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.

No. 10: New York Yankees

Ugh. Evil. Empire.

This one squeaks in purely for the same reason the Dallas Cowboys logo made it into the countdown for the NFL: Its ubiquity.

This thing is EVERYWHERE! One of the most frustrating things about the Yankees is their status as the flagship franchise of Major League Baseball. I literally hate going to Orioles games in Baltimore when these guys are in town, primarily because their massive fanbase eradicates anything resembling home field advantage.

That being said, this is mostly sour grapes. If the O’s had 27 world championships under their belt, I probably would not care an iota.

No. 3: Dallas (*shudders*) Cowboys

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.