UniNotes 8/2/09

Well, I'm back from vacation and in the mood to blog. Here are a few things I noticed from Sunday's MLB highlights.

The Braves wore these god awful red jerseys at home.


They also wore their alternate hat.


I hate both.

The Padres wore the camos.

These are ugly, but I for some reason like them. I also like the significance of the jersey - San Diego being a military town.


The Rays wore their alternate jerseys at home. I like these, but I also liked the old green unis.


The Pirates wore their alternate pinstriped uniforms. They're OK.

The Cardinals wore alternate hats. Um, OK. Not great, but OK.

All Star uniformity

I believe it was Tom Hanks who once said, "Uniformity? There's no uniformity in baseball!" Or something like that.

But it struck me, after both All-Star lineups were introduced tonight, that all the National Leaguers were wearing white uniforms and all the American Leaguers were wearing gray uniforms. No red tops. No blue tops. No black tops.

Then I remembered watching a show on MLB Network about the 1979 All-Star game. Get a load of these unis.....

Now, I don't believe the Phillies wore those red tops during the game, but look at all the different colors. First off, there were the baby blues. Why that color was so popular, I'll never know. But look at the yellow of the Padres (Dave Winfield!) and the Pirates (including yellow PANTS!). The Giants wearing orange. Then there's the Astros. Oh, the Astros. Houston, we have a problem.

By the way, here is the logo for the game. Love this logo.

Hey now, you're an All-Star

I am soooooo glad that baseball allows All-Stars to wear their individual uniforms during the actual All-Star game. But I've also come to like the warm-up jerseys they wear on Monday. Here is this year's National League warm-ups.


And here is the American League's....

I like how they've incoporated not just the Gateway Arch into the uni (which is a no brainer), but also the bat that appears on the front of the Cardinals' uniform.

These jerseys have come a long way over the last few years. Here's a pic of the AL '02 uni from Milwaukee:
Blah. Boring.


These pictures are hard to find. As far as I can tell, the warm up unis started to get better (at least in my opinion) with the '05 game in Detroit.
Notice the lettering. I don't know the exact, technical term for this type of font, but it's the font used in the Cars logo.

Pittsburgh in '06 wasn't bad - if you like yellow.

The AL jerseys were a little better.


I really like the '07 unis from San Francisco - but I love the color orange.

(Hey, there's Jeter again...)

But I think my favorite is last year's AL jersey from Yankee Stadium.

Granted, I'm biased. But the frieze across the chest was really cool.

Granted, the NL uniform...not so much.

But, BY FAR, the best jersey I found.......

That gives new meaning to "shirts and skins."

I give the Sixers a 10!

The 76'ers are going back to their old logo. Two words: Love....it!!!

For comparison's sake, here is the old logo:

I was never a fan of these uniforms.

Although I kinda liked the blue ones...

The team will unveil new uniforms later in the summer.

I would imagine they will look like these:

Now, if we could only get those guys in uniform in their prime....

Cup Champs!

Forget the Penguins and Lord Stanley, I'm celebrating this year's Calder Cup Champs: the Hershey Bears!!

Hershey won the cup on the road at Manitoba, and I love the fact that the AHL hasn't followed the NHL's lead and gone to dark uniforms at home and white on the road.

I remember, back in high school, specifically going to HersheyPark Arena on "reverse sweater" night just to see "the chocolate browns." Keep in mind, back then there were no AHL TV highlights from road games and the newspaper was in black-and-white. So the only way to see the road uniforms was to actually go to a road game (the closest back then being Baltimore) or "reverse sweater night."

I would actually buy one of those jerseys, if they sold them. (An Internet search came up empty.)

However, I think I like the old Bears uniforms better, which features a skating bear on the front of the jersey. (They now wear that logo on the sleeve.) Also, notice the logo of Blue Cross on the front of the jersey. Advertising. Hmmm....

I don't know if this was created by fan of Manitoba (the Bear's cup opponent) or what, but I found this and it made me laugh....

Speaking of Cups, did you see that Sidney Crosby and some Penguins took the Stanley Cup to the Pirates game on Sunday. What are the odds that the Pirates would be playing.....Detroit?

Oh Canada

It's Friday night, which means the Blue Jays broke out their throw back baby blues....

Although I generally don't like this color uniform (unless the uniform says North Carolina on the front), I don't necessarily dislike these.  My problem with these Toronto uniforms is that they were the road uni's, and they wear them at home.

By the way, Friday night means Boston breaks out the alternate hat.  I also don't necessarily dislike this hat - I've definitely seen worse, but the traditionalist in me hates it.

Red-faced over red hats

I was appalled, APPALLED I say, when I flipped on the Yankee game this afternoon and saw this....


WTF? Are you kidding me with this?



Turns out, in honor of Memorial Day, every team in MLB wore red hats today.

The Rockies...

The A's...

The Dodgers....

The Orioles....

Even the Blue Jays.

I'm sorry. Is it Memorial Day in Canada too?

(Answer: No. Memorial Day in Canada is July 1st.)

With some teams, like the Reds or Phillies, you couldn't tell anything was different unless you looked closely.

Even the umpires wore red hats.

(Although, note the umpire in the Dodgers picture. Apparently someone didn't get the memo and/or the package from New Era.)

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for honoring those Veterans who gave the ultimate sacrifice for this country. But, c'mon. This isn't about honoring them. It's about this:

http://shop.mlb.com/category/index.jsp?categoryId=2325112&cp=2325112

Granted, a portion of the proceeds benefit the Welcome Back Veterans Foundation.

A PORTION?? C'mon MLB. If you really want to make this stunt about the veterans, let's go with ALL the proceeds. Otherwise, this isn't about red hats, it's about green.