I’ve argued before that the ball-and-glove logo is one of the best in professional sports, and it would be great to see its permanent return. I found this site with a sample mockup of a new design based on the old uniforms (*).

If they win next year, it will be too late to change uniforms — all the bad karma in baseball would accrue to a team that changed their uniforms after winning the pennant. This year is the time to switch. We’ve had two years of extremely popular retro games every week. In a typical crowd at Miller Park, the ball-and-glove gear probably outnumbers the current stuff two to one.

I like the absence of the blue pinstripes, which really cleans up the look. With a slightly deeper blue (decidedly not navy), and a more golden version of the old yellow, the “true blue” design would look great on cream or white. And I like the lack of player names on the home jerseys. It goes without saying that the current-retro button-up jerseys are better than the pull-overs that were actually used back in the 80s.

The road uniforms say Milwaukee, as they should. Why do people ignore this rule? Home uniforms are white, and have the team name. Road jerseys are gray, and have the city name, dammit. All of the teams with long-lasting, classic uniforms (the ones that don’t go out of style every five years) follow this tradition.

And more than anything else, stop wearing batting practice jerseys during the game.

You don’t see teams with good uniforms — the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Dodgers, the Cardinals — out there in BP jerseys. Those teams have been using pretty much the same uniforms for over seventy years, because they got them right the first time.

The last point of this somewhat grumpy post: I’m sure Miller has paid a lot of money for the generic Brewers logo that looks suspiciously like the Miller Brewing Co. logo. I’d hate to see them lose their investment, so why not bring back an updated version of Bernie’s beer mug, and slap the Miller logo on the keg.

(*) He also came up with a sample based on the old minor-league / Milwaukee Braves uniforms, but those are too old-fashioned, and the design is almost identical to Atlanta’s current design. Plus, blue and gold are the colors, and you don’t want to change those.

Posted by Ben Brothers at 8:30 pm, 16 August 2007 and filed under Wisconsin News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.