Trying to sneak St. Louis Cardinals' trivia past
Leon Beyond on baseball's opening week is like trying to sneak the sun past the rooster. This week he traces the evolution (and occasional evolutionary dead-ends) of the Redbirds' famous emblem "The Birds on the Bat."
Click for a larger version:
Paul Lukas (of the wonderful
UniWatch) has
written about this important insignia, and the invaluable 'Dressed to the Nines'
MLB uniform Database is a great reference, but Leon didn't need the help of course. Here are some of the articles mentioned, starting with the original worn by the likes of Rogers Hornsby:
Audubon-inspired ornithologically accurate version. Birders to this day still decry that two male redbirds would ever sit that close to each other on a yellow baseball bat without pecking each other's eyes out.
The template that
Catholic Kardinals use when designing their uniforms:
Vinegar Bend Mizell, the best drawer in the 50's Cardinals Clubhouse and future Congressman, sporting the disastrous one-season-only non-Birds on the Bat jersey:
And local architects' ongoing battle with the Lumber industry:
Stay tuned for future updates, including the slated 2014 league-wide switch to aluminum bats, which will surely necessitate the R&D of chrome embroidery.
The wonderful comics website WHAT THINGS DO has been running my long out-of-print strip THE GHOST OF DRAGON CANOE. Part 2 (of 3) is up today. 
Also, I recently came across a manila folder full of reference I had collected back when I was working on that story:
And get a load of this color palette!
Anyway, if like comics, or caves, or ramshackle schoolbuses, you might be into it.
This week I let Leon Beyond into my house to dig through my junk drawer and catalog all of its contents.
Trying to sneak St. Louis Cardinals' trivia past Leon Beyond on baseball's opening week is like trying to sneak the sun past the rooster. This week he traces the evolution (and occasional evolutionary dead-ends) of the Redbirds' famous emblem "The Birds on the Bat." Click for a larger version:
Paul Lukas (of the wonderful UniWatch) has written about this important insignia, and the invaluable 'Dressed to the Nines' MLB uniform Database is a great reference, but Leon didn't need the help of course. Here are some of the articles mentioned, starting with the original worn by the likes of Rogers Hornsby:
Audubon-inspired ornithologically accurate version. Birders to this day still decry that two male redbirds would ever sit that close to each other on a yellow baseball bat without pecking each other's eyes out.
The template that Catholic Kardinals use when designing their uniforms:
Vinegar Bend Mizell, the best drawer in the 50's Cardinals Clubhouse and future Congressman, sporting the disastrous one-season-only non-Birds on the Bat jersey:
And local architects' ongoing battle with the Lumber industry:
Stay tuned for future updates, including the slated 2014 league-wide switch to aluminum bats, which will surely necessitate the R&D of chrome embroidery.
