In the late ’60s, when he was working as a young designer for the firm Stewart Morrison, Richard Walker recalled his colleagues grappling with a critical question. They had just been tasked with creating a logo for the Montreal Expos, the first big-league team north of the border, and now they debated incorporating a maple leaf into the design.
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They ultimately decided against using Canada’s national symbol, a concession to the climate of the time. After all, Quebec was in the midst of the separatist movement.
Though Walker did not work directly on the Expos logo, he understood the rationale behind the decision, which he’d ponder once more in 1976 as he got involved in another project. By then, he was working for Labatt Brewing Co., which had just entered the baseball business by helping to found the Toronto Blue Jays. In his role, Walker found himself pushing for the maple leaf. Said Walker: “The whole purpose was we wanted it to be Canada’s team because Montreal deferred that stand.”
Will expansion teams borrow a previous team’s history, or will they set out on their own? How do they want to be seen by fans? And perhaps, more importantly, how does a new franchise see itself? “That’s the No. 1 thing that you have to address and concern yourself with, is what you’re trying to say,” said Anne Occi, vice president of design services for Major League Baseball. “And how are people going to come in and take it to heart.”
Since joining the league in 1990, Occi has played a role in designing the uniforms of baseball’s last four expansion teams, the Marlins, Rockies, Diamondbacks and Rays. Each time, getting to know the team’s region proved to be a critical first step, long before any decisions of aesthetics. Said Occi: “What we wanted to do is find out more about the community they came from.”
Of course, Walker already possessed a sense of the city once it came time to help brand the Blue Jays. “When I came to Toronto, I came with a chip on my shoulder,” said Walker, who grew up in Western Canada. “Toronto always thought of itself as the whole country. They didn’t give a damn about anybody else, and to a degree, it’s a third of the country all in one city.”
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Yet, it was Montreal that got a big-league team first, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. Toronto officials had already tried and failed to lure the Indians and Giants before landing an American League expansion franchise. When it finally happened, Walker spotted an opportunity to project that the Blue Jays were indeed a national team. While the firm Savage Sloan did the design work on the logo, Walker provided the parameters. One of them was the inclusion of the maple leaf. Keeping it in the design proved to be a battle.
The symbol met with some resistance from the club’s American-born GM Peter Bavasi, who, Walker recalled, “was quite conscientious about dollars.” Bavasi requested that the colors be pared down to two at most, and according to Walker, the GM groused, “I don’t think a maple leaf is going to sell in the States.” But the club’s board of directors approved the logo as presented. It would go on to grace the Blue Jays’ inaugural uniforms in 1977. They are arguably the best ever created for a baseball expansion team.
Even Bavasi came around, telling the New York Times a few years later that the Blue Jays logo was “the second most recognizable symbol in Ontario, next to the maple leaf.”
Years later, when refreshing their uniform designs, the Expos adopted an appropriate symbol of their own. Beginning in 1992, the road grays featured a fleur-de-lis, which some interpreted as a symbol of Quebec nationalism. Claude Brochu, then the team president, saw it differently. “The fleur-de-lis is a symbol of our province, not a political statement,” he said. “Including it wasn’t meant to be a political statement. It’s a statement of who we are as Quebecers.”
Meanwhile, future uniform redesigns made the maple leaf an even larger presence on the Blue Jays logo until 2004, when it was stripped during the franchise’s infamous black period. “They got into an evolution of really, really, with all due respect, ugly pieces of artwork,” Walker said. But he was “delighted” in 2012 when the Blue Jays honored another of baseball’s time-honored traditions.
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The franchise looked backward for its new look, instituting a refreshed version of its original logo and uniforms. Of course, there was one noticeable difference, one that tugged at his sensibilities. “They increased the size of the maple leaf,” Walker said. “I didn’t think that was necessarily appropriate. But being a typical Canadian, ‘Don’t push it too hard’ was my thinking.”
Since 1961, baseball has added 14 franchises through expansion. Each has tackled the challenge of creating a lasting look from scratch. Here’s a subjective look at how they rank:
Happy 81st Birthday to former Eastern League prospect (Binghamton Triplets, 1960) Bud “Zipper the Ripper” Zipfel. He played for the Washington #Senators during two seasons (1961-62). #EasternLeagueHistory pic.twitter.com/wlZhVuSphN
— Eastern League History (@HistoryEastern) November 18, 2019
14. Washington Senators
How’s this for inconsistency? Shortly after the original Senators left for the Twin Cities in 1960, the founders of Washington’s replacement expansion team immediately filed paperwork to name the company “Senators, Inc.” Then they adopted the same colors as the originals. Hooray for continuity. But when it came to the uniforms, the new Senators abandoned the old team’s script, going with their own stylized lettering for the first two seasons. The look, like the franchise itself, proved to be forgettable. There was one saving grace. In 1963, the new Senators reverted to the script of the older Senators and then added a new curly “W” for the caps. So what if it looked like Walgreens? The curly “W” was revived in 2005, when Washington got its third crack at baseball, and they live on with the World Series champion Nationals.
3/12/62 The new Houston Colt .45s record their first-ever victory with a 2-1 Spring Training win over the Cleveland Indians. pic.twitter.com/Qm4gAnlzMc
— Mike Acosta (@AstrosTalk) March 12, 2020
13. Houston Colt .45s
This one’s tame when compared with contemporary Astros controversy. But back in 2012, to mark the 50th anniversary of the team, officials faced some pushback at a plan to wear the original Colt .45s jersey. The reason was splashed across the chest: a pistol. Indeed, the imagery had become dated since its debut, though that doesn’t mean there weren’t some clever elements. The color scheme still plays and the “C” in Colts as smoke from the barrel of the gun is clever.
Today In 1969: The San Diego #Padres play their first official major league game, a 2-1 win over the Houston Astros! #MLB #Baseball #History pic.twitter.com/9bsYN8Ztus
— Baseball by BSmile (@BSmile) April 8, 2020
12. San Diego Padres
Some expansion teams blaze their own trail. Others connect themselves to an element of the past. In 1969, the Padres chose the latter, taking the nickname of the city’s longtime entry in the Pacific Coast League. But the adoption of brown as the primary color was new. How that came to be is not totally clear. One story, according to longtime beat writer Bill Center, is that inaugural club president Buzzie Bavasi chose brown to match the history of the city and its original adobe structures. Another version is that owner C. Arnholdt Smith loved the color brown, as evidenced by his tendency to wear brown suits.
Whatever the reason, brown functioned as trim on original uniforms, a handsome look featuring block letters for the jerseys and an interlocking monogram for the caps. But traditional proved to be unremarkable, especially in 1969, when fellow expansion teams the Pilots, Expos and Royals nailed their looks from the jump. According to a Washington Post report, cited by design historian Todd Radom in his book “Winning Ugly,” sales revenue from the Expos’ instant-classic tricolor caps nearly beat out the Padres’ haul from its gate receipts. Ouch.
Forgettable unis proved to be a fitting beginning for the Padres, a team that would become infamous for its constantly changing look. This season, after a long absence, the Padres brought brown back. It marked the franchise’s 10th major uniform change.
#ThisDayInBaseball 1998
After five attempts, the Diamondbacks win their first game in franchise history when Andy Benes pitches seven strong innings, and Matt Williams paces the attack with three hits in the team’s 3-2 victory over San Francisco at Bank One Ballpark#rattleon pic.twitter.com/3W4w8jHTNd
— Bubba on Baseball (@bubbaonbaseball) April 5, 2020
11. Arizona Diamondbacks
Give former owner Jerry Colangelo credit for his honesty. When the Diamondbacks unveiled a league-leading five uniform combos for their inaugural season, Colangelo admitted, “From the standpoint of marketing, the more styles you have, the more you sell.”
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Ossi recalled the uniform’s primary designers proposing bold design choices, though many weren’t feasible. Uniforms, after all, are still pieces of equipment, which means they must stand up to the rigors of use. Also, designs must be replicated on cloth, which brings an added dimension to the challenge. “You had a designer that wasn’t used to working with something that has to be very practical,” she said. “You can’t do all alternating pinstripes. You have to be able to do things that can get cut out of cloth. There had to be a very quick learning period there.”
The Diamondbacks have since become one of the most fickle teams in baseball, locked in an endless cycle of redesigns and revamps. Perhaps all that change has created more appreciation for the originals. “They’ve worn it as a throwback for a number of years even though those aren’t their colors anymore, the purple and teal,” said Paul Lukas, founder of the website Uni Watch. “It seems to me at least so much better than what they’ve been wearing as their main uniforms. That to me is one that, other people as well, but for myself, I underrated it. I didn’t realize it would age as well as it did.”
Today…27 years ago – In 1993, the Colorado @Rockies played their first home game and drew a record @MLB National League crowd of 80,227 fans. pic.twitter.com/ygF5ORumaC
— The Rocket 95.1 WRTT (@therocket951) April 9, 2020
10. Colorado Rockies
As Occi and her team began the process of designing the Rockies’ original look, the base colors seemed to be obvious fairly quickly. “Purple is from ‘purple mountain majesty,’ it’s literally from that,” Occi said. ”They were known for mining, so that’s why the silver that was in there, and back then, using metallic was very rare, very, very rare, just coming on. Anyway, we did the veining of the letters just like the mining is veining of metal within that. All of that came to stand for something that was unique, and yet indigenous to the area, so that worked out well.”
Indeed, it has worked out well enough that the overall look has stayed in place to this day.
March 31, 1998: #Tigers beat the Devil Rays 11-6 in their MLB debut at Tropicana Field. Wade Boggs hits franchise’s first home run pic.twitter.com/PL80BlhG2I
— Tigers History (@TigersHistory) March 31, 2017
9. Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Years later, Occi remembered the feedback she heard after the unveiling of the Devil Rays’ uniforms, featuring the novel gradient on the lettering that graced the front of the jerseys. “Oh, is that really baseball?” she recalled. Perhaps it wasn’t. But it was at least rooted in the nature of the ray itself. “It goes to the depths,” Occi said. “So we thought about gradating from the yellow of the top down to the depth of the water, and the fish itself is black. It still gave it a nice juxtaposition to some coloration. Hadn’t been done before. Probably for a good reason, hasn’t been done since.”
The uniforms generated a cold response. It didn’t help that the team was dreadful and that the franchise itself was a mess. “Devil” would eventually be dropped from the name. However, as it does with many things, nostalgia brought new life. In 2018, when the Rays announced that they’d occasionally don their original unis, fans rejoiced.
Super cool uni & stirrups! Glenn Abbott led the expansion @Mariners w 12 wins & 204.1 IPs in 1977. And also in coolness. Check out his @sabr bio https://t.co/cxxiVzpvu6 pic.twitter.com/XAd6cTRmE6
— SABR BioProject (@SABRbioproject) April 25, 2020
In 1977, the internet didn’t exist, so there weren’t websites for obsessives to scrutinize every stitch and seam of a uniform. Logos weren’t news, as evidenced by this press mention of the Mariners’ new uniforms in August 1976: “The baseball team also has a logo built around its new name featuring a huge stylized ‘M,'” it read. Let’s fill in the blanks.
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The stylized “M” was an upside-down trident. It was rendered in yellow against blue caps. It was repeated on the jerseys, where it formed the “M” in Mariners. The trimmed V-neck pullover and sans-a-belt waistline are both perfect elements for the time. Perhaps they would have lived on longer had they not been cursed. “George Argyros, who owned the Mariners in 1981-89, never was comfortable with the upside-down trident,” read one report. “And it was under his watch that the Mariners ditched the trident and switched to the gold ‘S’ caps in 1987.”
Here are tonight’s Halo unis circa 1961-1965. #FlashbackWeekend pic.twitter.com/VznFeXQnU0
— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) August 17, 2013
7. Los Angeles Angels
Seeking continuity, original owner Gene Autry paid $350,000 to name his new Los Angeles expansion team the Angels, after the longtime Pacific Coast League club. The red and blue colors also hearkened back to the original Angels and the uniform lettering looked traditional. But it was an innovation on their heads that differentiated the new Angels. A silver halo was sewn onto the tops of the caps — a flourish that cost extra to make. The halos came off the caps after the 1970 season. But they were reintroduced to a new generation in the 1993 film “The Sandlot.” “That’s my favorite cap,” said Tom Shieber, senior curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. “Don’t understand why they don’t do it anymore.” Same, dude, same.
One and done!
1969 Seattle Pilots Home White.
They were manufactured by @WilsonSportingG @PhilHecken #Seattle #SeattlePilots #1969 pic.twitter.com/tdcidQc3Zm
— Goat Jerseys (@GoatJerseys) January 9, 2018
6. Seattle Pilots
Few teams took their nicknames more seriously than the Pilots, who treated their uniforms like a game of Pictionary. The bill of the cap featured scrambled eggs, the jersey both a steering wheel and wings, the sleeves multiple stripes worn by captains. For some, like pitcher Jim Bouton, the uniforms had too many pieces of flair. “There was a lot of grousing about the uniforms,” Bouton wrote in “Ball Four.” “We look like goddamned clowns.”
Well, at least those goddamned clowns were memorable. Years later, the Pilots’ unis get mentioned frequently as an example of an expansion uniform done right. Looking back, they even nailed the powder blues on the road. Shieber shared his personal belief that the uniforms may be among the best of all time. The look, he said, has ultimately proved to be memorable, fun, unique and innovative. Said Shieber: “At that point, only one other club had played with the cap in a fun way, and that’s the Angels.”
OFFICIAL: @FOXSportsFL is bringing back Florida @Marlins Classic replays. Beginning on Monday, April 20, fans can tune in on the TV home for Marlins baseball for some of the best wins in franchise history. We start with Opening Day in 1993 before we get into 1997 clinchers & NLCS pic.twitter.com/Ej542SLvXc
— FOX Sports Marlins (@FOXMarlins) April 9, 2020
5. Florida Marlins
Yes, teal was in. So in. This was the early ’90s, after all. Yet, Occi said she couldn’t cave to current tastes. “It had to come from the area,” she said of the shade of teal that became the Marlins’ primary color. Indeed, in South Florida, she saw teal everywhere. It was in swimming pools and fountains and buildings. She also saw silver on the marlin itself. “A striking fish,” she said. “Very bold and beautiful. It fights. It’s known for its cresting out of the water and you’ve got that shimmer that happens.” The Marlins’ original home caps were striking in all teal. The club wound up transitioning to black before ditching their original teal. But the power of nostalgia is strong.
Chris Creamer, founder of SportsLogos.Net, cites the Marlins’ original uniforms as an example of how a look can strike a nerve, even without a standout design. “You talk to any baseball fan: ‘Hey, you want the Marlins to bring back their teal uniforms?’ They’re going to say yes immediately,” Creamer said. “And they love them. They’ve won a couple championships with them.”
These uniforms rank pretty high on this list. But for me, teal never went out of style.
#OTD in 1969: Bienvenue to @MLB! @Montreal_Expos win inaugural game against the #Mets. Here’s the @SABRGames story: https://t.co/dary37Iapl #SABR @Expos50Greatest pic.twitter.com/8NtEbJ3rWb
— SABR (@sabr) April 8, 2018
4. Montreal Expos
The iconic logo that graced the Expos’ uniforms for its entire run in the big leagues was controversial from the start. Designers hoped that the tricolor monogram “M” would convey a sense of movement. They even borrowed the color scheme from hockey’s beloved Canadiens. But to a reporter covering the unveiling for the Montreal Gazette, the logo looked like an inkblot. The caps “came under a fair amount of ridicule because it looked like a beanie,” Walker recalled.
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Also, what was the significance of the letters embedded within the “M”? It’s still a matter of conjecture, though Walker’s answer makes sense. “It was a very highly stylized ‘M’ for Montreal,” he said. “It’s got an ‘M,’ an ‘E’ and a ‘B’ — Montreal Expos Baseball. It’s very flavorful, kind of very French in some respects. Lively and it’s got a very contemporary sports look. I still think it’s probably one of the best in baseball in many respects, not that it exists. But it was good.”
Indeed, the logo anchored a beautiful uniform that was perfect for its time.
#OTD-01/17/1931: An original Met, Don Zimmer was born OTD. The @Mets drafted Zimmer in the expansion draft from the Chicago Cubs, & he was the club’s 1st third baseman.
He batted 7th on Opening Day 1962; he went 1-for-4 at the plate. #Mets pic.twitter.com/vDVsAnW5tH
— Mathew Brownstein (@MBrownstein89) January 17, 2018
3. New York Mets
There have been experiments along the way: racing stripes, cream-colored home uniforms, snow-white sans pinstripes, black. In 1993, the Mets’ script even gained an underline flourish, which was promptly lost after two seasons. But the fundamental look has remained intact since the birth of the Amazins in 1962. “Essentially, what they’re wearing now is not really that different (from) what they wore in the ’60s,” Lukas said. Indeed, the blue and orange still works, both from a strict visual sense and as an homage to the departed Dodgers and Giants.
“It’s sort of surprising that there’s no other baseball team — and not many other teams in sports, period — that use royal blue and orange,” Lukas said. “It’s a really good color pairing and I’ve always loved the Mets script. I’d like to think not just because I’m a Mets fan. I think I can have an honest, intellectual assessment on it and not just an emotional attachment to it.”
I’ve written about the 1969 Royals almost daily for this entire season. As a capper, here’s an overview of the franchise’s first team, a surprisingly solid one: https://t.co/eV58cf6wVR pic.twitter.com/XIhMYgJVPY
— Darin Watson (@Darin_Watson) October 7, 2019
2. Kansas City Royals
If uniforms tell stories at a glance, then the Royals’ inaugural look conveys a tale of a bitter divorce. Charlie Finley treated his stewardship of the Kansas City Athletics like a constant marketing experiment. In 1963, Finley changed his team’s uniform colors to kelly green, Fort Knox gold and wedding gown white. When the A’s bolted for Oakland after the 1967 season, the local press noted that Kansas City’s expansion team embraced the conservative. The inspiration seemed obvious. “The Royals have a great uniform,” said Ross Yoshida, senior design director for the Dodgers. “But the Royals are basically us without the red number, right?”
Well, not exactly, contends Curt Nelson, who is director for the Royals Hall of Fame. “Many have said Royals uniforms are simply copies of the Dodgers,” Nelson wrote in an email. “Well, that is not true because there are several significant differences. That being said, the powers that be at the Royals founding did find inspiration in the Dodgers’ clean crisp sartorial look so they took some cues from that baseball standout and fashioned another here in Kansas City.”
Indeed, few looks are more local than the Royals’, who tapped the design expertise of Kansas City-based Hallmark. The project fell to Shannon Manning, a designer recently arrived from Chicago, who immediately began researching what other teams had done in the past. “Frankly I wasn’t impressed,” Manning said in a video that plays at the Royals’ Hall of Fame. “A pair of old sweat socks and baseballs with birds sitting on them and bats. Images like that of a sport but not strong graphic images.” Oh, snap. But if you designed this beauty, you’d probably be crowing, too.
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Manning’s original logo has since been tweaked. But the club has kept its original blue and white colors, which echo the racing silks of Ewing Kauffman, who owned thoroughbred racehorses before founding the Royals. Meanwhile, part of Manning’s logo maintains a presence on the team’s caps. It comes in the form of the joined KC emblem, which along with the Royals’ uniform script has remained essentially unchanged since day one.
Happy 72nd Birthday to Leon Hooten!
He competed for a spot on the Toronto Blue Jays’ pitching staff in their first spring training in 1977, but he never pitched for the club in a regular season game.
But that didn’t stop O-Pee-Chee from producing this card of him. pic.twitter.com/NZ59tZuCcA
— Kevin Glew (@coopincanada) April 4, 2020
1. Toronto Blue Jays
When Walker began overseeing the creation of the Blue Jays’ logo, he looked closely at what other teams had done. He found that logos often sprang up from newspaper cartoonists or fans submitting designs. “A lot of them evolved that way — not exactly a professional application in design and longevity,” Walker said. “But a good symbol, a good logo should, in my estimation, be just a nice piece of art or design in and of itself without anything else. If it works with something that’s well designed, well proportioned.”
With the Blue Jays, that level of professional refinement showed through, from the color balance to the letter forms for the numbers and names. The circular shape of the logo made it easy to center on the uniform jerseys — taking full advantage of the pullover look of the era. As a cherry on top, the original road uniforms were powder blue. The process to create the look might have been bumpy. But the result was flawless.
“The apex of what a modern baseball uniform can look like,” Radom said. “Perfectly balanced in terms of color and elements, the proprietary split letter forms, and all that symmetry, unencumbered by buttons. Top it off with those blue and white paneled caps, and we have a museum piece here.”
(Top photo of Andre Dawson and Vance Law in 1985: Bob Langer / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
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