Comedian Jerry Seinfeld once said: “We cheer for the clothes!” And he wasn’t wrong. Sports artist and visual historian Todd Radom returns as Nestor’s king of the fashion police and logos to discuss modern sports jerseys and the Baltimore Ravens’ Color Rush purple helmets with the angry KISS bird that fell short.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sports jerseys, Color Rush, purple helmets, Maryland Terps, Oregon Ducks, alternate looks, nostalgia, brand identity, logo design, uniform colors, readability, fan engagement, visual history, sports branding, design evolution
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Todd Radom
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore and Houston. Allers positive, Baltimore, positive. Here we are. As we tape this. We’re doing a Steelers ravens week. But this, you might hear this after the ravens and Steelers place. I don’t want to date it so much because been a lot of funky things going on on my television screen, and it ain’t the color that I’m lead, the adjustment of the hue, and all those problems that I had when I had the television where we try to get the Philadelphia stations in and superstar Graham and the Graham wizards things would be ghosted in different things. This is just my television screen. Now that I’m no longer a real media member, I get to watch these purple outs and purple hazes and purple prides and Purple Helmets, and then we start to talk about logos and throwbacks and throw ups, and I’ve talked a lot about my I’m Going through my Tony Soprano duck phase right now of feeling weepy and misty about my childhood and Houston aulers and the Baltimore Colts and things that I could collect that may have some intrinsic value only to me and other folks that went to hammer jacks or experience rock and roll legend and lores will be playing around here through the holiday but there’s only one person I can turn to when I put on a game and I see on a Saturday afternoon Old Miss rip down goal post when they’re wearing the Houston Oilers kits, weird, biggest day in the history of Hemingway stadium. And I love me some Grove, even on a wet day. And then the Maryland Oregon game comes to me, and I don’t even watch college football. I’ll fully admit this, like my wife was watching it. Swear to god, my wife like, put it on. And I’m like, Maryland’s playing Oregon. Since when? Oh, it’s the first time they’ve ever gotten together. And I said that, you will put that on. I don’t want to. Don’t want to watch Alabama. I don’t care about Georgia. I don’t care about any of these people put put Maryland on. And I put it on, and right away I’m looking at it looks like Maryland in Oregon. It looks like ducks are quack. Maryland was winning when I put it on. That’s how early in the game it was. And Nike has had these outfits. And I went to Dundalk High School. We were kelly green and gold back in the day. So, I mean, I’m okay with the ducks quacking. It looks like my high school colors. Looks like every cheerleader ever had a crush on, um, and Maryland could be wearing anything that looks like the flag. Everybody knows we we love our flag, man, we love our flag so much. It’s actually on the Maryland lottery tickets I give away as part of the Ravencrest is that their tertiary logo, then their secondary logo, is on the Maryland lottery ticket with the front facing what we know as the kiss bird. And these logos, there’s only one person I can turn to when I see the Maryland Terps come out in these Kevin Plank Under Armor approved things that when I got together with Leonard Raskin this week, and before I booked Todd onto the program here, I said they look like a mood ring, because every time They moved, the colors change, the mood change. They were winning. It looked sort of reddish. They were losing. Looked a little more baby poop green as they turned, as the worm turned, and the reflection of the green of Oregon weighed on them. Tom radham’s been doing Logos and uniforms and books, and I went to an oyster event last month at the Oyster recovery partnership, and they had a shirt said oyster police. And there really was a thing called the oyster police, because apparently the oysters were involved with mafia and the mob 100 years ago. So there were oyster police to check out police. I only know one logo, King, I mean, Luke Jones fashion tweets, I buy nice things and wear nice things like I’m wearing right now in this oiler thread. But only one guy like puts it together for companies like Mitchell and Nestor up in the fighting city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, we welcome Todd. Back onto the program, Todd, I’ve had you on my mind. I’ve been thinking about you a lot, and I beyond the cheese steak we enjoyed in Philly at Joe’s with with my dear friend, Dick Girardi, what are these people wearing? I mean, honestly, what is going on here? Man, this must titillate. You must really speak to the artist in you to see a weekend where everybody’s wearing their pajamas of some degree. Well, Nestor,
Todd Radom 04:41
first of all, good to see you, my friend, and you bring up something that has, I don’t know. I mean, it’s fascinating, because, first of all, Oregon and Maryland, we’re sort of at the forefront of this movement in college sports to seemingly look different in. Every week, right? And that’s not a synonym to
Nestor Aparicio 05:04
uniform. That’s an antonym. Well, that’s what I’m saying. What to do when you don’t want to wear a uniform, you wear what you’re The Sandlot case, you wear whatever you want.
Todd Radom 05:13
Yeah, it’s very un uniform. But I’m remembering having gone on ESPN College Game Day in probably 2010 I’m thinking maybe 2011 and doing a fashion runway thing. We taped it in New York, and we had these models come out in Maryland uniforms in, you know, all but, but those two colleges, like I said, on the cutting edge, for better or for worse, it’s about getting attention at the college level. It is about recruiting 17 year old guys, getting the eyeballs of them, and then we move on to something else the next week. And really it’s sort of, I don’t know, this thing which it’s been going on for a while. It anticipated the diminishment of the American attention span to a large extent, and we’ve seen it, you know, bleed into professional sports for some time now. But yeah, those Maryland numbers were not exactly easy on the eye
Nestor Aparicio 06:19
look, and I talked about the Ravens now that the Ravens have moved the media out of the press box and thrown the other half of the media out to watching them on TV, and Luke watches from the Little House in the corner the little house. Kevin Byrne press box, he said you couldn’t read the numbers very well, and you couldn’t see the decal on the helmet on Thursday night to the Ravens case. But I’ll get to that in a minute. Readability, likability, sellability, all of that. You’ve written books on this. I want to talk a little bit about the history of it because, and look to my eyes buying this wacky oiler thing that has the big Derek on the back. And I love the colors. It was my first love. Let’s like seeing a picture of my first girlfriend, right? 1973 my dad took me out. He was pissed at Johnny. You pissed at the Colts? Not pissed at Johnny. You Johnny. You was playing for the Chargers. My dad’s taking me out. We’re seeing who was the quarterback. It was Marty domris was the quarterback, and the the Colts were getting their ass kicked. My dad bought me a San Diego charger pennant with the lightning bolt, the big one for the wall, because he was so mad at Joe Thomas and at the Colts that he bought me a charger pennant. But I wanted an oiler pennant, so he bought me one anyway, and it had the blue helmet on. It’s still left over from like 7071 that little period where they went silver to blue and then went to the White the damn the damn pastor reading helmet. And it was a love of my life to, like, fall in love with these logos. But one of the things that I loved about the Houston Oilers is they never came out wearing black, even when Jerry Glanville was their coach and wanted them to, although he took that to Atlanta. But it was like, when you lose your primary color, you sort of lose me a little bit. And I don’t know, like I love the Padres and other teams that have changed jerseys, but in college sports, educate me if you can. And must, Marilyn always had the most boring kids in the world in the Claiborne era, and they just had an M on there. It was really awful. It looked really too old, old school. But I sort of think of Notre Dame as being the first place where they look like leprechauns one week, and then they had helmets that looked really gold, like they had been dipped in a pot of gold, Golden Dome. But it went even more gold during some Lou Holtz era. And it feels to me like that, where was the Pandora’s box? Not just that we can make a little money by doing something different, but in college sports, specifically, because we do think Oregon and Maryland, but I know I remember Miami would come out and forest green some weeks and some weeks in orange, but, but getting off a primary colors is not something that I think any brand should do, quite frankly, right? I mean, does that brand 101, for anybody that ever goes to school for this?
Todd Radom 09:06
Yes and no, yes, because, you know, by the book, you’re absolutely right. Coke is red. They should never be any other color. Let’s just go to consumer colors, right? Starbucks is green, this kind of thing. Pepsi is blue. You can go on down the line and colleges to your point, let’s face it, people, especially if they went to a particular college or university, it’s like religion to them. So to mess with that, that mix, you’re kind of approaching the third rail as far as this stuff goes. Now, let me step back from being doctrine it and kind of really tight about it, and say that alternate looks in sports have existed since the 19th century. So this part of it is nothing new, the preponderance of it, the volume of it that we’ve seen in the last 1520 years. Maybe this. Has really, this is new. Also the clean break, if you want to look at it that way, from your core colors, that’s also something new. So for example, if you are, I don’t know if you are the Baltimore Orioles, for example, and you want to go out there in white or orange, which they did revolutionary in a revolutionary move, kind of right in the in the in 1971 the Brooks Robinson uniforms all orange. That was kind of an unusual thing for that franchise at that time. But they could be black as well. You lean into who
Nestor Aparicio 10:32
you are. Baseball had a movement to do that, probably in the late 60s, right to be more flashy you’re wearing your athletics hat. Charlie Finley was for better. He was the guy probably really moved numbers with the gold pants and the gold slacks and the and the handlebar mustaches and Bob and Ted and Bill and Alice and like all the, you know, all of the crazy things that were going on in the early 70s, but baseball leaned into that and all of the pictures of that era of Memorial Stadium are catfish Hunter Vita blue looking like a million bucks, and they’re being 3800 people paid at Memorial Stadium because they were trying to sort of wake up the game after 1968 and all that, right? And the NBA was getting a little cache in places like New York. Joe Namath was coming on to the place horses didn’t talk boxers Ali was flash and, you know, and wearing robes into the ring, and Rocky in the 70s and Apollo Creek. So I’m thinking like the part of the 70s that awakened baseball and colors and whatever the Houston Oilers, whatever bud Adams came up with to change helmets three times and say, I locked that silver and that we want to be in that blue, like the water. We want to be like the wall, like Columbia blue water, you know, like I don’t and Honolulu blue for the
Todd Radom 11:53
Detroit that dates back to 1934 or as you know,
Nestor Aparicio 11:57
right? Yeah, but, but the 70s, it feels like it’s when things got a little more loose and liberal,
Todd Radom 12:03
yes in every conceivable sense, because our sports uniforms reflect our society. Nestor in the 1980s baseball took a big step backwards toward the end of the decade, back to tradition. The Atlanta Braves go back to the tomahawks on the front of their uniforms. We lost pullover jerseys, right? All buttons, then no more powder blue. Back to tradition, and that was at a moment when Ronald Reagan was about to finish up his second term, a politically conservative moment, and we don’t want to talk politics, but you are absolutely right. The same Happy
Nestor Aparicio 12:37
Days was a big show. Is all like nostalgia about the, yeah, right. It was all and the Phillies even winning in 93 right? Where, you know, they, they had those 50s Richie Ashburn sweaters on and, and look, the world went to the ornithologically correct birds that they never won anything. And in the 50s, right, right?
Todd Radom 12:56
And the whole thing is, you’re, you’re totally right. Nostalgia, I always say, runs in 20 year waves. It’s kind of a generational thing. So what’s an example of this? Like you just said, in the 70s, people were watching Happy Days, which took place in the 50s. And then, you know, in the 80s, we’re looking at a nostalgia for the hippies. And, I mean, I don’t know, you can, you can.
Nestor Aparicio 13:19
Yeah, exactly, yeah, but, but,
Todd Radom 13:21
but, the 70s. The reason for all this happening in the 70s, there are a couple of reasons. Number one, it’s a more modern approach to marketing. If you want to look at it that way, it’s the explosion of colored televisions in people’s homes, which really wasn’t a thing for a long time. It’s also moving away from traditional flannel and Doreen uniforms and sports to polyester, which could accept colors that never could have happened before. And it’s kind of a loose approach in terms of our society. I have in my book winning ugly, which is my air quotes, loving homage to some of those uniforms. I have a quote from the manager of the Atlanta Braves, loom Harris, who, when the Braves went to those Hank Aaron uniforms, which I love, the royal blue with the feathers on the sleeves, he said something to the effect of, well, look at what I’m wearing now. This is 1972 as opposed to what I was wearing 345, years ago, things change, and that really speaks volumes.
Nestor Aparicio 14:24
Was it controversial amongst the players? Because I as a kid, I collected the baseball cards in the 70s, and obviously, and we’ll go Dr Melfi one one moment on this. Because there is a psychology behind all of it, an incredible emotion that this point in my life, that I’ve lived long enough to be able to have $34 on the internet, because I only buy this stuff when it’s super cheap. No offense to your Mitchell, I didn’t pay 279 99 for this at the NFL shop. Or, you know, whatever I mean, literally. I find things deals on the internet, and I don’t buy the things made in China, that globe, you know, navy blue, and they should be purple in the case of there was a. Whole generation of Ravens fans buying stuff on the internet that was not purple. Hey, it did not when you got in the stadium. You’re like, Dude, you look like a blueberry. They would have held you where with what internet website, the turbo, you know. I mean, get it right. I mean that to my point, your primary coach, primary color to me, whatever. But there is some psychology, psychiatry, in this case, about why this that I even hated for three decades has all of a sudden gotten me wistful for looking at old Lenny Moore football cards, looking at old ticket stubs, um, you know, and seeing, Oh, look, I went, I bought this Houston Oiler little belt buckle, just so I could, you know, have a belt, another belt buckle to wear, like I am into it in the old helmets and all of that, even with the Eagles are wearing their little throwback thing, you said, 20 year cycles. It looks like Randall Cunningham and Brian Baldinger and, you know, so I like it Keith Byers. And I think when the Orioles went back to the cartoon bird of the 70s of my childhood. It makes my heart, I feel a little closer to gunner Henderson when that kit is going on, because it feels a little closer to, I don’t know book pal, or Lee May, or whatever that thing would be, that man dude, that’s a big part of selling me stuff, right? It’s a big part of keeping me involved that if the Orioles and I have had good friends of mine from Cleveland, they had to change had to change their name, but they the colors still look the same. Fans still wearing plenty of stuff with the eye on it. Clearly, what’s going on down in Washington with the burgundy and gold and their name change, and how there’s still plenty of politically incorrect so running our society in about seven or eight weeks as well. Um, I would just say when you when you change names, this and that, but if I went back to Dundalk and they didn’t look like your hat wearing kelly green and gold, I wouldn’t feel like I’m there anymore. And there’s something really is tribal. It’s almost like changing a country when you change a flag and it it’s hard to when I put a television on and I see in a professional game a team wearing the wrong color completely. It weirds me out. And I’m not even a fan of that team. I would never want to see the Orioles, maybe on St Patrick’s Day wear green or something goofy, but like, I wouldn’t want to. I don’t, I don’t like what the Padres did with that city. Connect like it has nothing to do with your primary least look like the team you were on. That’s all Nestor.
Todd Radom 17:22
I talk about this all the time. You look in your phone, right? And let’s look tonight at some NBA highlights, or, I don’t know, look on social media at little clips that are 12 seconds long, and it’s on a small device and you have no idea who is playing. In many instances, you don’t know where the game is taking place. I mean, basketball on this small surface is very different from baseball, where, if I’m going to look at a highlight of a game, chances are I’m going to have a pretty good idea of where the game is taking place. I think to move back for a second what you talked about in terms of nostalgia is it’s just, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, there is a, the word nostalgia is derived from a, from a Greek word. And I don’t want to paraphrase it and lose it, but take a look at it, and it’s about heart sickness, basically, right? And it’s kind of funny to me being the age I am, and you and I can relate. There are people who grew up in the 90s who have a huge crush on their Tampa Bay Devil Rays look, or the weird Toronto Blue Jays look of a certain era. And teams will, sometimes, quite often, as a matter of fact, step away from their core identity, only to come back to it at some point in time. There’s
Nestor Aparicio 18:43
reason I called you Ovechkin last week. Yeah. Did exactly that. Yeah, put that black The Screaming Eagle, which looked like it was. Maybe you made that logo because Todd, I don’t want to know, but it looked like whoever made the St Louis Blues logo,
Todd Radom 19:00
they did. It’s true, yes, yep,
Nestor Aparicio 19:03
it looks like the same artist. It just
Todd Radom 19:08
does a lot of work in that space.
Nestor Aparicio 19:10
I grew up a capitals fan, right? I mean, a big capitals fan, and they moved the team 15 miles and 45 minutes further from everyone up here, from everyone in my listing. And I was on the air when this was going on, and the only guy on afternoon drive and nasty Nestor, and I thought I was a big deal. But not only that, I’m the only guy in the city that’s ever loved hockey. So like, I’m sitting here saying, you move the team into DC. It’s 50 bucks the park. We’re there in a different rink, wearing different jerseys. And it was like susan o’malley wanted to run from Mike Gardner and Bobby carpenter and Rod langway and and I’m like, what that was? The original Todd your man, you are like Dr Melfi for me, I’m glad I brought you one that was my original fu to Ted. Leon’s is to say, you want me to what is this? US. This doesn’t even look like the capitals. It looks like you don’t even want to own the one. Just change the name. Well, just moving to Northern Virginia and call them the district. Oh, you can’t do that. Try that a generation later. So there’s a part of all of this where I see these massive overhauls, and we have Mr. Rubenstein here and new ownership and whatever. And I think to myself, then they come back 30 years later and they act like people liked it. No one liked that logo. Everyone hated that logo. Well,
Todd Radom 20:28
Nestor, a couple of things as it relates to that, and hated it so much they got rid of it. Well, yeah, and that’s gonna happen. But here, here’s the thing, there was a movement in many instances, for NBA teams and NHL teams who shared an arena to go all in on similar colors. So when the bullets gave way to the wizards, the colors were the same as what the capitals were, that bronze, kind of, I don’t know, cobalt, ish, blue and and black. And the same thing happened in Denver when the avalanche got there and the nuggets rebranded. They shared colors. So this is
Nestor Aparicio 21:04
not Michael Jordan, and it said on any of the capitals, and in 98 I’ll tell you that, yeah.
Todd Radom 21:10
But here’s the thing, it was actually it was kind of stunning to see Ovechkin wearing that, because he actually wore that as as a young player. Just shows the breadth of his career. And full disclosure, Nestor, I did some work with the capitals, just in a consulting way on their 50th anniversary. So there was a lot of discussion about who the capitals have been, from a visual standpoint, what that history is. And you know this better than I the Washington Capitals in their first year, were the worst team in the history of the NHL. The red, white and blue looked great. The team was awful. They wore white pants for a little while. That didn’t work out. Uh, they went to what they looked looked but at it, but, and you know, what did I just say, if you a few minutes ago, teams kind of come back to who they were, and when the caps went back to red, white and blue, with the stars, a couple of little differences here and there, but it speaks to the core DNA of what that franchise looks like. And think about all these other teams who’ve done the same thing. Nestor, the Allen Iverson looking Sixers, which are very popular here in Philly, and it has a lot to do with him. Went back to red, white and blue. The blue jays, who I mentioned earlier in Toronto, they wore black. They were the black Jays. They weren’t even called the Blue Jays. They just said Jays on their uniforms. They go back to the padres, going back to brown and gold. Looking like UPS guys. You know what I’m saying?
Nestor Aparicio 22:38
They look like the drive thru guy at McDonald’s in 78 because a Ray Kroc is what it was brown. Brown is here. He is all things. He is the logo King. Not even sort of low you, but you are the logo police. For me, in that, I think you’ll be honest when something looks good or doesn’t look good, you think it’s a good idea, by the way. 50th anniversary, the catch, I was a lifelong caption. I kissed the cup with Barry trots at the table. A veteran grabbed the cup from in front of me. I was almost eating a Caesar salad out of it, and took it down to strip in Vegas. That’s I’m a CAPS guy, and I’m still all these years later, I get most offended by unkept promises. But more than that, the logo change that they went through. I think good franchises don’t need to do that. I think what the Ravens have done and what the NFL has done, so let’s talk about color rush a little bit. And if you’ve got any books to promote anything you’re doing, please jump in. But and we did the college thing, and that’s all cool in the Maryland irrigate, you know, whatever they’re going to do, but in the NFL, with color rush and the purple on purple uniforms that the Ravens have gone through. I told this story two other times during the weeks. I’m not going to make it too short, too long for you, but for anybody just tuning in our logo or fashion tweet people, the kiss face logo that is on the Maryland lottery ticket with the red eyes the week that it was voted on after the controversy with the flying B that was under dispute. David Modell and I were very, very close in life. To the end of his life will always be close. He’s my brother. Never lied to me. David Modell, a lot of people lie to me. David Modell never lied to me, and I appreciate that about him. But one of the things, and sort of the backstage access that I had at that point in life is that I went on vacation the week or two or month, I think I might have been in Australia that they canned the logo and said, We’re going with a new logo. They went to the Baltimore Sun. They put it out for bid in the way that ravens was a fan, led driven thing that I supported. But I wasn’t like that big of a deal in 1990 early 96 I mean, but by 99 everybody was listening to my show, the barn. Ray Lewis, like all these things that happened, right? Brian Billick was March abroad. All that stuff was happening. And the time that it happened, there were a couple three choices. And I knew David was very on the up and up, because he wanted to call the Ravens the Americans. That’s a fact. And. He would have just been given his own license. He would have called them the Americans. There was a movement to think he could call them the Mustangs and get a marketing deal with Ford, because he was listening to Jerry Jones at that time getting Pepsi deals. So that’s another part of it. But they were called the Ravens because the fan poll won. So they really was on the up and up. David did not want to call them the ravens, but when he looked up some Gaelic reference to art modells, whose middle name was Bertrand. That should be future Hall of Famer, art model Arthur, Bertrand, modell. There’s a Gaelic reference to Bertrand being Raven, meaning Raven. So like arts midter names Raven where the ravens, that’s great. David signed on. The logo gets disputed. David went to his death saying he never stole the logo, like he’s like that. It was bija Bucha. I’ll fight it out, write the check. But I didn’t steal anything. And I don’t know whether coincidence this that court of law, whatever, but David would say to me, in his anger, we’re not going to play under disputed markings. And they put it out in the paper, and the three logos that were there was this sickle head B that was going to be backwards if they wore it on their helmet. The profile thing there was this gorgeous, red eyed, angry as hell, look like Ray Lewis’s face if it were a bird at that time, angry, nasty side profile. And I’m like, we called it the kiss face. It looked like Gene Simmons. We’re like, No way that’s losing. And then there was some other thing I don’t remember what the hell it was, right? So I go on vacation, I come back, and the thing that we know is the Ravens logo won. And I wasn’t like, pissed, but I was like, shocked, and I also would have really put my thumb on the scale, on the radio during that period of time, had I known the kiss face was in peril, maybe, like, I would have worked harder for calm. I would have been staying in your couch trying to get people into Philly out to vote last week. But, but, but seriously, I did not. I just thought the kiss face was always the best logo. It’s always what should have been on the helmet. I didn’t yell about it the last 25 years, you know what? I mean, we’ve won two Super Bowls with the other I’ve, you know, whatever. But I remember distinctly saying to David, that helmet should be purple. Dude, purple looks like goddamn Northwestern Washington. Look like a Pop Warner. Look like a big division one, double A. We’re not wearing purple helmet. We’re wearing black. Shows our power, our strength, and it’s going to have a B on it, because the Orioles are too stupid to put Baltimore on anything they did at that time, because they were really embracing the DC thing. And David’s like, it’s got to have the B. It’s got to have the B. And the kiss face didn’t have the B. I don’t know whether the kiss face really won the pole and David did what he wanted, or what the league told him to do, or because he had a lot of that going on too. But I always love the kiss face. I’ve waited my whole life for them to put the kiss face on, the bird on the thing, on a purple helmet, and they put it on the goofy uniforms. Was too much purple. Yeah, I and here’s the thing, Todd, I’ll leave it with you this because I’ve talked about a little bit when it came on television. The first thing I said was, honey, who shrunk my logo. The logo looked too small for the helmet. It looked like it needed to be 20% bigger, and it needed more white, more silver. It needed to stand out. It probably would benefit from not having purple slacks and like all the rest of it. But am I wrong? I mean, I’m coming to you as my logo, God, King, leader, author, police. Am I wrong? Tell me I’m wrong. Because Luke keeps saying it’s gotta have profile, and then they have profile, just like they modern profile. And I’m like, No, No man, when you have a Derek like the Oilers, that when you have something strong, like that, kiss face, own it, take it. Well, here’s
Todd Radom 28:47
the thing, Nestor, so think about the most classic NFL helmets, the very first ones, which would be the Los Angeles Rams, which got mucked up a couple of years ago when they changed it. And the Philadelphia Eagles just this very simple wing, which can go either way on a helmet, depending upon where you’re facing. They probably represent, to me, the very essence of showing off who you’re, you’re, who you are, right? And then you’ve got teams like the Steelers and the Raiders, who basically have a crest. You know, the ravens are sort of similar under normal circumstances. Well, they had a crested
Nestor Aparicio 29:27
logo the first time, right? David’s original concept of the Flying bee was crest, right?
Todd Radom 29:33
Yeah, right, yeah. And I think, you know, very in a shield, right? Like, so, very NFL, all this stuff. So here’s the thing. Very European, yeah, very, yeah. It’s very soccer in a certain sense. But our helmets have gotten more complex. All of the the divots and holes and you know, all, they used to be nice and smooth, right? Look at a picture of norm van Brocklin from back in the day, or or ya tit. With blood like dripping out of his ear there with a New York Giants, nice, smooth helmet, not like that anymore. So when you get divots and different, I don’t know dimensions and reflections, it’s going to change things. And I think in part, that’s what happened with the Ravens. I think the proportions were a little wacky. You’re totally right. Too much can be too much. As it relates to the purple part, I think also, just in moving back for a second in the 90s, everybody wanted to be black. It was all about leaning into the Chicago White Sox. Who leaned into the LA Kings
Nestor Aparicio 30:36
on that? Who do you credit on that? Rap music? Jerry Glenn, yeah, it’s NWA MUSIC, okay,
Todd Radom 30:43
alright, absolutely, that’s, that’s exactly what it is, yeah. And they look great with the Raiders stuff. And, you know, yeah, it all actually, you know, I work with ice cube, right? And, and the White Sox did a little mini documentary that included him last summer about the White Sox look, because, you know, it’s been a long time since they wore that terrible team, but a great look right now. Anyway, Black was all the rage, and at that time, it was very hard to match purples. I’m going to get into the weeds here Nestor to match purples from uniforms and fabrics to shells of helmets. Look at the Vikings in those years. They don’t match, not at all. The lids don’t look like what they’re wearing on their bodies. So anyway, that’s,
Nestor Aparicio 31:31
can you give me 30 seconds on the science of that? Because you already dropped me a polyester thing. I, you know, I sit in the front of class. Todd. I get accused of not being a good listener. I’m a hell of a listener. I’m an interrupt. You got a clarifier, but you said something about polyester and gold and it being unavailable in the 60s and available in the 70s, kind of like Technicolor was for Disney.
Todd Radom 31:51
Yeah, yeah. You couldn’t achieve those kinds of colors on flannel uniforms and baseball caps, which were 100% wool until not that long ago. They’re now a synthetic blend across the boards matching those colors. Think about the Phillies here in Philadelphia, the 1983 team that you saw lose the World Series to your Orioles. Think about that blood clot kind of color that they wore, the maroon. And I have one of those hats. It’s really cool. By the end of the season, the hats had faded, the uniforms, the twill decorations on the uniforms, had not faded, and the batting helmets looked totally different. So it was all mismatched, and Bill Giles in the early 90s said, we can’t have any more of this, and that’s why they went to a pure red color that they still wear today. Really,
Nestor Aparicio 32:41
I love the burgundy bubble pee I owned. I went into the stadium Hilton the summer 81 with my father, and, you know, on the Phillies trail and Manny trio and Mike Schmidt and all that. And I had a Phillies the whole thing was that maroon, that blood, you know, color of red and Phillies in white. That was strong dog. Come on now right here
Todd Radom 33:04
in Philly. Love it too. Nestor I, my wife and I were at a restaurant in, let’s say, late May, early June. It was a beautiful night, and we’re in South Philly, and we’re sitting outdoors having a glass of wine and some food, and we’re just watching people walk by. And I did this very unscientific survey of who was wearing the burgundy right, and it was primarily younger people who probably never saw it when in the first place. And they gravitate toward it because it’s cool look. I actually have a fitted with that look, and I kind of
Nestor Aparicio 33:38
have a see sto lex lescano, who was my all time favorite player. He came back for the 20th anniversary in oh three. They had an old timers little thing amongst both teams, the Phillies and the ORs, because it was a, it was a rare interleague game back in oh three, remember, and see Stowe came in, and I have his jersey, little big for me, but it’s, it’s the baby blue, and I love it. I could bury me in it, you know, even though it says Phillies on it, Todd rams here he is. All things are somebody, your background, your books and all that. And then we could get a little bit more into color rush and maybe where this is going, and having a sensible conversation that, if they had some, so a little more sense and of what would look good and readability and all that. But you have such a I mean, you really are a doctorate in all of this. You’ve created a million things that you won’t brag about because you’re relatively humble, but you, but you’ve done this your whole life, literally, right? Yeah.
Todd Radom 34:36
I mean, at heart, a designer, a graphic designer, and I was there at the inception in the very early 90s when sports licensing exploded. And as you noted earlier, and this is a fact, are there was, there was just a need for more stuff in the very early 90s when Popular Culture, Sports and streetwear collided and exploded. COVID. And it was at this moment when the NBA, Major League Baseball and the end the NHL opened up their first creative services departments in New York. I’m a young guy, and I was probably one of the first, let’s say, five people doing sports design. It’s a very different world now, and the needs for this stuff have changed tremendously. But in addition to that, which I still do, I’ve written a couple of books about about sports and branding. Sports branding in particular, I’m also a media guy like you. I’m a weekly regular on the ESPN baseball tonight podcast with buster. Only in season, been doing that for about 10 Buster,
Nestor Aparicio 35:41
my best man. Buster came up Baltimore. First year I was on the radio. Buster was in town covering the Baltimore blast and the San Diego soccer. He was a soccer beat writer working for a guy named Bob Wright at San Diego Union Tribune. And He came in covering, and he came to my studio to talk soccer with me, and then a year later, and I think it was known to me, he might have been interviewing for the Baltimore job when he was kind of in and he got the gig, and he came to Baltimore, and I was one of the handful of people he knew a little bit. Of course, when you’re the baseball writer, you don’t need to know anybody, because you just, you’re around the team. You don’t really move into Baltimore. You move into the clubhouse, kind of, sort of in that era. And being an old newspaper guy, what an incredible career he’s had. I’m very proud of him. He
Todd Radom 36:25
speaks very fondly of his time in Baltimore. He’s a close friend and a weird story here Nestor not to go off track, but if you remember, and you probably do, there was a time before we emailed and texted, and so I have a very core, close group of guys that I grew up with. We all go to college in 1982 and we wrote letters to each other, because that’s the way you kept in touch. Well, I got a letter from my buddy Gabriel, who went to Vanderbilt, which is like a million miles away from Yonkers, New York in 1982 and he said, everything’s down here is good. We’re having a good time partying, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you’d love my roommate. You guys love baseball, and his roommate was buster only. So I’ve actually known Buster having nothing to do with sports or baseball for about 40 years now. We lived close to one another. Our kids kind of grew up together, so a very long and winding road with buster. But
Nestor Aparicio 37:23
like I said, he’s an interesting cat because he loved baseball and didn’t grow up near the ballpark. He’s a Vermont guy, right? Yeah, you know, on a dairy farm, it’s a different thing when you took the bus to Memorial Stadium. And I have not just little connections with these jerseys they I was a five year old kid at the ballpark a lot, being an Aparicio and having a father love baseball. I mean, those jerseys. I mean, I was at the catfish Hunter Palmer game in 74 American League championship game. Like I looked the box for up a couple of weeks ago, and I was shocked, like they were like 20,000 maybe 30,000 people there that day. I don’t remember it that way, but I My childhood was baseball and logos and colors and colts games and Orioles games. And you never lose it, dude. Do you never do right? It’s the base No. And
Todd Radom 38:11
I’ll tell you what Nestor I went up to New York for the final game of the World Series couple of weeks ago, dodgers, Yankees, and I was taken back to being 13 years old and attending game one of the 1977 World Series with my dad, dodgers,
Nestor Aparicio 38:29
Yankees. You’re looking for dusty Baker and Wright and Lopes at second. And where’s Ron? Where’s the where’s the penguin? When chance you get to see the Dodgers in your old well, not true for you, because you can go to Shay, but when you’re in Baltimore, you didn’t get the National League teams. You had to go to Philly,
Todd Radom 38:42
yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and think about, you know, these outposts of where, where people really, if you’re an Atlanta Braves fan, you, you know, kind of nowhere near an American League team or a Seattle Mariners fan in the late 70s, early 80s, let’s say interleague play came in in 97 Yeah. So it was quite a thing. But anyway, it all comes rushing back. And having grown up in the 70s, the influence of this magical era, this very expressive era where sports became this colorful, colorful place, it still influences me doing what I do to this day, and God knows, I’ve written about it extensively. And I’m just very mindful of having grown up and having grown up around baseball, which you just alluded to, it’s always there in the background. I kind of miss it. We’re only a couple of weeks removed from the season, but just the fact that it’s always there for you. And if you want to consume it in little bites, you can do that. And if you want to eat the whole meal in one sitting. You can do that too, and that’s what makes it great to me. One thing
Nestor Aparicio 39:45
on Yankees game five before I get back to that the last basis, which is readability and what comes first, the chicken or the egg. I love baseball so much that I had flight out to LA and I have one thing left on my bucket since last time we got together, I saw the Northern Lights. Number one thing. The Bucket List changed my life. They showed up here. I walked outside. It was crazy. I said to my financial advisor, Leonard Raskin, from Raskin global, like, saved me 1000s, maybe 10s of maybe the rest of my life. I would spend everything I have chasing it. It happened. Now. What am I going to do? I want to go to Hollywood Bowl. That’s next on my list. And you know, the Pink Floyd show was going on out there. So, but game six and seven of the World Series and a little I got an insider as a vice president with the Los Angeles Dodgers, so I had a chance to get a ticket and whatever. But I realized might not be a game six. So on the day of game five, which was an 80 degree day, I woke up in the morning and saw the incredibly depressed prices of the tickets in New York, and I had a ticket for $398 on my screen, and I was buying it. I was putting in my little special four digit code, and it, it burped and didn’t give me the ticket. But I was coming to game five, and all I could think about that night, I watched the game. What a game, right? I mean, you were there. You were my friend that was there. I saw you put your picture up at 630 I think I even went on there. So you have no idea how close I get, whether the tickets went to six and seven and $800 I was out when the ticket was 354, under four and a quarter. I’m like, I can get there. I mean, it would cost me that much to get on a plane to go to LA to see a potential clinch game. And I’ve been to, I mean, I was in in Toronto, and Carter at the walk off the ball landed underneath me. I mean, I was in the locker room in Atlanta when the Braves won tonight. So, I mean, I’ve been at the games, but I wanted to experience it on an 80 degree night. But the thing that moves me about your experience there even your picture for you, and you can tell me, because this is for you, not for me. But I did the bow stadiums when you sit in the new Yankee Stadium, if you’re just sitting in it, and I’ve sat in both a million times, you do kind of feel like you’re in the old ballpark. And I would think like when the Dodgers are in and they’re wearing the right color combinations that look like the 77 and 78 Dodgers, that is very romantic to guys our age, that you do feel like you’re there. And there is a part of that, that even for guys your age, you don’t feel like Camden Yards never feels like no more. You know what I mean, all ballparks rarely, but they worked hard to maybe give you that experience. Yay or Nay?
Todd Radom 42:13
Well, first of all, I think I know the same Dodgers executive that you just alluded to. I think we have a mutual friend.
Nestor Aparicio 42:20
It’s a canopy of friendship. It’s a canopy of friendship. Yes, that’s,
Todd Radom 42:24
that’s a good word, yes, actually, but I’m gonna say hard no on the Yankee Stadium experience, really. Okay, hard. No. I went to the old, old, old stadium with my dad, the one that was was renovated in 1973 Mets hosted the Yankees at Shea Stadium for a couple of seasons. I was a season ticket holder for a while at the old Yankee Stadium. I went to countless games. I can’t even I can’t even imagine high hundreds. I have no idea. Sat in every place in that from the bleachers drinking beer with my buddies, which is a long way
Nestor Aparicio 42:59
away. You’re the bleachers that yeah, yo yanking stadium beyond the statues.
Todd Radom 43:03
We’d line up and get you, yeah, but, but, no, this stadium is, is a pastiche, would be my word. It is a hollow. It bear, it bears a physical resemblance in certain risk, I
Nestor Aparicio 43:20
think in the bowl, though, I’m not talking about when you’re paying for your nachos in the band. I mean, I love the little alcoves. You used to have to go through the little cubby holes. It was like a subway thing to get to the
Todd Radom 43:31
Nestor. Why I missed Monument Park being able to see that from my seat. They buried it. They buried it under a net and behind a wall. It’s malpractice. It has no juice. The place has no juice. It’s got giant double
Nestor Aparicio 43:46
doing roll call and stuff. It had no juice because they got their ass kicked.
Todd Radom 43:50
I know that the upper deck in the old ballpark would physically bounce up and down and it and the steepness that the intimidating. And believe me, I went to, you know, countless Red Sox Yankees games in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2003 2004 I went to every one of those World Series. 90 690-899-2000, 2001 2003 this place is not that. And I will, I will absolutely, you know, go balls to the wall with that. And it’s funny,
Nestor Aparicio 44:29
I went to a game, glad I asked, but I’m sorry I opined, yeah, yeah, yeah, no.
Todd Radom 44:34
I mean, we can have strong opinions. No, no. I mean, it would
Nestor Aparicio 44:37
agree. It’s much more Gentile and much more expensive to get. I mean, it’s all of that, but I do think it has an it has a it has a vibe. I mean, it had a vibe to me during the playoffs that, quite frankly, to your point, if you go to a regular season game and it’s half empty, I would agree with you it. There’s only one postseason again in the Bronx. I mean, it had that, that environment can’t be built well, yeah. I mean, I. The dream of Pedro games in May 20 years ago were good, but it was different here in Tino, Martinez hit a home run against the Diamondbacks. For an example, Nestor, I
Todd Radom 45:09
can’t help but think of in the current Yankee Stadium when it first opened. As you recall, you’ve got this elite series of seats the moat. I would call it, you know, right? Because the leather they were, they were all bought by bankers and these guys who were associated with Bank of America and Wells Fargo and, you know, Goldman Sachs, and they couldn’t be seen sitting there, because it was right as the financial crisis was unfolding. And I will say this, I’ve sat in those seats, and they’re very beautiful, and, but, but, you know, like everywhere you’re kind of removed from the the nitty and the gritty and the Bronx, the boogie down Bronx, the Bronx is burning. Of the late 70s. I was there in those years as a kid. I was there in the 80s, when they weren’t necessarily good. I was there in the early 90s, the stump Merrell years, all of this. Nope, I understand this is more comfortable, but it’s, it’s, it’s like a big, Lumpy bowl of vanilla pudding. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 46:07
I would have had a good time at game five, and you would have been the one. I would have found the person. Hey, dude, guess who’s here. Here I am. Got in cheap today, Tom raiders here, he’s all things, the logos, all things are last thing for you, on the Ravens thing and the helmet and whatever. And in the bird that I like that won’t come back, and whatever pajamas the league tells them to where they wear, where’s the chicken in the egg? When they come to an artist like you and say, we want it to look good, or we want to sell a lot of them, obviously, they’re hand in hand. But then there’s the part. And Luke brought this up this week, and I and he is our fashion tweet, uh, tweet Nestor around here. He’s the dude he, um, he said, You know, it’s these things really look good when they’re a helmet, and they look good when they’re a jersey in their photo shoot with one dude or whatever. But then you put 12 of them out there, and they look like 12 eggplants, or they look like 12 bags of ketchup, or like whatever, Canaries, whatever, whatever thing you want to say, to be insulting. Of it, a lot goes into this dude. This is not willy nilly. This is not the drunk owner in the owner’s box saying, I like, you know, mustard or, you know, this is years of research. I don’t know what that even means, and the test groups and whatever experts they bring in for this stuff, but you do speak to me about that, because just the fact that you can’t read the back of them really is an indictment to what they’re they really are there for at least. Let me make it. Make it look good. Let me know who’s playing right and and the logo not popping off the helmet. How does that happen when they spend millions of dollars to do it that way, that they don’t? They could put that side facing bird on the thing, make it a little big. They could find a way to make it that we’re not talking about it two weeks from now, saying, what’s up with that? Instead of saying, oh my god, they knocked it out of the park.
Todd Radom 47:51
Well, as always, form and function need to marry together in this wonderful meshing. And you know all of the things that you talked about, and you know what you’re talking about are true legibility of numbers. I’m remembering a friend of mine who was a team photographer for an NFL team back in the 90s telling me that, geez, I’m shooting a Jacksonville Jaguars game, and I don’t know who the hell the players are, because I can’t read the freaking numbers, because they’ve got three outlines. Mike Tirico, just this past week, stepped in it a little bit in, in talking about the Houston Texans battle red uniforms, which, I mean, you know, if he if Mike Tirico says that they’re illegible, and I trust this guy, they’re eligible, right? So they’ve got to be they’ve got to look good. I call them radioactive candy apples. Is what they look like. Yeah, yeah. Not a good look, and not a, I don’t know, you know, esthetic a logo. What
Nestor Aparicio 48:54
was the logo all about? You can see it wasn’t very I mean, they have a great logo. They maybe you’ve made it, I don’t know, like I did, but that logo, with a minute, that logo came at the Texans became a team, and hey, man, I’m a oiler guy, right? Like they were, this was a high bar. I think their logo is fantastic, a moderate, yeah.
Todd Radom 49:14
And what is, what is a Texan? If you were, like, just to kind of break it down, um, that achieved everything in with great ease and simplicity, which is really what somebody in my position always aims for the the once you glom things on and get really, really complex. And we saw it happen in the 90s. It was a movement, and it was kind of a reaction to software that we did not have even a couple of years before. Look, I can do eight colors. I can use three outlines. Too much became too much. It started to devolve. And I’ll tell you what not to slap my own back. But I did the angels logo and look that they still wear now. And this was I worked on it in 2001 and it was. Kind of a appealing back left. You
Nestor Aparicio 50:02
inherited sort of Angels in the Outfield at that point. Right?
Todd Radom 50:06
No, there was the move on. Look in between periwinkle and Disneyfied. I remember seven colors. It was very, very complex. The Angels in the Outfield was really a very fleeting moment in time, I would say, 1993 to about 96 but, but
Nestor Aparicio 50:23
pop culture is, yeah, I go back to the Nolan Ryan 73 and when Bobby Valentine was my favorite player, and I begged my dad to take me out to see him play, and he got thrown out in his first at bat, arguing balls and strikes. And he
Todd Radom 50:35
invented the rap too. You know about this?
Nestor Aparicio 50:38
Well, I know he invented the fake mustache, or getting thrown out of a game for managers at Chase stadium. Well,
Todd Radom 50:42
Bobby Valentine, the pride of Stanford, Connecticut, had a restaurant and still isn’t Oh, the sports bars, yeah, and, and he is the guy he claims to admit it to the the rap, W, R, A, oh, the rap, as opposed to NWA, you know,
Nestor Aparicio 50:57
taking quesadilla like a rap, okay, yeah, like,
Todd Radom 51:01
you know, there’s nothing on hand. We ran out of event
Nestor Aparicio 51:04
and rap Sugar Hill gang came before him. I know exactly Grand Master Mel, but you know sequence, yeah, before Run DMC and, you know, and I even hip hop from
Todd Radom 51:15
the Bronx, cedar and Sedgwick, right? Look, man, cool her, you and I, at some point,
Nestor Aparicio 51:18
got to go to a sporting event together, but we probably won’t watch the sporting events. Like, the sporting events. Let’s make sure it’s something that you know, like, not like a flyers game or something like that. But Todd is up in Philadelphia. Tell everybody how to find you in your books. You make great and for anybody that’s made it an hour into a conversation about logos and elements, and that’s a lot of us, man, Luke and I fight about this. Everybody we know our age fights about what looks good. But, I mean, yeah, I want to get radioactive on a tweet make fun of the Houston Texans jerseys on a Sunday night. Next thing you know, you’re here fighting it out with me, man. But people are into this, and thankfully, they buy your books and you write them to educate people, because it is really fun to learn about if you love sports.
Todd Radom 51:56
Well, you know the the uniforms and the logos are always there in the background, right? And, and people who are passionate about it are generally not design geeks or, you know, visual nerds or anything like that. And, and these things define us as fans in a lot of ways. So, yeah. So you can find me@todram.com t, O, D, D, R, A, D, O m.com. I’m out there on the socials under my name and and I’m, I’m everywhere Nestor, and I do want to share this. I was, I was just in the last two weeks, honored by tops. Well, look at that. That’s a baseball card. And I could be that
Nestor Aparicio 52:37
up again and talk about what it is. Is it t 206, or what is that?
Todd Radom 52:40
So this is an Allen and Ginter card. So Alan and Ginter is a set that includes current players, legendary players, and people outside of baseball. So you’ll find me and Usain Bolt and Chuck Norris. I believe in here, and some eclectic people, but I am listed on here as a graphic designer.
Nestor Aparicio 53:05
So dude, I went up on your website, and I had something I had to kick in the nuts about, because this was fun. And I’ll leave you with this, because Todd’s got to go and go create things. Here. It says here on the website, you’re a visual historian. And I’m like, wow, that’s cool, visual historian. So I just call you the God of all things and the and really, you know, you’re the fashion police. For me, what you say goes. And I’ve enjoyed my visit with you. I’ve enjoyed our friendship and our cheese steak, and at some point I’ll wear something really gaudy and tacky and old school, and we’ll get together and we’ll have a beer together. How about that?
Todd Radom 53:41
I can’t wait. Let’s do it.
Nestor Aparicio 53:42
Alright. Tom radham is in Philadelphia. Don’t hold that against him. He decided to move in. He’s that guy. He tried to help the Americans. He tried to help the population. And now we’re going to live with probably some throwback jerseys we don’t want, including a whole bunch of other throwback things we don’t want. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 Taos in Baltimore and still respecting democracy and talking baseball and football jerseys and logos where Baltimore positive i.
