Indians!

Saturday I went to the Indians game for my soon-to-be brother in law's bachelor party. I was excited to go to the game seeing as Cleveland brought back Jim Thome, a guy who I spent years watching growing up in the 90s. We sat out in the bleacher section in left field, here's a view from my seat:

The stadium announced it was Thome's birthday that day as well, and I thought how cool it would be for him to hit a home run on his birthday in his return to the Tribe. Then in the bottom of the 6th Thome sent one out towards the bleachers in left, it was literally heading right towards my face! Thome's 602nd career home run eventually landed a few rows in front of me and the place went nuts!

The next day I went online to check out the video highlights of the game, and sure enough I spotted myself in the stands as Mr. Thome's bomb went out of the park. Cleveland won the game 8-7, it had been about 6 years since I've seen them win in person, and it was an awesome experience.

Worst NFL Look Ever?

Not a fan of the Raven's color scheme of purple and black, but they do a nice job with the purple jersey over white pants. But every now and then they pull out their disgusting black alternate jersey which is stupid. Then even rarer is the black jersey over black pants which looks even more stupid. Well Sunday night they took it a step further by wearing the standard purple over black pants. Seriously? It's bad enough the pants are solid black without any kind of striping to help break it up a bit, but man, the purple and black together just look like crap. Then with the black socks it just creates a bad look from head to toe. This team, along with the Carolina Panthers, are the two teams suffering the most from 90's design syndrome and need a complete overhaul, but hopefully nothing too Arena Football-esque like the Jaguars, Vikings, Cardinals and Falcons.

Ragan's Puke-Mobile

Definitely the worst paint scheme to be unveiled so far for 2011 is David Ragan's UPS Ford. Talk about overkill on the yellow, and a company that's image is solely brown there's very little of it here. Ragan's '09-'10 scheme was very cool and wouldn't have bothered me to see that back again this year before he gets the inevitable can from the famous Jack Roush #6. But still, the king UPS scheme goes to Dale Jarrett and his ride from the early 2000s.

Lotus Renault GP 2011

Lotus is returning to Formula 1 in 2011 in an alliance with the old Renault team. Next season Renault will just supply engines while Lotus will handle all car designs and engineering. The team unveiled the paint scheme (actual car design won't surface until shortly before the new season) and they have gone with a classic black and gold scheme that any racing historians will associate the old John Player Special grand prix cars that ran back in the 60s and 70s. Not a bad move at all. The only annoying thing are the bright red endplates of the Total sponsorship that are returning from last years Renault team. Kinda throws off the flow of the scheme, but still nice nonetheless, plus the new Pirelli tires for 2011 look great!

Gordon's New Look

In 2011, Jeff Gordon's famous long-time sponsor DuPont is stepping back a bit from full-time sponsorship. So next season the AARP is stepping up to sponsor Jeff in the majority of races. That means more times than not you won't see Jeff sporting the flames of DuPont that have been a fixture on the track since 2001. Instead you will see a gradient-heavy black and red AARP Chevy that is reminiscent of the infamous "T-Rex" car from 1997. As Jeff's career starts to wind down it would be great to see him go after that elusive 5th championship.

Kurt Busch #22 2011

Kurt Busch is switching from the famous Penske #2 Blue Deuce over to the #22 sponsored by Shell/Pennzoil. Kevin Harvick has been sporting the yellow and red for the last 4 seasons with a really nice scheme that fit the sponsor well with many curved and aggressive lines. This, however, is not good. It looks like somebody experimenting with the pen tool for the first time and this was the result. Oh well, at least the new Dodge nose looks great.

New Tribe Unis

So the Cleveland Indians unveiled a new uniform set for the 2011 season. Overall they're half awesome and half meh. Both the standard home and alternate away jersey fall into the meh category. Except for some minor tweaks the home white has remained virtually unchanged since the 1994 overhaul and I think is due for a change. While not bad it has just grown a bit old. Plus, what's up with the cap's navy blue not matching the navy on the helmet, or any of the blue found on the Tribe's uni's for that matter. Looks even more noticeable on the road alt, which by the way goes back to the standard Chief Wahoo cap apposed to the script 'I'. Where these uni's shine are the new road grays. The Indians are going with a retro look that compliment the home alternate cream jerseys perfectly (more on those in a minute). The road grey's and home alts really clash with the script 'Indians' jerseys with the retro vs. modern look, script vs. block lettering, piping vs. no piping, Chief Wahoo vs. block 'C'. It's actually starting to become a mess really. That said, the cream home alts should really become the standard homes, and this team will instantly become one of the better looking team in baseball. A classic team really should stick with a classic look. But the worst move of all? Switching from the navy block 'C' cap on the home alts to red. Blah!