Brewers 101: The Logos

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)