Beneath the surface of the tidy identity of one of minor league baseball’s most storied teams lies a decidedly untidy, twisting, turning history—or rather two separate histories that converged under the banner of today’s Birmingham Barons, Double-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox.
To start with, the team’s identity is untidy just because of the sheer length of its history. Since 1885, the Barons have collected leagues and affiliations like an old house collects clutter. They’ve played in the Southern Association, the Dixie Association, and several iterations of the Southern League, and they’ve been affiliated with the Cubs, Reds, Pirates, Athletics (of the Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Oakland varieties), Red Sox, Yankees, Tigers, and White Sox.
For a team with that much change in its past, the Barons have stayed remarkably consistent in one aspect: their identity. Since 1901, Birmingham’s team has gone by the name Barons every year they’ve played (there were some years without a team) except for a period in the late 1960s and early 1970s when they went by their parent club’s name, the A’s. (Prior to 1901, it was something of a grab bag of team names, including the Ironmakers, Maroons, Grays, Blues, Bluebirds, and Reds.)
In the early days of the Barons, the team was called the Birmingham Coal Barons, a direct reference to the area’s biggest industry. “Back in the late 1800s, teams were representative of companies,” said Michael Guzman, the team’s media relations manager. “In Birmingham, a big part of the industry back then was coal.”
According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, coal mining in the region dates back as far back as 1815, with booms and busts over the decades until the industry’s decline in the area in the 1950s.
That said, the origin of the team name is not exactly common knowledge, even among locals.
“Barons has been the name of the team for so long, I don’t think that people connect the dots,” said Barons general manager Jonathan Nelson. “Last night I spoke an event…that was the first question that was asked, what’s the genesis of the Barons name?”
While the coal industry was the inspiration for the Barons’ name, it’s not the only factor that shaped the visual identity of the team that takes the field today.
From 1920 until 1960, the Birmingham Black Barons played in the Negro Leagues, hosting the likes of Willie Mays (pictured) and Satchel Paige along the way.
The Birmingham Black Barons and Birmingham Barons shared the city’s Rickwood Field, alternating home series over the course of the season. The Black Barons won three titles in the 1940s with a roster that featured numerous players who would go on to play Major League Baseball after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947.
The current Birmingham Barons’ history is so closely tied to the Black Barons that the Negro Southern League Museum, which opened last year, is located adjacent to the team’s home at Regions Field. Not only that, but the team’s uniform set includes a look that is familiar to students of baseball history in the area.
“When we redesigned our uniforms back in 2008, we wanted to connect with that Birmingham Black Barons past,” Nelson said. “If you look at our road uniform, it is incredibly similar to the Birmingham Black Barons uniform, whether it’s the piping on the jersey or the piping on the pants, or just the type of font that says Birmingham. I know that that is an important part of our history, especially here in Birmingham.”
The current iteration of the team dates back to 1981, when the Barons resurfaced after a five-year baseball hiatus in Birmingham. The Birmingham A’s had folded in 1975 because of poor attendance, in spite of a roster that included the likes of Reggie Jackson and Rollie Fingers. While new stadiums and the continued presence of high-quality players like Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura, and Ray Durham helped this current version of the Barons, the thing that really put the team on the map was a certain #45, who played one season in 1994.
“The Barons have such a rich history of great teams and great players,” Nelson said. “Michael Jordan, when I speak to civic clubs, continues to be the most commonly asked question.”
That Jordan-era identity, which was used from 1993 through 2007, obviously evokes the Chicago White Sox, the team’s parent club since 1986. That said, the Old English B on the cap, while consistent with the White Sox brand, actually pre-dates the affiliation with Chicago. According to Nelson, the Old English B goes back to the days even before the Birmingham A’s, when the Barons were in the first of their two stints as a Tigers affiliate (1957-61, then again 1981-85).
The updated logo introduced after the 2007 season, designed by Hartwell Studio Works in Atlanta, reintroduced red as an important part of the team’s identity.
“We decided to dive in, really update and modernize our brand,” Nelson said.
That’s said, it’s still a conservative look in a minor league baseball landscape that features sea horses and turtles and tiny dogs, but that’s an appropriate choice for a town defined by a baseball heritage that runs deep. The name and the logo call back to aspects of Birmingham’s past—it’s a tidy, solid identity for a team that plays in a city where many teams in many leagues have been built, torn down, and built again over and over.
