The Inland Empire 66ers are the California League High-A level affiliates of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
Hopefully the two teams don't share graphic designers.
@bensbiz the word is out! New colors, new logo - same name! What are your first thoughts?? #ExpertOpinion pic.twitter.com/oUMj1e1iB8
— Inland Empire 66ers (@66ersBaseball) November 13, 2013
Look, I didn't take this job to beat the negativity drum, and Angels fans need more bad news about not at all, but the 66ers have a new logo that is about as attractive as a broken crack pipe at midnight.
The new team colors are silver, powder blue and orange. The new team logo is... a wrench.
Official propaganda weaves a tale of using the idea of Route 66 - for which the team is named - and adding colors associated with "muscle-cars". And so the icon of the franchise is a mechanic swinging a wrench like it is a baseball bat. If you like cars or road trips and associate the 66ers with these because of the namesake Route 66 highway and all it conveys, think clearly here... wouldn't a mechanic and his tools be the LAST thing you would want to associate with your journey? Sure if you break down you want a mechanic, but this logo asserts that a break down has taken place. This logo must be semiotically conveying the belief that the Angels are broken down and that it is in the minor leagues from whence they will be repaired. Sadly, the mechanic logo bares no resemblance to Eddie Bane.
Let's go around the sidebar logos that encircle Mister Mechanic. Beneath him is the new 66ers text that will likely be emblazoned across the front of every jersey (since Inland Empire is probably too long). Other than the fact that if you take off your glasses it reads "dgers" and you think "Is this the Chavez Ravine minor league club?" it is the least terrible thing pictured above.
To the text's immediate left is an engine with an almost face - Eyes sort of appearing toward the front below the intake manifold and just above a nose/fan that covers a hungry maw. To show that this monster engine is fierce and alive (instead of a fat slug) there is diagonal energy lines flying off its back, implying motion in the lexicon of cartoons. But the energy lines are rounded orange bubble shapes. The result looks like an oil spill gushing out of the back pistons.
Above the engine in the top left is a Silver IE with a classy art deco flair on the letter I - nothing screams 1920s deco like an area of the country that was horsetrails in the jazz age. The wrench logo lingers behind it, in case you were worried about every proud meth dealer in the IE getting this as a tattoo.
Our Mister Mechanic man is swinging his wrench with the same sploogey oil spill that the engine has and to his lower right is a wrench with an oil leak that is supposed to like it is a cartoon of powerfully moving by in the sky. A wrench, flying through the air pouring crude oil out at a high speed - yep, the clear association to Angels minor league baseball is there and if all this is too understated, the complete absence of any current or former team colors is included at no additional charge.
The upper right hand corner took time to decipher. It looks like the fossilized skull of Woody Woodpecker with a nameless companion buried next to him with the acronym ERS standing in as a woodpecker tombstone. Then it becomes clear that Woody and his pal's eyesockets are being used as the round bottoms of the number six. What appeared to be skull plumage is actually the tops of each numeral. So why would two sixes look like cartoon bird skulls? Now think here... because we have an engine, a mechanic and some oil-soaked wrenches, this is the hood ornament of the 66ers. Get it? Get it? No? Yeah, neither did I.
The 66ers had a classic logo - it was an interstate highway sign with the legendary Route 66 - a universally understood symbol of the open road, the promise of the minor leagues and the journey every player is taking is akin to the start of a great road trip and the feeling of freedom it entails. That logo is gone and the car you were driving in is in pieces at the mechanic's garage. At present, there are not even any tires. We aren't going anywhere with this team. Hey - maybe it is perfect for a club in the Angels farm system after all.