Leggo My Logo

Cool story from the Times’ City Room blog. The famous Yankees logo, which has long been credited to Henry Alonzo Keller, a sports illustrator from Bronxville, might actually be the product of a portraitist, Sam Friedman, who used to sketch patrons of the 21 Club. According to Friedman’s family, Friedman drew the logo in 1947 for Dan Topping, a co-owner of the Yankees who had just sidled up to the bar at the 21 Club.

One day, Mr. Topping — who was a regular patron, along with his second wife, Sonja Henie, the Norwegian figure skater and actress — told Sam Friedman he wanted a logo that included the Yankees name, a bat, a ball and patriotic-themed top hat, but that the ad agencies he had already asked had produced nothing satisfactory. So goes the Friedman family story.

Sam Friedman took out a pen and swiftly sketched a design on a cocktail napkin. He elongated a leg of the K in the word Yankees and made it a bat with a top hat on top. He drew the circumference of a baseball around it, said Jack Friedman, who provided a copy of a scrap upon which his great-uncle wrote the word “Yanks,” which he says strongly resembles the cursive of the logo.

When reached for comment, Tony Morante, the Yankees’ director of stadium tours, said Henry Keller has always been recognized as the logo’s creator.

Interestingly, Keller’s family claims the Mets later stole Henry’s logo, which he designed for the team and is still used today. And, since they are the Mets, a team spokesperson said they had no idea who designed the logo, even though, as one Times’ commenter pointed out, the Mets own website gives credit to cartoonist Ray Gatto.

Only in New York. 

Pittsburgh Pirates: 17 Years of Suck

Yesterday, while the Yankees were busy putting a stranglehold on the American League East, the Pittsburgh Pirates lost to the Chicago Cubs, ensuring a 17th consecutive losing season, the worst such mark in all of professional sports. All of four of them. I can’t say I’m necessarily surprised at the Pirates two-decades-long futility. Even their promotional gigs and Hot Stove reports are a joke. The Pirates are seemingly redefining the definition of bad. In this decade alone, they’ve lost at least 87 games a year, bottoming out (at least thus far) at 100 losses in 2001.

The last time the Bucs were good was in 1992, when Atlanta’s Francisco Cabrera singled off Stan Belinda to score David Justice and Sid Bream for the tying and winning runs, respectively, in Game 7 of the ALCS. To put that into perspective, 1992 was the same year Pearl Jam’s Ten and Radiohead’s Pablo Honey debuted. And Bill Clinton was still a month away from winning his first term as president. After the ALCS, the team went into a protracted rebuilding phase, letting Barry Bonds sign with the San Francisco Giants, among other questionable moves. They’ve yet to recover. Ron Cook, a sportswriter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, sums it up nicely:

Here's one final depressing way to blow the Pirates' ignominious march to history into perspective: Kids who graduated from college this spring aren't old enough to remember when they had a winning team.

Operation Iraqi Baseball

Earlier this summer, Rachel Maddow highlighted a McClatchy news story about the Iraqi national baseball team, which, it turns out, is bad at baseball and, more troubling, in desperate need of equipment. Within a few days, Maddow and her staff were besieged with offers to help. Among the calls the show received was from Ebbets Flannels, a Seattle-based manufacturer of vintage baseball uniforms. The company’s founder, Jerry Cohen, pledged 20 uniforms, one for each player. Other companies and private citizens said they would donate bats, batting gloves, spikes, mitts and catcher’s gear, among other pieces of equipment. Maddow, for her part, sent the team a case of baseballs and, because she’s a self-proclaimed nerd, a rule book.

Last night, Maddow announced that the equipment had finally reached the team, after a month-long collaboration between her show, McClatchy, Ebbets, CTG Athletics, a New York-based sporting goods company, and Ohio-based shipping vendor Star USA, who covered the cost of delivery. A genuinely pleased Maddow declared, (unironically, I might add) that Operation Iraqi Baseball was a complete and total success. See for yourself.



You can purchase a Iraqi team jersey here. A portion of the proceeds go to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. You can also find links to various charities that help the people of Iraq at the show’s website.

KKK Knights Vs. Hebrew Stars

Via Jeffrey Goldberg, comes the most interesting box score you'll ever see. I'd imagine this particular rivalry makes the Yankees-Red Sox pairing look like a match up of the two worst teams in a Sunday softball league.

For more information about the game, including details about one famous Star, take a look over here.  

Sugar, Sugar

I just stumbled across this trailer for Sugar, a film about a young Dominican pitcher trying to make it the majors. Written and directed by the same team behind the underrated Half Nelson, the film looks pretty damn good. It premieres this weekend in New York and Los Angeles. I now know what I'm doing Sunday afternoon. 

The Last Thing You'll See Before You Die

More fun with photos here. 

One Lunar Cycle Away

29 days until Spring Training. Know hope. 

"That Next Goddam Guy Up, Rickey."

Roger Angell picks off recent Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Rickey Henderson, who was, according to Angell, one of the greatest--and most annoying--players in the history of baseball. Why was Rickey such a pain in the ass? Because Rickey made it thus: 

It was all on purpose, of course. Rickey’s plan, from the first day, was to get into the minds of the other team’s pitcher and the other team’s manager and the other team’s infielders, and their fans, too, and get them thinking about Rickey instead of the business at hand. That at-bat scrunch shrivelled the strike zone to the size of a Kleenex; his furrowy, imperious frown, twisting head, and curatorial glare at each passing pitch turned the home-plate ump’s calls his way. Once he was on base, that squinting, finger-twitching pause when leading away from first made the infielders sidle to more awkward places in the diamond, and insufferably burdened the pitchers’ attention. Managers, out of their gourds with anxiety, more than once ordered an opposing lead-off batter walked intentionally, with nobody on base, to clog up the base-paths and avert more potential damage by that next goddam guy up, Rickey.

For a look at Henderson's, um, impressive lifetime stats, take a look over here. To get the complete story of Rickey, though, feast your eyes on this.