Today on the Ticker: Baseball belts, big volleyball news, NOB news everywhere, and more.
Uni Watch News Ticker for August 2, 2023
Posted in:
Baseball
MLB
- Nationals SS C.J. Abrams wore a sparkly red belt last night. His teammates mostly wore navy or black belts. (From Bryan, who didn’t give his last name)
- Speaking of belts, Rays 1B Yandy Díaz wore a pink one last night, while his teammates wore black ones. (From Geoff Poole)
- Angels utility player Brandon Drury is on a rehab assignment with the Salt Lake Bees. He wore a red Angels helmet last night. (From Michael B. Lundberg)
- Here’s why the Blue Jays wear their red jerseys, even when they’re horrendous in them. (Thanks, Phil)
- Smokey, a feral cat that has lived in Coors Field since it opened in 1995, is being put up for adoption. Apparently, the neighborhood around the stadium has been filled with feral cats since before Coors Field opened. (Phil, again)
- Former Padres 3B Graig Nettles had a straight NOB while his teammates wore radially arched NOBs during the 1984 World Series. Anyone know why? (From Tom Konecny)
More
- Here’s the logo for the 2023 Canadian Little League Championship. (From Wade Heidt)
- Rutgers will share Middlesex College’s field beginning in 2026. (From John Cerone)
Football
NFL
- Here’s the jersey schedule for the Panthers. (Thanks, Phil)
- Paul recently appeared on the podcast 49ers Webzone: No Huddle about the team’s uniforms. (From multiple readers)
- Broncos CB Patrick Surtain II wore imprinted thigh pads with an image of a PlayStation 2 controller on them. The controller is a reference to Surtain’s nickname, PS2. If you remember: Back in 2021, Paul did a profile on a company that makes thigh pads with images on them. (From Mark Britten)
- Raiders QB Jimmy Garoppolo has worn a different helmet for three separate practices now. (From Rudy Gutierrez)
- A fan brought a Steelers/Pitt Frankenjersey for QB Kenny Pickett to sign. (From Corey Crisan)
- The Chiefs have released two sideline caps, and fans really hate one of them. (From Phil)
College
- Following up on yesterday’s Nevada story: This article contains a bunch of photos that weren’t available when yesterday’s post went live, plus what a sportswriter and an online poll have to say about the team’s new unis. (Thanks, Phil)
- Slight updates to Stanford’s unis: The black outline around the jersey numbers is gone, and so is the pants logo on the hip. (From Josh Lauderdale)
- Recent New Mexico transfer S D’Angelo Perkins-McAllister recently received his extra-long NOB. According to a team spox, New Mexico had to use “super-skinny lettering” to get the name to fit correctly. Here’s what his NOB looked like at his previous school, TCU. As an added bonus, the school also has an extra-long name in RB Jacory Croskey-Merritt.
Hockey
NHL
- According to one YouTuber, the 2013-14 season was the worst season for unis. (From Phil)
Minors/Juniors
- New 20th-anniversary logo for the SPHL. Also, moving forward, the SPHL will no longer call itself the Southern Professional Hockey League. Instead, it will just go by its initials. (From multiple readers)
Basketball
NBA
- Timberwolves Anthony Edwards is changing his number to No. 5. (From Mike Chamernik)
- NASCAR driver Alex Bowman and his pit crew will be wearing Pistons-themed uniforms for this Saturday’s race at the Michigan International Speedway. (From Wayne, who didn’t give his last name)
More
- Here are Team USA’s numbers for the upcoming men’s World Cup.
Soccer
USA
- The New York Red Bulls have revealed a third shirt. It looks like they’ll wear it Aug. 26. (From our own Jamie Rathjen)
International
- Scotland: A few weeks ago, we reported on Kilmarnock’s new away shirt, which honored the discoverer of Penicillin, Alexander Fleming, who hailed from Kilmarnock. Here’s a science-themed interview with Kilmarnock F Innes Cameron that talks about the new shirt. (From Shawn Hairston)
- Japan: Thespakusatsu Gunma of the J2 League has introduced a nickname, Thespa Gunma. (From Jeremy Brahm)
- Georgian clubs have a long and fascinating history of wearing other teams’ kits. (From Ed Zelaski)
Auto Racing
- Cross-listed from the basketball section: NASCAR driver Alex Bowman and his pit crew will be wearing Detroit Pistons-themed uniforms for this Saturday’s race at the Michigan International Speedway. (From Wayne, who didn’t give his last name)
Volleyball
- New unis for Wyoming women.
- New jerseys for Cincinnati women. (From gjmarmet)
- New unis for Wolfdogs Nagoya of Japan’s men’s V.League. (From Jeremy Brahm)
Grab Bag
- New secondary logo for Temple. More details here. (From multiple readers)
Comments (26)
The Timberwolves player changing his number is forward Anthony Edwards, not KAT.
Fixed
Are these new personalized thigh pads 3D printed? Or, do they just make custom molds? I would 3D printed pads would be so much easier to make.
ERRATA:
1. The Rays wear navy belts, not black.
2. The TCU web site said the UNM transfer’s first name is D’Arco, not D’Angelo.
3. Good move by Stanford to de-BFBS-icy their uniforms.
4. I like Temple’s secondary logo well enough but it is so unnecessary. Everyone recognizes the Split T, and the owl design stood up well. This looks like something Nike would have dreamed up for a base layer nobody
…nobody would ever see. (I apologize for the premature “send”.)
To your point #4: I’ve had enough of the whole diamond motif. Yeah, I know Russell Conwell gave a speech mentioning ‘acres of diamonds’ like 100 years ago – Temple’s gotten enough mileage out of that already. How about incorporating some subtle Philly reference instead?
The Padres wore vertically-arched NOBs in the 1984 WS, not radially-arched. That said, it took a sharper eye than mine to see that Nettles’ was straight across.
And why can’t they let that elderly cat live out his years in the only home he’s known? A 28-year old cat’s not gonna appreciate uprooting.
I somehow missed that “radially” was typed into the entry above.
I’m guessing the Nettles straight-NOB jersey was a replacement jersey? They may have had blank jerseys and numbers on hand for emergency, but given the time required to custom cut vertically-arched letters, stock letters would be faster, and maybe putting the name on straight as opposed to radially-arched was faster still. Bear in mind, this is just speculation on my part.
As far as that short about the 2013-14 NHL uniforms, I will definitely disagree about some of the uniforms shown. While ditching gold for silver was a downgrade for the Stars, the brighter green was an upgrade, and the uniforms were a vast upgrade over their overly simplistic first Edge unis. The alternates for the Senators and Blues were superior to their regular uniforms (the Sens had that abstract template shared by the Penguins and previously by the Lightning, and the Blues had those awful front-piping unis with the comically huge shoulder panels). There’s no debating that Buffalo’s alt was God-awful (given it’s forever associated with the word “turdburger”), and the Isles’, Avs’, and Flames’ alts were pretty bad too. But opening with the Leafs’ 1931-inspired Winter Classic jersey? The BETTER of the Winter Classic jerseys? And NOT including the Stadium Series jerseys? Bad Sportsnet, no biscuit!
the new sideline hats are perfect for me, as I am equally a New England Patriots fan AND an NFL fan! Thanks New Era!
That Blue Jays article is a little click-baitey. TL;DR, they wear red because they can.
The Panthers are wearing black at Seattle? Will that be color vs color?
My guess is Seattle will be wearing neon green.
Someone on the Rays was wearing a yellow belt last night (Wander Franco?). Also typo: it’s Yandy Diaz, not Yandi.
As for the straight NOB for Nettles, was that strictly because he was acquired after the season already started and there wasn’t enough time to prep the vertically arched NOB? I think this may have come up before in a ticker.…
Yandy Diaz always wears pink. A man who always wears pink. Is he trying to tell us something?
Dude, seriously?
He was traded from the Yankees to the Padres in March, before the start of the season.
So like I said in my comment earlier (the TL:DR version here), I suspect it was probably just a hastily-put-together backup jersey.
At a Twins game a couple weeks ago, I saw someone wearing a red Chuck Knoblauch jersey from 1998. I think the Twins lost three times wearing them, and Tom Kelly the manager banned them from then on.
I respect the commitment of a Twins fan not only wearing that godawful-but-kooky jersey but also wearing a Chuck Freakin Knoblauch jersey. Chuck’s deke throw to second in Game Seven of ’91 to save the game and the series is one of my greatest Twins memories. And his trade-me-now-goddammit behavior in the ’96 and ’97 seasons, followed by his yips-filled defensive play for the Yankees getting consistently rewarded by umps with outs he didn’t come close to making, is among my worst Twins memories. Massive props to that fan!
from my initial instagram searching, these are all the programs I have found to (so far) switch to the FUSE template: Ohio State, Stanford, UNC, Tennessee, LSU, Cal, Michigan, Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma State, Florida, Florida State, and Oregon, Clemson, and Oklahoma.
Smokey has not lived in the stadium since 1995. He is not 27 years old. The article simply says cats have lived there since 1995.
Yandy Diaz wearing a pink belt is not news.
Nice logo for the Canadian Little League championship. I never knew this tournament existed and have never seen it on Canadian television. Hopefully it will be televised. Also, there is no sponsor splashed onto the Little League logo which tells me there is limited support for this tournament, unfortunately.
“Smokey, a feral cat that has lived in Coors Field since it opened in 1995,”
I don’t think this statement is right. The article states that feral cats have lived there since at least 1995, not that Smokey has. He’d be at least 28 years old right now if that were true. Possible for a cat…sure. Likely for a feral one…I don’t think so.
Just glancing at the SPHL 20 year logo looks like it’s for the Blue Jackets.
Smokey is not 28 years old. The article says he’s lived there “as long as anyone can remember.”