The Bowling Green Hot Rods, High A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays in the South Atlantic League, will commemorate the 10th anniversary of their popular Bootleggers alternate identity with a commemorative update of the brand. Bootleggers Night has been a tradition for the past decade, paying tribute to Kentucky’s bourbon heritage, in particular the Prohibition-era bootleggers who used hot rod cars to outrun law enforcement while transporting moonshine.
The new marks were created by Brandon Lamarche of 32 Designs, the designer who created the original Bootleggers identity for the team’s “What Might Have Been” night in 2016. Bootleggers was the runner-up in a 2008 name-the-team contest.
The identity centers around an updated version of a bearded bootlegger character who is wielding a baseball bat and riding a flaming bourbon barrel. An alternate mark features a flaming alligator in a barrel, a reference to the process of treating the inside of bourbon barrels with flames, which creates an “alligator char” pattern.
A new wordmark incorporates a pair of barrels standing in for two letters O in Bootleggers.
The Hot Rods will take the field as the Bootleggers for 10 Thursday games throughout the season.
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