Brewers 101: The Logos

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For those of you unaware at this point, I was tasked with operating Reviewing the Brew’s Twitter account (you’re following, aren’t you?)

With that tremendous responsibility, we will occasionally shout out to the ether in search of what our followers and readers want to hear about. It was just such an occasion that the Brewers 101 segment was born. Follower @ForzaGemelli – a baseball fan in Italy, of all places – asked us to cover some history. Specifically, he asked about the move Milwaukee made to the National League. And we will get to that very soon, but without a strong foundation everything falls apart.

So we begin our short history of the Milwaukee Brewers by examining when and where the logos and namesake of our beloved Brew Crew began.

The American Association (1901) (1902-1952)

In 1901, the newly-formed American League allowed eight charter members. One of those teams was the Milwaukee Brewers. They played only one year, finishing 48-89, dead last of all eight teams in the league. A year later, they packed their bags and moved to St. Louis, becoming the Browns, and later the Baltimore Orioles. The name Brewers – a nod to the German heritage and Beer-making tycoons like Miller, Schlitz, Blatz, and Pabst – would forever stay in Milwaukee.

Here’s a photo of the American Association Brewers from 1944, with a good look at the cap logo and Brewers script – which might look familiar to you. (source: borchertfield.com)

The American Association was founded the year after Major League Baseball left Milwaukee for the first time. In 1902, eight Midwestern cities formed what was largely described as a “renegade league.” Despite the way it was looked at by the majority of minor and Major Leagues, it was wildly popular and the Milwaukee Brewers were one of the most successful franchises in the fifty year league history. They played at Borchert Field, a funny wooden stadium sandwiched near 8th and Chambers streets.

The team’s early history had a variety of fonts chosen – usually a mixture of block and Gothic scripts, in white or red with navy blue being the most prevalent color. The name of the city, Milwaukee, was the most common placement on the jersey in script or block letters. It changed occasionally to a block or Gothic ‘M’ on the left side of the chest.

Through it all, the colors blue and red dominated the team for its entire stay in Milwaukee – no doubt the reason the Boston Braves kept the blue and red when they moved back to the Cream City.

As the team evolved, so did the uniforms and logos. One of the most famous

Oh look! It’s Owgust the Barrel Man – he’s quite agile for a man made of wood and filled with beer. (Source: baseball-reference.com)

logos( or mascot, if you prefer) was “Owgust” – the now infamous Barrel Man that appeared on programs, pennants, and jersey sleeves in the latter part of the team’s history. The name Owgust, as far as I could ascertain, is a phonetic spelling of the German pronunciation of “August” – which I assume references not only the summer months of baseball, but also the less literal definition of inspiring reverence or a person of eminence. If I’m wrong, please don’t hesitate to tell me.

Owgust became the symbol of baseball and pride in Milwaukee, and the Major League Brewers continue to use him and other callbacks from the AA days to preserve the long history of Brewers baseball in the community.

(sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Seattle Pilots (1969)

This is Gabe Brabender posing in his awesome home Pilots uniform – and those ridiculous glasses. (photo from: seattlepilots.com)

1969 brought another wave of expansion in Major League Baseball. The Kansas City Royals and the Seattle Pilots, along with their new fans, were hopeful for a long and fruitful relationship between the city and professional baseball.

One of those teams would be right. The other would be the Seattle Pilots.

The team finished with a 64-98 record, good for the basement of the American League West. The team drew one of the lowest attendances in the American League with under 700,000 fans through the turnstiles. It’s little wonder that the team found itself in hot water financially to the point that they had to uproot and move to Milwaukee.

The team decided on the name Pilots as a nod to Seattle’s culture – the Pilot’s wheel represents the marine trade and recreational activities, while the gold wings pay homage to the aeronautic industry that found a home in the Pacific Northwest.

The Pilots were on the forefront of a lot of changing trends in baseball uniform

This is the Seattle Pilots hat. It’s seriously awesome. (photo from: shop.mlb.com)

design – they adopted a more ‘modern’ script for their lettering, used different shades of blue and those hats. The leaves on the bill and gold band on the bottom of the cap were reminiscent of a military uniform design that set the apart.

The teams also wore their logo patch on the chest of the jersey – a pilot’s wheel surrounding a baseball adorned with wings.

Though the team only survived for one season, the design of the Pilots would have lasting impressions on the Milwaukee Brewers.

(sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Milwaukee Brewers in the ’70s

The haphazard Milwaukee Brewers uniform were never meant to be – now they’re iconic. (photo from: baseballhalloffame.org)

Fun fact: the Milwaukee Brewers color scheme was never supposed to be blue and gold. Pretty much everything about the design in the 1970 season was not supposed to look the way it did, but the financial difficulties of the Pilots forced the hand of a lot of parties, and Milwaukee had to play the cards they were dealt.

Bud Selig wanted to remake the team with red and blue in homage to the American Association Brewers – but the blue and gold stuck.

The uniforms of the first season very closely resembled that of the Pilots – because they were the uniforms of the Pilots, with Seattle’s icons removed and the Brewers logos stitched over the top – fans of the early days and players of the era have said you could actually see the remnants of the old team on the uniforms.

The Brewers gave a nod to the Pilots with a similar lettering, and donned a blue cap with a plain gold ‘M’ adorned on it.

Over the next few years, slight adjustments were made along with the times. The

Owgust definitely got more trim for his trip to the Majors. (photo from: sportslogos.net)

block script stayed on the jerseys, and the Brewers said goodbye to tradition and used the word ‘Brewers’ on both home and road jerseys. After the 1970 season, the team slimmed down the gold armbands from the military style bands of the Pilots, giving the uniform a look more closely resembling the current look. By ’72, Milwaukee went with the pullover double-knits and continued into the strange realm of ’70s fashion trends with the yellow front panel on the navy blue cap. Not to mention: yellow socks with blue stirrups.

Times were changing and the Brewers were young, so the early to mid-’70s was marked by tweaks and shifts in the overall design of the logo and uniforms. Oddly enough, the only constant of the era was Owgust – our friendly neighborhood barrel man who was dusted off, given a more athletic posture, and showed off to the Milwaukee faithful as one of the team’s official symbols. This era in Brewers history also gave birth to a new lasting team symbol. That mustachioed man was, of course, Bernie Brewer – introduced to the Milwaukee fans in 1973.

(sources: 1, 2, 3)

The Ball and Glove (1978-Present [intermittently])

Look at how great that logo is. LOOK AT IT. (photo from: sportslogos.net)

We now arrive to what is unquestionably one of the most iconic logos in baseball history. It was 1977, and the Milwaukee Brewers were looking for an image change. They opened up a contest to professional and amateur designers to encapsulate the Brewers in a logo for a chance to win $2,000 – which was a lot of money then (and now, if you’re me).

Tom Meindel, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Art History major came out on top with the simple, whimsical ‘m’ and ‘b’ stacked together as a baseball mitt. It was clean, brilliant, and ended up being worth a whole heck of a lot more than two grand.

Along with the logo change came a few more uniform changes as well. The plain white home uniforms were thrown away, replaced by the white and blue pinstriped get-up. In 1979, the Brewers finally relented to the long-standing unwritten rules of uniform wording and replaced ‘BREWERS’ with a cursive ‘Milwaukee’ on the road uniforms

Into the 1980s, the away uniform moved from the powder blue (so hot in the

There is literally nothing in this photo that does not scream excellence. Bravo, Gorman Thomas. (photo from: cardboardgoods.net)

’70s), and stopped briefly into grey before settling on white. Unfortunately, it would take all the way until 1990 to get rid of the horrible elastic pants and double-knit pullover jerseys.

Once 1990 hit, things were tweaked again. The Ball and Glove remained the sole image of the team – but the script had changed. A ‘Swoosh’ was added under the team and city name for a bit of extra flair. The road jersey once again went from white to grey.

If ever the Brewers had glory years, they lived during the heyday of the Ball and Glove logo. Like all good things, those seasons wouldn’t last forever – even though the logo did.

(sources: 1, 2)

The Mid-Nineties (The Dark Ages of Baseball Design) (1994-1999)

Remember this logo? I bet you sort of wish you didn’t. (photo from: sportslogos.net)

Seriously folks, these were trying days for baseball for a lot of reasons. We were hurtling towards a new century. Society demanded progress. Baseball needed to keep up with modern times and many fans foudn the game too pastoral. This led to some horrible, horrible things: sleeveless jerseys, drop shadows, those teal hats the Marlins had,’ Turn Ahead the Clock Nights’ – not to mention that the Devil Rays multi-color logo ACTTUALLY EXISTED.

The Milwaukee Brewers were no exception to the lost ages of baseball history. 1994 was the 25th year of the Milwaukee Brewers franchise, and with that brave new world the team officials felt that it needed a brave new logo. The team turned to designers within Major League Baseball to get the job done.

What they came up with was like nothing else in the history of Milwaukee baseball – but probably not as great as they would have hoped. The colors shifted to a darker navy blue and paired it with a dark green and gold. It sort of

Yeah…that seems legit. (photo from: thirdcoastdigest.com)

brought together everything about Wisconsin Professional sports into a strange amalgam of unintersting design. The lettering was changed from the block letter and cursive into what can only be described as ‘futuristic Gothic’ – sort of modern, sort of nostalgic, but thoroughly odd. The intertwined letters M’ and ‘B’ sat on a diamond field (because it’s baseball, get it?!) and crossed bats behind it. Ugh.

That logo did not survive on the cap past 1996, as the team moved back to the letter ‘M’, which varied in white or gold. The diamond/crossed bats/M and B made an appearance under the lettering on the alternate navy jerseys, which looks very cluttered – but remember that it’s the nineties and everything makes more sense then.

Let’s be honest for a minute: nobody really likes this period in Brewers logo history. It’s overly commercial, the green bill makes it look like a little league team, and the whole thing is detached from the team legacy. If I could give it one positive point, it would be that this unfortunate set-up did serve as a bridge between the kitschy, folksy Brewers logos of old up to the contemporary logo that the team has now.

The Present and the Future (2000 – Present)

If that was on a beer bottle – I would TOTALLY drink that beer. (photo from: sportslogos.net)

By the year 2000, construction was getting completed on a state-of-the-art retractable roof stadium and a new era was beginning in Milwaukee Brewers history.

It seemed only natural, then, that the team would once again reinvent their look in order to reflect the new direction. The new logo design reinforced the environment they were moving into – a classic, nostalgic space with contemporary flair and a nod to the heritage of the city and fans.

The color scheme moved away from the strangeness of the nineties and differentiated itself from the more garish blues and golds of ’70s, ’80s, and early 90s. The designed is dominated by a deep navy blue, and punctuated by white and a more true gold. The Brewers script returns to the embellished cursive – with the swoosh – and is reminiscent of the script used by Schlitz, Blatz, and other German and beer-making magnates in the glory days of Milwaukee’s industrial beginnings. A further nod is given to what brewers actually do by

The Brewers continue to tweak their look to reflect the diverse population of the city. And the city loves it. (photo from: 213milestoshea.com)

accenting the team logos with a sprig of barley. Yes, folks, it is BARLEY. NOT WHEAT. STOP SAYING THAT. It has been around for, like, ten years now you think it wouldn’t be so ambiguous by now.

The team’s uniform has largely gone back to displaying “Brewers” on both home and road jerseys, and only lately have they adopted “Milwaukee” for use on their alternates. In 2013, the gold jersey will be worn as an official alternate in addition to the navy, white, and grey jerseys.

One of the earmarks of the most recent turn in Brewers design history is the ethnic heritage jerseys. It began with the “Cerveceros” jerseys as a nod to the Hispanic culture in Milwaukee and throughout baseball. Soon it evolved to include German and Italian variants, and I’m sure there will be plenty more to come.

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Milwaukee has come a long way from the humble beginnings of minor league, turn-of-the-century baseball to become a premiere organization in the National League. Through it all, the Brewers have been able to endear themselves to their fans and become part of the fabric of the community as it progressed – while still reminding everyone where they came from.

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