The St. Louis Cardinals have worn birds on bats on their jerseys for all but one season over the last one-hundred-one years. Now those birds will have some company, a patch sporting the logo of a multinational independent investment bank and financial services corporation.
Tuesday, the Cardinals announced they had struck a jersey advertisement deal with Stifel, the St. Louis-based company that already displays their logos on the front of the sweaters of the NHL’s Blues.
The logo will appear on the sleeve of all four of the Cardinals’ uniforms and will feature the company’s logo recoloured to match those of the team.
“We are proud to partner with Stifel in unveiling our first jersey patch sponsor,” said St. Louis Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III in the press release. “We worked closely with Ron Kruszewski and his team at Stifel on the patch design to make sure it fit tastefully on our iconic uniform, and they even agreed to slightly modify their word mark to fit the red and blue colour combination that we use for our classic ‘Birds on the Bat’ logo. Both Ron and I are confident that this design strikes the perfect balance between preserving the integrity of our uniform while providing great exposure for Stifel.”
As has been the case around the league with these patches, it will appear on the left sleeve of right-handed hitters, on the right sleeve of left-handed hitters, and on the glove arm of pitchers. It will measure four inches wide by one-and-a-half inches tall.
The Cardinals are the tenth of the thirty Major League Baseball clubs to rent space on their jersey sleeves to a company; the league permitted teams to do so beginning with the 2023 season. St. Louis joins the Arizona Diamondbacks, Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Houston Astros, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, New York Mets, and San Diego Padres as MLB clubs to officially announce and reveal their on-field uniform advertisements for 2023.