new Tacos uniform/identity on May 30th of this year.
I love that the mascot is an un-anthropomorphized truck. Good work, and clever!
They should have gone as Fresno Chiles. You then can mix taco trucks, tacos and Chile’s .
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Properly-sized plackets/headspoons. So it CAN be done…
MiLB is starting to become a generic template of mascots.
The Rail Kings cap really reminds me of Australia’s WBC caps.
I thought the same thing
I like these, especially the Fresno food truck.
Maybe Altoona should have used the cap of the mascot as its cap: pinstripes with an A. Plus pinstriped uniform to match. But I like this one as well.
“The Central Valley is the birthplace of the taco truck, whose lonchera truck origins arose from the 1942 Braseros Act and a need for a way to feed laborers in the fields during World War II.”
This is Raul Martinez/East LA erasure. The food trucks the Grizzlies are referring to are a vastly different sort of thing than what we think of as a “food truck” today and Martinez was responsible for inventing it.
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