Madison Capital Times December 3rd 2005

 As victories for the common man go, this one ranks somewhere beneath the Bill of Rights, the invention of blue jeans, indoor plumbing, country music and charcoal grills, and the repeal of Prohibition.

But there's little doubt that Milwaukee Brewers fans will celebrate the club's long-awaited decision to officially reunite with the interlocked M and B - "the Glove Logo," in street parlance - as part of its new special pinstriped jersey that will be on display at all 13 Sunday games at Miller Park next summer.

In this case, absence indeed makes the heart grow fonder. Absence from the playoffs, and from the ranks of contenders, for that matter. The Glove, a creation of then-UW-Eau Claire graduate student Thomas Meindel, was adopted in 1978 just as the Brewers hit stride as a franchise and became an American League power. It was discarded after a 15-year run in favor of a series of logos with the staying power of Todd Dunn.

The Glove wasn't perfect as a talisman - see Rene Lachemann's one- year stand as a last-place manager in 1984, and its last hurrah in 1993, the birth year of a 12-season losing streak. But the Brewers carried a .517 winning percentage during its run and made their only two playoff appearances, including the 1982 World Series.

Notably, the logo was dumped the year Robin Yount retired after a Hall of Fame career with the club, and resurrected as he begins a second life with the franchise as bench coach.

But don't praise "The Kid." You've got to hand this one both to the hard-core Buckethead types out in the cheap seats in Brew City, and also to the likes of Mase, 50 Cent and Allen Iverson.

Huh? Yep, this one is equal parts sentimentality and savvy, of both financial and cultural veins.

Few bemoaned the end of The Glove when it was dumped in '93. Even though it was remarkably unique, and you could actually see what it stood for - as opposed to the flowing, cursive M-E of the defunct Montreal Expos - it had become a bit outdated and cartoonish for the times. Something along the lines of artificial turf, or feathery oversized mascots, or the powder-blue road jersey that was so en vogue in the '70s and '80s, at one point donned by 10 teams.

(The Brewers are pulling that notion out of mothballs, too, but only as a replica retail item.)

But the logo began a comeback at the dawn of the 20th century, and at one point was as ubiquitous in rap videos as the bikini and hip gyrations. That sparked an underground movement to oil up The Glove for another run with the Brewers, a populist push that surged in momentum last year when the club finished 81-81 and finally gave its fans some legitimate cause for hope.

The franchise considered bringing back the logo as far back as 2003; that's when then-president Ulice Payne noted in an interview with OnMilwaukee.com that Brewers throwback gear was the No. 1 seller on mlb.com.

At the time, the Web site conducted a poll regarding the logo and 95 percent of respondents were in favor of bringing it back. The Brewers staged their own straw poll of sorts this past July with a T- shirt giveaway at Miller Park in which fans could choose either the current "M with wheat chaff" design or The Glove.

Final tally: Old school 13,240, new school 7,970.

So credit new owner Mark Attanasio with a no-brainer move that should lead to a big boost in merchandise sales.

The timing was right, although I'm waiting to see whether The Glove will lose steam as an icon of the masses now that it has been adopted by The Man. (Imagine the horror among teenagers if their parents started wearing their pants at their knees, too.)

Or when the masses have to come to grips with the reality that players, not jerseys, win games - with the possible exception of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who were doomed to fashion and football hell by those horrendous, clashing bright red and orange jerseys.

You can include ex-players among that group of starry-eyed optimists as well, judging from comments made by Gorman Thomas at the televised unveiling of the new jerseys Thursday night at Miller Park. A fan favorite as a free-swinging, beer-in-the-parking-lot- swilling outfielder in the franchise's halcyon years, Thomas was there when The Glove first showed up.

"New logo, new uniform, new manager, new approach," he said of the change back then, quickly shifting gears to the modern day. "Now that the team has got over the hump, gotten back to .500, maybe this might be the catalyst to get over that little bump that's left."

That and a true third baseman, a second baseman who can field pop- ups or hit curve balls, and maybe another quality arm in the rotation.

Not that there's anything wrong with putting a new look on the field. Actually, a survey of Mark Okkonen's excellent book with the self-explanatory title "Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century" shows that on the whole, jerseys have never looked better than they do these days. Change can be good.

At any rate, it's worth making a couple of points:

1. In baseball, teams with longstanding histories, especially when tinged with success, don't feel the need to make these sorts of changes.

The Yankees have worn the enmeshed N-Y on their hearts since 1937. The Cardinals have donned two redbirds resting on ends of a bat since 1936. Dodgers has been written in the same script since 1938, when the nickname was adopted permanently. The Gothic D of Detroit first appeared in 1905 and has been there every year since 1934.

As Payne put it in that same interview when told that fans had an emotional connection to The Glove: "Winning builds an emotional connection."

2. The Brewers didn't exactly hire Alexander Julian to work on these new threads.

Julian, the first professional designer to work on sports jerseys, came up with the snappy, color pinstripes of the then- Charlotte Hornets when they were an NBA expansion team and also the argyle-sided gear worn by the University of North Carolina men's basketball team.

The Brewers essentially pulled their old jerseys out of mothballs and added The Glove to the left sleeve, whereas in its first incarnation it appeared only on the hats. Fans got their first look Thursday during the televised show when a cavalcade of current and former players and coaches sashayed down the platform of the .300 Club while wearing the new gear and models on their arms.

(Fitting that a fashion show in Milwaukee be conducted by a guy with a bad sweater. Venerable announcer Bob Uecker, serving as emcee, hopefully was just embracing the throwback theme by wearing an early 90s-style charcoal-colored wool model with stitched-on diagonal black leather strips. He was behind a podium, so it was impossible to tell whether he was donning a pair of Z Cavariccis as well.)

The amateur in this chair would have preferred a jersey that blended the old and new - using the old "BREWERS" block lettering across the chest, with The Glove on the left ribcage, but on solid, navy blue tops.

Of course, beggars can't be choosers. The nostalgia-minded will be reveling in this development for quite some time, at least until they decide to push for the resurrection of something else that was just plain better in the old days.

Can anyone say, "Giant beer barrel in the outfield?"

E-mail: amertz2@madison.com
Illustration

Caption: HENRY A. KOSHOLLEK/THE CAPITAL TIMES During the Brewers' 13 Sunday home games in 2006, the team will wear uniforms featuring blue pinstripes and the old "ball and glove" logo, also known as "The Glove." The uniforms will be similar to the ones worn by Paul Molitor, Robin Yount and Jim Gantner during the Brewers' glory days in the 1980s.