No. 4: Toronto Blue Jays

Baseball, eh?

It wasn’t until about a year and a half ago when I was watching the Orioles play the Blue Jays that I realized how much I missed the old Toronto unis. The tone-on-tone blue palette works so well, and contrasts nicely with the red symbolizing the Canadian flag. It’s a real shame that the ball club felt they needed to mess with the old design, but I guess I can kind of understand the reasoning behind it; it was largely unchanged for the first 25 years of the team’s existence, and it did have a somewhat dated retro 70s/80s feel. Plus, the single best way a sports franchise can drum up merchandising dollars is to change uniforms.

That being said, it’s somewhat disheartening that they went in the direction they did; there’s something very late 20th/early 21st century about the current logo and uniform in terms of the color palette and very streamlined design, but it’s not particularly timeless. It already looks pretty dated, and a little too much like a minor league uniform for comfort. There’s a good reason that the Red Sox, Yankees and Dodgers have left well enough alone over the last 70-80 years: baseball is a business, and every bit of marketing material, from letterhead to the logos on the team’s caps should reinforce and strengthen the brand. The easiest way to achieve that sort of brand positioning is to simplify. It’s no surprise that Tampa Bay is finally selling merchandise—winning helps, but so does not having a gradient-heavy manta ray on your uniform.

No. 7: San Francisco Giants

Of all the MLB teams, the ones comprising the NL West have probably garnered the least attention from me over the years. Not only are they not in the AL East with the Orioles, but they’re not in the AL or the eastern part of the country. They are the polar opposites of what I’m paying attention to as a baseball fan.

Another thing to factor into this is the fact that, apart from a blip here or there, the NL West hasn’t been well-represented in the post season in my lifetime. Before interleague play was introduced in 1997, the postseason was really the only exposure I had to NL teams in general, and the fact that most of them didn’t go very deep in the playoffs or field successful clubs in successive seasons really limited that already minuscule amount of exposure. In fact, NL West teams have only accounted for six World Series champion ballclubs since the World Series as we know it today began in 1903. And that includes original division-founding franchises the Cincinnati Reds, Atlanta Braves, and Houston Astros that have since been re-aligned to the NL Central and NL East. Compare that to the 42 Series wins for AL East teams (including four from the Detroit Tigers before they were re-aligned to the AL Central.) No comparison at all, really.

While there’s no doubt that interleague play has certainly made me more aware and interested in the goings-on in the National League, it still feels a little alien to me.

But I digress; this post is all about the NL West, or, at the very least, the San Francisco Giants. The G’ints get the nod over the Los Angeles Dodgers, but just barely. Both clubs have extremely timeless and iconic logos and color schemes. A big part of that stems from the fact that, compared to their division rivals, they are the elder statesmen, at least as of the most recent division re-alignment. Just more proof that everything was cooler before I was born.

No. 9: Boston Red Sox

Kiss me, I'm fake-Irish!

A lot of the same things can be said about the Red Sox logo that were said about the Yankees one. Red Sox Nation commandeers virtually every ballpark they visit, and are probably tied with the Chicago Cubs as far as market share goes. The stylized “B” has an edge over the Yanks’ logo due to its unique shape and the colors, which work together so well. Typically blue and red is a no-brainer when it comes to sports teams, but I’ve recently realized just how difficult it is to pull it off (Phillies, Nationals, I’m looking at you.)

Something that really bugs me about the Red Sox is the nosedive the quality of their fanbase has taken over the last 5-10 years. Don’t get me wrong, I always found Jimmy Fallon’s “Boston” sketches on SNL hilarious, but it was a caricature of the average Red Sox fan—there’s no need to try and emulate it. It’s just always disappointing to see a fanbase get hijacked by bandwagon jumpers that generally are just using the team in particular and the sport in general as an excuse to engage in binge drinking and oafish behavior. Actually, Kevin Kaduk over at Yahoo! Sports’ baseball blog Big League Stew posted today about how the behavior of particular Cubs fans over the last decade reached a nadir yesterday when Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino was doused with beer while making a play on a fly ball. Not that Phillies fans are remotely without blame as far as this sort of behavior goes; Philly sports fans are legendary for their bad behavior. But the long and short of it is that this sort of reckless, degenerate behavior is endemic any time a team achieves sustained success. Honestly, the only baseball teams that I can think of that haven’t developed this dark underbelly of fandom are the St. Louis Cardinal and Los Angeles Angels fans of the 2000s, and the Atlanta Brave, Cleveland Indian and Seattle Mariner fans of the 1990s. Excluding LA, it might just be a case of market size, and to be fair, Los Angeles has never been much of a baseball town. And before you Dodger fans jump down my throat, pause and reflect on the fact that as far as pro teams in your town go, the Lakers trump everyone else several times over.

Anyway, I’ve clearly digressed to the point of no return on this post. But as logos go—good show, Boston.