A fire has burned for years, fed with Milwaukee Brewers uniforms featuring logos other than the Ball-in-Glove and San Diego Padres uniforms in colors other than brown. The Brewers and Padres are in the midst of a victory lap declaring a return to the purity of their heritage. Are they right to hail victory, or their new uniforms a mere distraction from a hidden degeneracy?

It is our responsibility as Fascionistas honor the blood shed by our ancestors in the two foremost battles of the sports uniform world by uncovering the truth and reviewing the new Brewers and Padres uniforms.

MILWAUKEE BREWERS

Some Fascionistas die on the hill that the Ball-in-Glove is not enough to restore the purity of the Milwaukee Brewers, as a return to royal blue is equally imperative to their heritage. I, however, draw a distinction between the Milwaukee Brewers of the American League, and the Milwaukee Brewers of the National League. It was sacrilege when the AL Brewers dared to don navy blue, but upon moving to the National League Central in 1998, Milwaukee has been correct to wear navy rather than royal. Lest we forget it is the dream of Fascionistas for every division in baseball to display diversity in color. Our goal is for no two teams in the same division to share the same primary color. Of course, there are few teams where victory is even close, but the National League is close. Should the Brewers wear royal blue, they would be the second team in the division to primarily wear royal, sharing the shade with the Chicago Cubs. As disgustingly overused as navy blue is across Major League Baseball, the Brewers are the only team in the National League Central to wear it as a primary color, and the combination of the shade with yellow as a secondary color is unique for both leagues. Now, the only primary color that is repeated by two teams in the NL Central is red, shared by the Cardinals and the Reds, who both reserve special right to the color despite being division rivals. The decision to keep royal blue is correct.

Now we must address where most attention is: the Ball-in-Glove itself. This logo is disgusting compared to all previous iterations of the BiG. The most obvious degeneration the centered ball, and the perfectly round circle making up the B. Despite technically being an act of graphic centering, the ball is actually less in focus now than it was originally, as now it appears that the B portion of the glove is being crushed by the weight of the M as opposed to supporting an M that has been stitched on, like a glove. The two perfectly centered seams of the 2020 BiG's ball, as opposed to the imperfect single seam of the original 1978's BiG, makes it the ballness of the ball too obvious. The single seam of the original ball is a byproduct of being a graphic rather than a photograph, it shows us a visual representation of ball without attempting to provide realism that is only possible with a photograph. The new BiG's double seam's underestimate our intelligence, they expect us not to realize it is a ball unless it looks like a real ball, yet the perfect centering, ironically, is too perfect to occur in a natural act of catching a ball.

 

To divert from the standard Fascionista party line, I never supported the white stitching of the original BiG. I respect that it conveyed that the space between the M and B is, in fact, stitching, but visually, I preferred the visual consistency offered when the stitching was blue and maintain that the goal of conveying the stitching can be accomplished in colors of white. Of course, the only iteration of the BiG with blue stitching was the 2016 navy alternate, which was switched to white after one single year because so many Fascionistas rightfully defended their heritage. Let it be clear that, despite my preference for blue stitching over white, both colors are vastly superior to the degenerate yellow stitching of the new BiG. Despite not taking up any more technical space than the previous stitching, the space appears wider due to the yellowed white space blending with the white outlines of the M and B. On the note of outlines, the yellow outline connecting the B and M has been changed to blue and given a separate yellow outline. Anyone who thinks such a needles change could be a visual improvement must have inferior genes.

 

The difference between the underlying ideologies of the original BiG and the new iteration is as follows. The original BiG was a glove that looked like and M and a B; the new BiG is an M and a B that looks like a glove. This gross misunderstanding of the original theory is why we Fascionistas must impose ideological uniform education from birth.

 

Returning to optimism, the cream-colored primary home uniform, modeled by (((Ryan Braun))), deserves much praise where other cream uniforms deserve execution. The recent trend of "fauxback" cream uniforms followed by teams like the Seattle Mariners are a ploy into exciting degenerates who think the jerseys are connections to their heritage; cream was never a part of the jerseys the Mariners fauxbacks pretend to mimic, nor was cream ever so standard in history that it is a true representation of past times. Furthermore, there is simply no aesthetic superiority of cream jerseys over white purity in most cases. The San Francisco reserve a birthright to wear cream, as it is their heritage, and they respect the cream by wearing it as a primary. The Brewers will also commit to cream as a primary, which is honorable. Despite having no history of wearing cream, Milwaukee has been dubbed "The Cream City", so it is right for the Brewers to march with their Buck brothers in raising the cream sword. The wordmark on the home jersey is both a reference to the 1970s Brewers uniform, widened notably to allude to contemporary craft beer label typography, similarly to the 2000 Brewers uniforms current towards the commercial beer cans of the time. Fascionistas should support everything about the cream jerseys.

We should not support the alternate home pinstripes, however. Our opposition has nothing to do with aesthetics. In fact, it is my opinion that the white pinstripes look quite good, as they are identical to the beautiful throwbacks worn from 2006-2019, with royal blue being switch for navy. We oppose the pinstripes on principle that teams should be allowed a primary white or off-white home jersey, one colored alternate if they so choose, and an occasional throwback alternate if historically significant. The royal, pinstriped throwback introduced in 2006 was historically significant, and would be both relevant and admissible today, if and only if it remained in royal. Wearing royal when official colors are navy denote the status as a throwback; navy pinstripes are nothing but an alternate. The navy pinstripes might have made a fine primary jersey, but the choice was made to commission the stripeless creams, rightfully, and that decision must be consistently respected.

The road grays of the new uniforms are acceptable in and of themselves, for the typeface is nice and they feature the city name while the previous Brewers road set featured the team name, but they disrespect Milwaukee's heritage by sporting a gray canvas. As countless teams who do not belong in powder blue hop on the powder blue bandwagon, teams like the Brewers who belong in powder blue have a responsibility to wear it in order shun the degenerates. While most teams who wore powder blue road uniforms during the 70s switched to them from historically established grays, the Brewers were founded with powder blue as the only canvas for their road uniforms. They did not have a gray uniform until 1985. Fascionistas reject the arbitrary code that all road jerseys must be gray; we support powder blue if and only if it is used as the canvas for the primary road jerseys and trousers. We support powder blue for a small number of teams, but no other must wear powder blue; most of the teams currently adopting powder blue ought not to wear it, especially since they choose to wear it at home, but the Brewers are amongst the teams that should wear it. The teams who must wear powder blue roads are as follows: Brewers, Royals (their current powder blues are unacceptable for not applying to the trousers and wearing them as a home alt), Blue Jays (they are closest to victory for wearing theirs on the road, but they do wear it at home), Phillies (they currently fail by wearing theirs as a home alternate throwback), Expos (if/when they return). We would support the Cubs in powder blue, but it is not a part of our party platform. As nice as the road grays may look, we must continue fighting in the name of powder blue purity.

There is, of course, a navy blue alternate colored top. The Brewers, more than most teams, had become notorious for overusing their navy alts, both at home and on the road, during the previous set's reign. They used the blue top with more moderation during the Jenkins era, but the (((Braun))) era Brewers had leaned especially towards the blue. Whether or not you wish to believe the Brewers organization, they have declared that the new blue tops will be exclusively worn as a road alternate, so hopefully, one crisis has been averted. I am not so fond of the jersey itself. The cursive script attempts to reference the road script of the first BiG era, but the new script is far too obvious in its digitization. The larger issue with the new script is that its solid yellow writing lacks any sort of outline, while the original script was blue with a yellow outline. Of course, with a blue canvas, that isn't an option, but they yellow script could be blue with the outline yellow, and it would look great. The lack of an outline not only looks cheap it, also blends into the yellow piping as if they were a single graphic. Speaking of, why exactly is there piping on this jersey? There is no piping anywhere else in the set, and the only time piping has been used in any Brewers set was in the controversial Morte Bame era of the 90s, of which the only possible reference in this set are the sleeve stripes on the road grays. They likely added the piping to add some more color to make the yellow script less alone, but a blue script with yellow outline would have looked more consistent. The road alternate also comes with a yellow front paneled cap, used only with this alternate. Fascionistas support teams utilizing differently colored front panels on their caps, and we uphold the original royal-and-yellow road cap of the 80s Brewers set as a fine cap, but the yellow panel is too large on the current set. From most camera angles, you will not be able to see that the rest of the crown is blue. Its specific pairing with the colored top is another possible reason that the yellow piping might have been seen as necessary, as the hat would be rather out-of-place if it were the only yellow-dominant element of the set. This alternate, if it must exist at all (it shouldn't), should lean more on navy blue, with yellow being used as an outline. The yellow-panel cap should exist, but it should be paired with the primary road jersey. This would look odd with the current gray roads due to their inherent drabness, but they would look excellent with powder blue roads.

There are two new arm patches in this set - one for the road, one for home. That itself is a crime; there is no need for two separate alternate logos. Both logos are patched onto the left sleeve, while the right sleeve has a patch commemorating the Brewers' 50th Anniversary in 2020. The other crime related to these logos, is that one of them is frankly awful. The ball with barley as seams is punishable by death. We get it, Brewers, you're the beer team. It's already in your name, alluded to by your excellent font choice, explicitly referenced by the Barrel Man mascot, and implicitly referenced by the other mascot (Bernie may not slide into a beer keg anymore, but we all know the new pool has concentration above the legal limit). You do not need to put barley everywhere. The barley on the previous set's insignia was great, but the entire identity was designed around it. The new identity is designed around nostalgia. Arguably, the barley could be there to reference the 2000-19 identity in the same way that everything else is a reference to something from the Brewers' uniform history, but the choice of navy over royal already accomplishes that. Barley or no barley, a lone baseball with no lettering does nothing to signify 'Brewers' without further prompting. From a distance, the barley is not even visible. This dreadful logo is the arm patch for both home jerseys.

The other alternate logo, worn on the road, is quite good. It's the State of the Wisconsin, Michigan-M logo used throughout the 70s, with royal switched to navy, no white outline over the Michigan-M, and bricks laid over the state to represent Milwaukee's manufacturing sector. The vague connection to Milwaukee is a bit much, especially since the globalists have done away with much of Wisconsin's blue-collar economy, but the logo does look good. Forced symbolism aside, the bricks do add a much-needed dose of blue in order to support the Michigan-M, and it does resemble a contemporary beer label.

Much of this identity is based around craft brewery design aesthetics. I dislike these elements on the degenerate hipster beer labels themselves, but they do look good on the uniform and would look good without the connection. They are there to be strengthen the beer theme of the Brewers in the same way that the 2000 set did by leaning on the sodapop-esque beer aesthetics of the time, but just as those beer trends were eventually considered outdated while the team kept wearing them on their uniforms, the Brewers are setting themselves up for sporting a dated whenever beer design trends change next. Arguably, the design could be considered good enough on its own that it can stand strong when beer design changes, but the test of time will decide soon enough.

Gentlemen, the implementation of the Ball-in-Glove we have fought for above all other logos in some full-time form cannot be considered a victory. This is a step in the right direction, but Fascionistas have a duty to honor our ancestors who have died in this struggle. The struggle must continue, and it will.

Next time, we will assess the San Diego Padres' return to brown.

Onward towards victory!