Now that the football season is over, sports fans can look forward to Major League Baseball. Spring Training is finally here, and teams have announced their kits for the Cactus League and Grapefruit League. The Spring Training hat logos that some of the teams decided to use are totally amazing. Some of them are less than impressive. SportsLogos.net put out an article featuring some of the Spring Training ballcaps that are going to be used this year. I want to take a look at a couple of these cap logos that the Major League teams should think about implementing as their primary logos.
First off, we have the Seattle Mariners. Now, this team needs improvement on their primary logo in a desperate way. Once I saw their Spring Training look, I was shocked. It’s absolutely AWESOME! Let’s take a look at their current logo, and then we shall compare to their new image.
This logo is known as the “nautical compass rose” image. It is what we see the Mariners wear during the regular season. Honestly, there is just too much going on here. You can see the compass aspect, with the directional points facing the different navigational directions. Of course, there is the text “Seattle Mariners” circled around the image. While I am all for teams representing their city/state and name in their logos, it shouldn’t cause the image to be too jumbled or bunched up. And that’s exactly what you see here. Remember, simplicity is key. Now, let’s see how their Spring Training logo compares.
Wow. What a huge difference. This logo is a throwback to their previous trident logo, which ran from 1981 to 1986. It’s a modern, revitalized reworking of that look from the 80s. This thing is just phenomenal. The trident is upside down, giving their clear resemblance of the letter “M” for Mariners. What a fantastic way to make a logo represent the actual team name, and what the team name means. A mariner is a sailor, and the team should honor that with a clear logo of the sea. Nothing does that better than this trident, the featured weapon of Poseidon, Greek God of the sea. Seattle should make this their permanent logo (again). Now let’s touch on a team that went the wrong direction with their Spring Training logo. And that’s the Tampa Bay Rays.
Now the Rays didn’t really have a drastic change like the Mariners did. Tampa Bay already uses their sunburst logo on their regular season hats. For Spring Training, the logo has a bit of a tweak and is placed in the powder blue ballcap. Honestly, the sunburst doesn’t say much about the Rays. It doesn’t let you know who they are, or where they are from. You could stretch it by saying the sunburst “resembles a ray of sunshine”. But let’s face it, that’s a stretch. The team really needs an improvement on the image they are going to carry on their hat. If you have any ideas on what they could use, drop them in the comments below!
*This content originally featured on awesomesportslogos.com.
[Blake]