The Pittsburgh Pirates have confirmed a report first published by SportsLogos.Net over a month ago, their gold “P” logo seen on the team caps will be come the primary logo for the 2014 season.
The Pirates join the Cleveland Indians (who have yet to confirm) as teams switching their primary logos to their cap logos for the 2014 season.
Confirmation came courtesy two updates posted to the official Pirates Twitter account, which we’ve merged together for your convenience below:
As mentioned in the Tweet above, the Pirates “Jolly Roger” logo – used by the club as a primary logo since 1997 – will stick around on the jersey sleeve of the team uniforms as he has for the past several seasons. The actual previous primary logo, “Jolly Roger” combined with the word “PIRATES” above, will be discontinued.
The Pirates hinted that a primary logo change would be coming for 2014 quite early in 2013, saying at the time that they wanted to place a heavier emphasis on their cap logo. No heavier emphasis possible than just the cap logo and nothing more. Note that this new primary logo is just the plain gold “P” logo, no black outline, no circle, just the P on its own.
Pittsburgh has worn a gold (or black on gold) “P” logo on their caps every single season since 1948, that’s over 65 years, but as far as we can tell (and, to be honest, baseball primary logo research in this era is tricky), the team hasn’t used a “P” as their primary logo since the 1930s. In 2010 the Pirates added a secondary logo featuring the gold “P” logo on a black and white roundel.