MLB Expansion Concepts
Momentum has been picking up for Portland to get a Major League Baseball team, thanks in large part to the Portland Diamond Project. As a lifelong baseball fan and strong proponent of Major League Baseball coming to Portland I decided to join in on the fun by creating some team concepts.
Concept #1: Portland Stumps
The Portland Stumps are based on a green and brown color scheme that no other team in baseball has. There is a light seafoam green, a darker green, two shades of brown as well as a lovely “puke green” that acts as a midpoint between the brown and green. I can’t believe I’ve made a uniform design with puke green as a color. I just liked it too much when combined with the final color: cream. Cream home jerseys are a rarity in baseball and I’ve always thought they have a nice classic look to them. No white in any of these designs, in fact. White is just too clean for a team as earthy as the Stumps.
The away jersey is my favorite. It’s a classic road jersey design with the script Portland font but the bright green on the cap, hat and chest accent the gray and brown to make this jersey really stand out. The alternate jersey is where I really wanted to try something different. Everything from the off-centered cap logo to the two-lined city name makes this jersey unique across baseball. This jersey also shows how perfectly the green and brown work together when accented by the cream.
The Name
The name Stumps garnered quite polarizing reactions when presented to Reddit(see for yourself). But it was at the top of the baseball subreddit all day and over 500 people commented on it. This is exactly what I wanted to accomplish with this project. Make a concept for a team name that nobody was talking about(frankly, I was sick of people saying the name should be Mavericks, or Lumberjacks) and do it well enough to impress even those that hated the name.
For me, I still like the name. Stumps signifies the growth of Portland and the resourcefulness to handle the growing pains that come with it. Portland’s growing pains haven’t gone away as the population has exploded over the past decade. But as with the origins of Stumptown these growing pains can have silver linings. In this case it’s the real possibility of watching Major League Baseball in Portland.
For a full write-up on the Stumps and more images visit my baseball blog, chicksdigthelongball.org
