What’s in a (City) Name?
April 14, 2008
| Kevin
Zdancewicz
What’s so special about this
week’s
featured jersey, you’re
saying to yourself. That’s just the Orioles road jersey. Well, you’re
right
that this isn’t an abnormal jersey per se, but there is definitely
something
interesting about it. I’m going to assume most you know that the O’s
play their
games in Baltimore, MD. But if you were to ask a random, non-sports fan
to look
at that picture above and establish the team’s hometown, they might not
be able
to. It’s definitely not as easily as determining where the Red Sox play
based
on this.
The Orioles have not had
Baltimore
written across their
chests since
1972. The franchise's official reason lately seems to be to
acknowledge the
Orioles as a
regional team, with fans all along the Mid-Atlantic area. Therefore,
keeping the
city off of the jerseys helps fans from areas outside the Baltimore
area
continue to identify with the franchise. But that doesn’t mean fans,
especially
those in and around Baltimore, are not upset that the location
of Camden Yards doesn’t grace the front of the jersey. Some
maintain that a
team can remain regionally-appealing despite having one city on the
uniform.
Others suggest that owner Peter Angelos – who didn’t take “Baltimore”
off the
road jerseys, but apparently has thwarted
all efforts from within the organization to put it back on – is
being
illogical since this move would increase jersey sales and make the fans
happy (as
they are not pleased with the Angelos regime to begin with). There’s
even an online
petition
to put “Baltimore” back on the road jersey.
While the Orioles may have the most colorful
back-story
regarding the issue, they are not the only team that doesn’t use the
city/location name on their road jersey. The Angels
also choose not to use their hometown on the road uniform since they
are now
the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, which is a little too much to put on
the
front of a jersey. This is an obvious and more appropriate case of
declining to
include a city on the jersey in an effort to market to a broader
region. By
keeping Anaheim, Los Angeles, Orange County or whatever else off of the
jersey,
multiple areas can claim the Angels as their own without seeing some
other city
on the team’s jerseys. (Then again, the Angels have
almost always worn Angels on their road jerseys.) It makes you
wonder why
they
didn’t just remain the California
Angels?
The Tampa Bay franchise has new
uniforms
this season and officially got rid of the nickname “Devil Rays”
for the
shorter (and less demonic) “Rays.” As a result, the franchise hopes
that
baseball fans will fully break from the “Devil Rays” moniker by
featuring
“Rays” on both the home
and
road jerseys. There are a few other teams that put their team
nickname on
the road gray jersey. The St. Louis Cardinals do it, probably so that
they can
use the sweet birds-and-bat
word mark for both uniforms. The Phillies
go without Philadelphia since it must be difficult to render across a
jersey
and the team’s nickname represents the hometown as much as the city
itself. The
Milwaukee Brewers, who have gone without
Milwaukee on the jerseys since their latest uniform redesign, round
out the
six teams that break the league’s road jersey protocol mold.
(Update: The Orioles
unveiled new uniforms for the 2009 season that feature "Baltimore"
on the front of the gray road jerseys. Also,
in an apparent ploy to get Baltimore on each uniform set, a new
patch was added to the home jersey sleeve and a city wordmark was
added to the black
alternate jersey sleeve. The Oriole Bird logo was altered as well.)
Photo Courtesy of ESPN.com
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