Fashion Backward, or a Lonely Li’l Baseball Fan

Geek
1980 Giants

In honor of the upcoming baseball season, I thought it was time to dust this one off.

Seems when I was 13 or so, I felt compelled to draw the home & away uniforms of every MLB team, as well as alternate jerseys (an obscure practice in those days). I was obsessed with baseball, especially with the Giants — this was back when I lived in San Fran — and their distinctive orange & black. It was incredibly satisfying to get out the markers and fill the pages with all those colorful combinations of logos, stripes, and numerals.

Home Unis

1980 home unis

Road Unis

1980 road unis

Alternate Jerseys

1980 alternate unis

As far as I can tell, these uniforms are from the 1980 season (I think that’s when the Astros inaugurated the more “restrained” away uniform), but there seem to be a few discrepancies — the baseball Hall of Fame website, “Dressed to The Nines,” doesn’t show the alternate White Sox jersey or all those Padres variations…

It’s amazing to see how much uniform design has changed since then, though a few classic teams like the Yanks, BoSox, and Tigers have done very little if anything to change a good thing…

I also find it amusing that I displayed the unis in descending order of favorites — the teams, not the uniform designs — meaning that I had to identify not only my top two or three favorite teams, but all of ’em, 1 to 26 (‘member, this was before the Rockies, D-Backs, Marlins, and Devil Rays — not to mention the new Nationals — entered the scene):

1. Giants
2. Yankees
3. A’s
4. Reds
5. Red Sox
6. Tigers
7. Phillies
8. Pirates
9. Dodgers (as a Giants fan, this makes no sense!)
10. Mets
11. Cardinals
12. Expos
13. Astros
14. Royals
15. Brewers
16. Orioles
17. Braves
18. Cubs
19. Twins
20. Padres
21. Mariners
22. White Sox
23. Rangers
24. Angels
25. Indians
26. Blue Jays

When applicable, I used the uniform number of my favorite player from that team, e.g:

Giants: #22 Jack Clark
Reds: #15 George Foster and #22 Dan Driessen
Phillies: #20 Mike Schmidt
Pirates: #39 Dave Parker
Dodgers: #6 Steve Garvey
Mets: #16 Lee Mazzilli
Expos: #10 Andre Dawson
Brewers: #15 Cecil Cooper
Orioles: #22 Jim Palmer and #33 Eddie Murray
Braves: #5 Bob Horner
Cubs: #22 Bill Buckner (!)
Twins: #2 John Castino
Mariners: #23 Bruce Bochte
Angels: #29 Rod Carew

As you can see, for some of these teams, I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find a “favorite” player. I mean John Castino? Bruce Bochte? Whew!

This last piece was a little experiment I did where I used other teams’ styles to imagine new designs for my beloved Giants. Coincidentally, one of the designs — I believe based on the Tigers’ — wasn’t too different than the road uni the Giants introduced a couple of years later, in 1983.

Hope you get a kick out of this 25-year-old blast from the past!

0 thoughts on “Fashion Backward, or a Lonely Li’l Baseball Fan

  1. THIS is fucking fantastic. Totally something I would have done in the early 80s. (Well, maybe not ALL 26 teams, but still…)
    I’m ready for the SPX softball game already!
    -jim d.

    1. Hey, a fellow baseball/comics geek! If only we could eliminate SPX’s let-down 3rd day, we could resurrect the softball game. Any chance of that?

      1. I think it’s supposed to be back this year, no?
        “In 2005, SPX returns to its two-day format on September 23 and 24 with the Small Press Summit for artists, publishers, retailers and aspiring independent comics creators on Sunday, September 25.”
        http://www.spxpo.com/index.shtml
        This implies the picnic and softball game, too, I think/hope…

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