Seeing Red

Changing your uniform design is like calling one of those last-second timeouts just as the opposing team is about to kick a field goal. Sure, it may have been a good call--maybe their first try would have been straight through the uprights, but they choke when they have to kick it again. However, when you think about it, it's just as likely that they miss that first kick, and your ill-advised, too-clever-by-half timeout gives them the second chance they need.

Switching up your team's logo and uniform design is kind of like that. There's always the chance that your old design really was an eyesore, and the change is actually an improvement. However, it's just as likely that you're fixing what isn't broken, overthinking and overacting when the best move is to leave well enough alone.

Now, if you're like me, you probably weren't sitting around thinking, "You know what really needs a change? The Boston Red Sox logo that's existed happily for 29 years." But that's what sets people like you and me apart from the Red Sox brass. Maybe it was the Game 7 ALCS lost that left a sour taste in their mouths, but after two recent World Series wins and God knows how many millions in revenue, they suddenly decided that this just wasn't good enough anymore.

Now, let's face it: baseball doesn't have much over other sports. While I love it to death, it's slow, objectively boring, and as much as I keep hoping it will happen, the players never start hitting each other with their bats. The one thing baseball does have in its corner is history. No American sport can touch baseball's unique place in Americana, and its steady presence through every cultural transformation. Love them or hate them, the Red Sox have pretty much always been there. And through Reagan, the Berlin Wall, O.J. Simpson, Monica Lewinsky, September 11th, and Barack Obama, they had the same logo.

The point is that baseball isn't simply historic--it's also somehow comforting in the way that it stays the same as we grow and change. If you're the Blue Jays, sure, you can feel free to try out some new uniforms. But if you're one of baseball's most stories franchises, then that's just not going to fly, especially if you decide to change to this.