Good morning, I’m posting this during the second inning of Sunday Night’s game because knowing me I fell asleep on the couch around 9:45. Â Here’s a guest post from Greg:
A thought on the Mets.
For many a moon, I wore an old Brooklyn Dodger hat. I could relate, as a Brooklynite, as a ballplayer. It was a becoming hat too, I felt like it made me look alright, perhaps my imagination at work, but whatever. A nice shade of blue, good old fashioned white B. Fancy, but not too fancy. A baseball hat which could be worn around with jeans and T shirts.
The Mets find themselves in an unusual position. Unlike the Yankees, an ex-Baltimore team, the Mets really are a NY team, and they pick up from the Giants and Dodgers, who were likewise NY teams.
It was good that they took up the images of the Giants and Dodgers because, as many people will note, it was the competition between those two teams which enlivened the NY sports scene, and underscored the neighborhood aspect of our city (as it was before Robert Moses).
As Brooklyn was folded into NYC, it becomes perhaps inevitable that the Mets would take the Giants’ NY logo. Also too, the Mets were headed up partially by some old Giants fans. They settled the Mets in the locale where Moses had recommended the Dodgers move: Willets Pt.
They took the name of the Mets after some old baseball team which played in Harlem, in Staten Island, and perhaps elsewhere in NY, a feeder team to the Giants and Dodgers, providing a historical link. The Metropolitans, btw, is the better name imo.
They also got a nice insignia, the famous baseball-skyline image, which is much more exciting than the Yankees’ square, meaningless, bat-n-hat.
But something went wrong with the uniform. Rather than just take the Giants insignia and meld it with the Dodgers’ colors, they brought along the orange. Over time, the blue softened to a light shade, and now, in light blue and bright orange, they have one of the most striking color clashes in MLB.
Keep in mind that people want to wear the team hat on the street. For Mets fans, this is tricky, because that hat can’t easily be matched with. Frankly, it’s unwearable unless the wearer doesn’t care what people think about their fashion sense.
In addition to that problem, they also added pinstripes, creating a busy home uniform, which only got busier when they began putting numbers on the front and names on the back.
So there are two ways out of this: by addition, or by subtraction. I think by subtraction is the classier route. Ditch the pinstripes, wear them for old timer’s day. Have an away hat with light grey letters rather than orange, or a home hat with white letters rather than orange. Ditch the orange pin on top. Darken the blue to Dodger blue, as it should be in honor of that half of the Mets’ legacy. Altogether very wearable, subtle, and nice.
The other way is addition. By adding black, a neutral color like grey or white, the Mets can begin to abstract away from the clash of the bright blue and orange. It’s difficult combining all those colors in one uniform, and you can see it’s still a work in progress. Unfortunately, given the money the Mets have, PR, and some of their decisions, like the Dominoes Pizza-Citi Field emblem, four colors leaves room for mistakes.
An example, imo, is a lot of that hideous garb that fans are wearing, with random swaths of black, orange, and blue. A worse example, imo again, is how the genius of the baseball-skyline logo, with white, blue, and, orange, is contaminated, or cheapened, with a four color logo which includes black. The economy of the original design is lost.
Of course, there are those who will say the black was a 90s fad, and they’re right, but in this case, I view it as a happy accident, in some respects – because something had to be done.
I realize people want to go and see the Mets team they always used to see, but they have to appreciate that fans want to wear this stuff, and while they can for the Yankees or Red Sox, or many other teams, the Mets – who have a great logo on their hat, have really challenged the fan base with the bright blue and orange.
I also think that there is a little bit of a disconnect between the fans and the ownership. Fans just want to see consistency in the ‘uniform’. They don’t like it changing every day, and for good reason. Why can’t the Mets have alternate uniforms for special occasions only, like Old Timers Day? That would be the right time to pull out the 1969 hats and unis, or the 1986 hats and unis. And they could sell them right alongside their other wares for those who want them. But from a day to day basis, they need a single home uniform/hat and likewise for the road. Fans want this, and I can’t see why management can’t give the fans what they want, while also providing a true alternate.
Lastly, I want to comment on Citi Field. There’s been a lot of outcry about the Dodgers imagery, and the Mets did go a bit over the top with the Dodgers pictures in the Rotunda. It looks not only as a Jackie shrine, but a Dodger shrine.
That said, people should appreciate that the Mets on their own are just another expansion team. But as a connection back through time, through many decades, the Mets are a link to the Dodgers and the Giants, and some of the richest NY history, and richest baseball history. By providing that link to those old teams, the provide many of the fans with a link to their grandparents, their parents, and their uncles. Sure, the Dodgers and Giants took off for the west coast, but they left a lot of fans, or children of those fans, and all those memories of the fans, the stadiums, the aura, the players, behind. The Mets help themselves and the community by laying claim to those heirlooms, to represent that extremely rich NY NL baseball history.
For some people this is unimportant, I understand, but baseball is a history-oriented sport, and I think it’s appropriate for the Mets, or the Metropolitans, to be that team.
– Greg
