In today’s Ticker: a helmet protest in Formula 1 still more new NFL uni numbers, and more!
Uni Watch News Ticker for May 5, 2023
Posted in:
Baseball
MLB
- Twitter user Jay Cuda, who is a must-follow for his fun, no-frills baseball infographics, posted this one about MLB uni numbers yesterday.
- Interesting piece on how MLB broadcasts have adjusted their score bugs to account for the introduction of the pitch clock. (From John Marmet)
- MLB GameDay has apparently forgotten that the Mariners have dropped their grey unis. (From Tim Dunn)
More
- The Fubon Guardians of Taiwan’s CPBL have unveiled the pink jerseys they’ll be wearing for their upcoming Baseball Boyfriends night. (From Jeremy Brahm)
Football
NFL
- Looks like Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk and GM Ran Carthon teased Oilers throwbacks in the team’s war room for the draft, and no one noticed. Strunk wore an Oilers cap and lapel pin during the second day of the draft, while Carthon joined her with a lapel pin. (From Jon Alvey)
- The Panthers and Chargers have both announced new uni number assignments.
Soccer
USA
- New USL W League expansion team Oakland Soul have unveiled their inaugural home and away jerseys. (Thanks, Jamie)
Auto Racing
- Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton will wear a rainbow-themed helmet for this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix as a protest against Florida’s anti-LGBTQ laws. The seven-time world champion frequently wears rainbow helmets during races in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other nations that limit the rights of the LGBTQ community.
Grab Bag
- Warner Bros. has a new logo, dropping their most recent logo after less than four years.
- A Minnesota highway being named after Prince will have purple signage, natch. (From Jason Criss)
- For a period of time in the 20th century, Michigan State’s yearbook was called The Wolverine. I’m sure this got awkward by the 1940s or so. (From John Marmet)
Comments (27)
I think it just missed the Ticker deadline, but the Ravens announced their rookie uni number assignments.
link
Whatever happened to the good old days in MLB where position players rarely wore numbers higher than 30, and pitchers generally had numbers between 25 and 49?
You mean like Henry Aaron and Reggie Jackson wearing No. 44, and Jackie Robinson wearing No. 42, and Warren Spahn wearing No. 21, and Bob Feller wearing No. 19, and, and…..?
Jackie Robinson wore 32?
Typo. Now fixed.
Jackie Robinson at one time wore #32 !?!? This sounds like breaking news!
I remember pitchers wearing 13 – 49 when I was a kid. I mean, with such reliability that I thought it was a hard and fast rule. I think it was Bob McClure who I saw wearing 10 and I thought, hey, can he do that? LOL. Then you saw more 50s, and now it’s just a free for all.
Atlee Hammaker pitched and wore #7 for the Giants. In 1985.
I can remember when Dave Heaverlo wore the highest number in the majors (60). If I recall correctly, that was the highest number until Carlton Fisk took 72 with the white sox.
Not sure when players started to wear numbers in the 70s/80s/90s regularly. Numbers into the 50s were pretty common into the 1990s if I recall. I can remember some guys in the low 60s in the early 2000s (Nick Johnson – 60; Ted Lilly – 61; etc)
I remember Heaverlo as much for his shaved head as for #60!
Glad to know I wasn’t the only kid fascinated by uniform numbers….and I do remember Hammaker with the first single digit on a pitcher I ever saw!
I remember Carlton Fisk wearing 72 when he went from Bosox to Chisox because 27 was taken. That was my earliest memory of a player wearing a number higher than 59.
If a team moves to a new city and changes their name, there is zero reason they should wear the throwback of their old city/name. Houston Oilers throwbacks makes no sense for the Tennessee Titans. Just like Montreal Expos makes no sense for the Washington Nationals or the Hartford Whalers for the Carolina Hurricanes.
The only team that should wear the Houston Oilers throwbacks are the Houston Texans since it is that city that housed the team and fan base that rooted for them.
Bud Adams is a piece of garbage for not letting Bob McNair name the expansion team the Oilers back in 2002.
For the first year or 2, the Titans still went by the Tennessee Oilers though. So that situation is a little different than a team that changes their name immediately.
I have mixed feelings about the Titans wearing Oilers throwbacks, but your contention that the only team that should wear the Houston Oilers throwbacks are the Houston Texans makes even less sense to me. Their only connection is the played in the same city. No other connection. At least the Titans have a legitimate connection to the Oilers.
Lee
The city they play in is the only connection that matters in anything other than a corporate context. Who cares that it’s the same corporate entity – people in Nashville weren’t what made the Oilers’ stadium The House of Pain, the whole reason a lot of people cheer for the team they do is its proximity to them. I HATED the Oilers as a kid, as a Steelers fan, and those uniforms remind me of a ton of great games that have nothing to do with Nashville. I get why (some) Texans fans are pissed- they’re the connection that’s being shut out of celebrating their team’s identity.
So the only teams that should honor the Expos and Whalers are…no teams at all?
Defunct identities (and others…looking at you, OKC Thunder!) shouldn’t ‘die’, they deserve to be remembered/celebrated occasionally by the teams they exist as now…that makes proper historical sense.
Texans fans don’t seem all that dissatified with the uniforms the team has worn since day one, and the team has spent decades establishing a brand all their own. Like the Baltimore Ravens, the shadow cast by the team that left town can’t be that large anymore, so any inferiority felt about the replacement teams’ identities is likely felt by only a very small number.
Do we know that McNair even wanted the Oilers branding 20 years ago?
Not everyone likes ‘leftovers’ ; )
Even if he did, Tagliabue agreed with Adams’ ownership rights and put in place a restriction preventing any future franchise that might land in Houston from taking the name, but he’s never brought up in these discussions.
There may be some truth that Adams ‘stole’ Columbia Blue from Lamar Hunt (who wanted his Dallas Texans in that color, and who gave the OK for McNair to use ‘his’ team’s legacy identity), and there’s no doubt that he helped himself to the Titans name…though the Jets had zero problem with him doing so. But he is responsible for bringing professional sports to Houston in the first place. He owns that as well.
The key thing is that history and memory are not scarce resources. If the Twins celebrate their franchise history with Senators throwbacks, that doesn’t reduce Washington fans’ ability to remember or commemorate the old Senators, nor does it prevent the Nationals from honoring the same Washington baseball history with Senators throwbacks.
The only exception I’d make is the case of teams that still own the intellectual property of their defunct identities and refuse to let successor teams or the league share that IP. In that rare case, memory is effectively a scarce resource. But outside of that scenario, for any sports fan who values history and heritage, the more celebration of the past, the better.
Major pet peeve: every single time there’s a “company has a new logo” article, they never show the before and after. Thank you Anthony for providing some context.
Agreed, it should be a law. Or at least a style guide entry.
Lee
Well, one of Uni Watch’s “favorite” pitchers, Matt (Frat Boy) Harvey, has officially hung up his glove. link
Why would Michigan’s “The Wolverine” have been awkward in the 1940s? I must be missing something, probably something super obvious, since all I can think of is the Marvel superhero of that name. The comic book character debuted in 1974 but didn’t become a widely popular lead superhero until the late 1970s, and didn’t get his own monthly book until 1988.
The Michigan State Spartans having a Wolverine yearbook might be awkward but I don’t know why the significance of the 1940s.
“For a period of time in the 20th century, Michigan State’s yearbook was called The Wolverine. I’m sure this got awkward by the 1940s or so. (From John Marmet)”
It’s cool when your home state has a dashing and evocative nickname (Beaver, Badger, Buckeye, Sooner, Hoosier, Hawkeye, &c); I feel badly for states whose nicknames would probably make for less-than-inspiring team identities. New Jersey State Gardens, anyone?
The Spartans joined the Big Ten in 1949, thus intensifying the rivalry between Michigan and Michigan State.
Because it wasn’t Michigan’s “The Wolverine,” it was Michigan State’s.
It’s depressingly funny that both Florida and Saudi Arabia are similarly homophobic enough that they both warrant protest helmets.
Pretty sure that Ron Desantis is not too worried about what Lewis Hamilton wears. Ron is standing up for families and children and doesn’t need Lewis’s consent to do so. Lewis’s wokeness is a big reason why I am glad to see him not winning the majority of races anymore. Just drive. I can get politics in numerous ways. I and millions of others watch F1 races for entertainment, not to have Lewis preach to us. I suspect his constant posturing with slogan t-shirts in recent years was a big reason behind the recent FIA rules banning political statements during “work time” at the races. Go Max (whose politics I don’t know anything about since he never forces his opinions on us!)