This past weekend, the Redskins bounced back from their embarrassing Week 3 loss to the lowly Detroit Lions with an ugly but desperately needed win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It made me think of my grandfather, a huge ‘Skins booster who never got the chance to see them dig their way out of 17 years of failure and disappointment.
‘Stardust’ by Hoagy Carmichael was one of his favorite songs.
MONSTER.
I would rather watch the Redskins go 0-16 from here to eternity than hire a puppy murderer. Congratulations, Andy Reid—this is a classless, win-at-all-costs move right out of the Buddy Ryan playbook. And Jeff Lurie, I had no idea you were such a fan of Al Davis-esque personnel decisions. From now on I’ll just be referring to the Eagles as the Oakland Raiders-East. I love how Roger Goodell has developed this reputation as a “disciplinarian” since becoming NFL commissioner, yet people like Donte Stallworth and Michael Vick get slaps on the wrist and repeated opportunities to make millions of dollars in the face of the reality that they are killers. Perfect. Totally makes sense. Especially within the context of sports punishments.
“Sorry Charlie Hustle; I understand you were just trying to “make things a little interesting”, but you disgraced the integrity of the game, so we’re going to have to ban you from baseball for life. But those young guys over there who unwind by running over pedestrians and butchering dogs, they’re going to get a time-out. Completely fair, really.”
One down, three to go.
As shown by my previous countdown of favorite NFL team logos, I love sports. And while I’m a devoted Washington Redskins fan, my moods don’t typically rise and fall with their wins and losses during the football season. This might have something to do with their notoriously mediocre-to-poor play since the end of the Joe Gibbs Mk I era in 1993. But that alone doesn’t really explain it, because my favorite baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles, have been equally mediocre over the last twelve seasons (“mediocre” is generous; they haven’t made the playoffs since 1997. At least the ‘Skins made it to the first round in 2005 and 2007.) And the baseball season, at 162 games, is over 10x longer than the NFL regular season. Factor in the potential number of playoff games, and the number balloons to 181, versus 19 in football. So there is less at stake from game to game in baseball, yet an Orioles loss affects me much more than a Redskins loss, which is completely illogical. I’ve made a conscious effort over my lifetime to not identify myself as either a “baseball guy” or a “football guy”, but the fact is that I’m much more emotionally invested in baseball in general and the Orioles specifically than I am in the Redskins or football as a whole. The only “rational” explanation that I’ve been able to come up with is the fact that I played organized Little League baseball throughout my childhood, while I was forbidden from participating in football because I “might get hurt”. Thanks, Mom. Tell that to Kirby Puckett!
With ALL this in mind, let’s dive right in to the top ten countdown of my favorite MLB logos!
Worst team, best uniforms.
Crazy, huh? At least these lovable losers can be number one at something.
I’ve always loved the Lions’ unis, particularly the logo. It’s right out of heraldry, and totally looks like it belongs on a knight’s shield. The uniforms as a whole are all about simplicity, and it’s easy to let as great a color combo as silver and Hawaii blue do most of the visual heavy lifting.
Like the Cowboys’ logo, this one hasn’t been altered drastically over the years, only receiving noticeable changes this past offseason (and really, who could blame the losingest single-season franchise in football history for wanting to ring in 2009 with a new, slightly fiercer (the fangs are new) look?
We didn't sell out—we bought in!
Before I get into why I like this logo so much, let’s let the internet take credit where it’s due:
From Wikipedia:
The Steelers logo was introduced in 1962 and is based on the “Steelmark,” originally designed by Pittsburgh’s U.S. Steel and now owned by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). In fact, it was Cleveland-based Republic Steel that suggested the Steelers adopt the industry logo. It consists of the word “Steelers” surrounded by three astroids (hypocycloids of four cusps). The original meanings behind the astroids were, “Steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure, and widens your world.” Later, the colors came to represent the ingredients used in the steel-making process: yellow for coal, orange for iron ore, and blue for scrap steel.[24] While the formal Steelmark logo contains only the word “Steel,” the team was given permission to add “ers” in 1963 after a petition to AISI.
The Steelers are the only NFL team that puts its logo on only one side of the helmet (the right side). Longtime field and equipment manager Jack Hart was instructed to do this by Art Rooney as a test to see how the logo appeared on the gold helmets; however, its popularity led the team to leave it that way permanently.
I don’t know why, but I’ve always found that to be a cool story that demonstrates the sort of communal spirit that athletic teams generate, even if it was clearly a case on both sides of trying to align their respective identities with a perceived winner.
In any event, what I like about the Steelers’ logo is the anomalous use of color. What I mean by that is they use the red and blue sparingly, only appearing as accents within the context of the logo itself. They don’t otherwise appear as part of the uniform, which is consistently black and yellow. It actually gives the red and blue more visual weight by using them less. This is further emphasized by the logo only appearing on the right side of the helmet—the fact that it only appears on the one side throws the helmet off-kilter, but not in a bad way. It just makes you notice it more, and remember it longer, and seek out the reasons behind the decision (not the easiest thing to do when the information super-highway is just a twinkle in a nerd’s eye when you’re a little kid.)
Another aspect of the Steelers’ logo that I find very cool is the abstract symbolism of the astroids in the logo. They aren’t explicitly representational of the things they symbolize, which lends it an air of mystery. I remember thinking when I was growing up that the “stars” each represented one of the three rivers that intersected near the shores of downtown Pittsburgh, the Monongahela, the Allegheny, and the Ohio. It was a logical assumption, though incorrect. That being said, the cool thing about abstract symbolism is that it allows for such interpretations.
Ick.
Hmmm…maybe it was a slight misnomer to describe this list as a representation of my “favorite” sports logos. I feel like “most successful” is more apt. Because no other sports logo is simultaneously more instantly recognizable and capable of eliciting nausea from me than this one (That’s a lie; this one is equally capable of both.)
That it is soooo culturally pervasive in our country is a lot to do with Jerry Jones, the obscenely wealthy used car salesman that took over as majority owner of the team in the late 1980s. He’s a shrewd businessman that never met an endorsement deal or cross-promotional opportunity he didn’t like, and will spare no expense in making the Dallas Cowboys the “face” of pro (American) football throughout the world. That said, it also doesn’t hurt that this logo has undergone the least change since the team was formed in 1960, with only the addition of the offset blue stroke around the star being added in 1964 and remaining consistent ever since. This freaking star is basically like the insignia for the Imperial forces in Star Wars: everyone knows it, but only assholes like it.
I love cheese.
Ouch. Sorry, Bears fans. I know your NFC North rivalries run deep, what with nothing else to do during the midwest winter besides sitting around listening to or watching football. That’s what you get for having the most miserable weather in the country! Seriously, though. This one gets the nod purely because I love the colors—ever since I saw Sterling Sharpe’s 1991 Donruss card! Plus you had that dude with the wacky Polish last name under center before The Messiah Great Betrayer Brett Favre came to town, all done up in his Lee® dungarees, running around and gunslinging like a little kid.
I might also be partial because I love cheese.
"C" stands for Chi-town, that's good enough for me!
I was surprised to learn that what I’ve always thought of as the “classic” Bears logo has actually only been in use since 1974. I had always assumed that this was the “C” that started it all, spawning countless imitators from the pros on down (I remember my high school football team playing the Chantilly Chargers, who sported the same logo.) Turns out that it was actually Cincinnati’s own Reds baseball franchise that got the ball rolling all the way back in 1913!
A lot of people might disagree with this selection, or at least my ranking it fifth, saying that it’s boring or too “old-tymey”, but that’s exactly why I love it—it looks timeless. And while I’m not usually a fan of the blue-orange color combo, complementary or not, I think these specific shades of those two hues go together so well. It’s not garish and juvenile like the unis of Boise State, University of Florida, and the old Denver Broncos.
That being said, color is the primary reason this one got beat out of the number four spot on this countdown….
Saints' fleur de lis
Admittedly, I’ve never paid much attention to the Saints. They’re a small-market team from a city I’ve never been to in a geographical region I tend to loathe. Honestly, I often forget that they’re even in the same conference as the Redskins. But as logos go, this is pretty solid. It’s a single graphic element that immediately associates the team’s location with its French roots. There’s a bit more universal iconography at play here than in most other sports logos, which is probably a good thing, as that off-sets the regionalism of the franchise. Not the most original logo in the world, but it’s still a powerful symbol that is instantly recognizable.
This is the first entry in what I like to refer to as the “muddled middle”, a grouping of logos that are clearly good, but the relative merits of each are so negligible that they make actual numeric ranking a tricky proposition. It doesn’t get really great again until the top two. Also, I realize that the AFC is very under-represented on this list, appearing only four times, and in the case of numbers 9 and 10, representing only three different franchises. Part of the problem is that a lot of AFC teams are just “newer” in the grand scheme of things and don’t have the same storied history as older NFC franchises that were established, in some cases, back in the ‘teens of the 20th century. Also, AFC teams just seem to re-design their logos with a lot more frequency, which makes it difficult for an icon to establish any sort of identity.
