Padres Unveil 2016 All-Star Logo, Hint at New Colour Scheme?

The San Diego Padres unveiled the logo for the 2016 Major League Baseball All-Star Game at an event at Petco Park earlier today.

No, it’s not brown.

No, it’s not orange.

But it is yellow.

Call it a mixture of eras, perhaps? The logo is navy blue, like the current Padres; with shades of powder blue, like the Padres of the previous decade; and yellow, like the 1970s-80s. It’s a compromise, okay… now is everyone happy?

Well, it doesn’t seem so, unless the brown and yellow supporters are just a lot louder than the others.

The logo features a navy blue diamond trimmed in silver, an archway (a combination of the Gaslamp Quarter arch and Petco Park architecture) above in “Battleship grey” with a blue and yellow circle housing the Padres’ “SD” insignia, below follows a scene depicting a clear blue San Diego sky with palm trees in view.

Alternate mark

On the diamond itself, in the familiar-to-Padres-fans bow-tie style, “All*Star” is in white above “GAME” straight across. Below it all is a yellow banner with the year “20-16” flanking the MLB silhouette logo in the blue/yellow colour scheme.

2016 “All-Star” wordmark seems to recall the old “San Diego” away khaki jersey crest? #Padres #MLB pic.twitter.com/sHXrdanzdU
— Chris Creamer (@sportslogosnet) July 17, 2015

Yeah, they called back to the 2000s again with the old bow-tie script (remember the khaki road uniforms?).

So, let’s come to peace with the fact the brown isn’t coming back, the current team ownership clearly doesn’t want it, it’s not happening anytime soon. With that firmly in mind, this logo is good, the colour scheme reminds one of the actual city of San Diego rather than that worn by a single baseball team from almost 40 years ago. The design is crisp, clean, well done.

Having said all that, the Padres appear to be shifting to yet another colour scheme.

Brown and yellow: 1969-1979
Brown, yellow, orange: 1980-1984
Brown and orange: 1985-1990
Blue and orange: 1991-2003
Blue, khaki, light blue: 2004-2011
Blue and white: 2012-2015
Blue, light blue, yellow: 2016-

Their seventh in their relatively brief 47 seasons. That averages out to a colour change every 6-7 seasons. The Vancouver Canucks are impressed.

Blue, light blue, and yellow also feels very Tampa Bay Rays-like, which I guess is payback for the Rays stealing their fauxback uniform template from the 1978 Padres?

“Fine, go ahead and steal our uniform template… we’ll steal your colours!” #Padres pic.twitter.com/idCBGhjkr0
— Chris Creamer (@sportslogosnet) July 17, 2015