Friday, July 26, 2013

City and Team Name...Its A Chicago Thing

The home team will often have it's name on the front of the uniform...

 

....no big deal.

And often, the road uniform has their city instead of the team name...

 

...again, no big deal

Occasionally, a team will have their city on the home uniforms...


...though you would think the home team knows where they are from.  Then again, when that city/county spends over half a billion dollars on your ballpark, they are entitled to have their name on the front of the home jersey!

But very rarely will you see both the team name and city of the front of a jersey.  I've found three examples, with two of the three being Chicago teams.

The first to do it was the 1957 Cubs


This was the first year for the rounded C hat and blue pinstripes at home. The hat and the home uniform have remained pretty much the same, but the road unis were a one year wonder.   The next season the front just said "Chicago."

The next team with both city and team name would be the White Sox...


...who started in 1967 and continued through 1975, though the color scheme...


...changed to red in 1971.

The last team to have both was the...


....1978 San Diego Padres.  Like the '57 Cubs, this was a one year only deal.  The Padres uni did make a comeback in an odd way...


....serving as inspiration for the Rays 1979 throwbacks, though obviously the Rays didn't exist in 1979

4 comments:

  1. Love your blog but you are mistaken about both the Cubs and the White Sox uni's. All of those cards show their away uniforms.

    See:

    http://exhibits.baseballhalloffame.org/dressed_to_the_nines/detail_page.asp?fileName=nl_1957_chicago.gif&Entryid=908

    and:

    http://exhibits.baseballhalloffame.org/dressed_to_the_nines/uniforms.asp?league=AL&city=Chicago&lowYear=1967&highYear=1972&sort=year&increment=9

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  2. The White Sox DID wear Chicago on the front of their home jerseys from 1976-1981.

    http://exhibits.baseballhalloffame.org/dressed_to_the_nines/detail_page.asp?fileName=al_1976_chicago.gif&Entryid=1300

    ReplyDelete
  3. What I'm saying is that the uniform has both the city AND team name on it......usually a uniform has one or the other. These have both

    ReplyDelete
  4. Interesting. A little before my time but I'm not a fan of those Cubs uni's particularly the hats with the white piping. Awful teams back then too.

    ReplyDelete