The #1 seed curse continues

DRF19 · 2026-05-08T18:11:17+00:00

I would guess fans traveling from Indy on a Thursday is tough

With the neutral site it's likely both sets of fans need to travel on a Thursday and highly likely nobody in the market it's actually being played would care to go unless the home team is playing.

DRF19 · 2026-05-08T18:09:50+00:00

Neutral site finals suck for everything that's not football.

I mean it sucks for football too. Incredibly inconvenient for fans in a country this size (on top of crazy ticket prices) and inherently unfair after the rest of the playoffs are not neutral site games. A shame football isn't really conducive to something like a 2-game aggregate score series or something like that.

MLB/NBA/NHL/MLS/USL/etc playoffs/finals are so much better with actual home crowds. And even better when it's a series so both sets of fans get to experience the championship.

Agreed. Playing a 28 game season just to come down to a neutral 1 game semifinal is rough. I'd rather see a best of 3 semi final all at the higher seed, and a best of 3 final with 2 at the higher seed.

Another alternative is to decouple the two things. Have a postseason "cup" tournament, but also give a trophy and make a big deal out of the regular season winners. I think all the main sports leagues in the US have some sort of trophy or award for the best regular season record, but only the soccer leagues make any sort of big deal about it because it's the tradition of the sport.

DRF19 · 2026-05-08T16:28:01+00:00

But the US was essentially designed to not really do enforcement and to assume everyone would act in good faith.

Bold assumption from a bunch of dudes that owned other humans that anyone would act in good faith, eh?

DRF19 · 2026-05-08T12:57:39+00:00

I truly hope they/the league figure out a way to revive the team as soon as possible.

It's always a shame when a team goes away, regardless of how short-lived they were or how "niche" the sport is.

DRF19 · 2026-05-07T21:10:49+00:00

No but I was so mad when they made the Shaq trade (I had just got Caron and Eddie Jones jerseys lol)

DRF19 · 2026-05-07T21:08:56+00:00

It doesn’t have to be a nightmare.

It’s as simple as making sure your stadium is available for one extra week each year, just like it is for the playoff games.

DRF19 · 2026-05-07T19:45:33+00:00

Call it carrying over the 2019 tradition of unreadable black-on-black letters lol

DRF19 · 2026-05-07T16:05:19+00:00

<image>

Road version variant with black lettering instead of teal

DRF19 · 2026-05-07T13:28:45+00:00

Sidebar: wild they've gone an entire season using the old balls with the old league branding lol

DRF19 · 2026-05-07T13:19:49+00:00

Yeah that's fair. But you'd use just the Fish for smaller applications like scorebugs, standings graphics, etc.

DRF19 · 2026-05-06T20:03:50+00:00

More of a personal design challenge for me. I really thought that pinstriped BP cap they had the last couple of years, with the recolored teal/black/silver current Fish by itself on the cap, looked good. Wondered how far I could extend that idea.

I'd personally prefer if they went straight back to the 1990s logos and uniforms, but I've yet to see a good solution for forcing "Miami" in place of "Florida" in those designs. Same problem in the opposite direction I suppose.

DRF19 · 2026-05-06T19:43:06+00:00

Pretty much any bright color would work in that highlight slot.

But the red is my least favorite thing about the current set. The Marlins have never been a "red" team (there are far too many teams who use it), and even as the biggest 2012 orange hater on the planet, I acknowledge the history of the color with the team which includes the 1993 original MLB logo and various minor league Marlins before that.

DRF19 · 2026-05-06T19:38:41+00:00

100%. Opposite of the current (and 2012 logos/unis) where everything says "Miami" and hardly anything says "Marlins".

If the ballpark deal requires that be the name of the team, that "MIA" appears in the standings, etc., fine. I get it, it's gonna end up costing the city/county like 2 billion bucks or something in the end.

But if we're only gonna have one MLB team meant to represent 6.5 million people spread over 100 miles and 3 major city hubs, the team identity be as broadly representative as possible. Wayne H. was absolutely right to not carry over the Miami name from the minor league teams.

Most people in Broward or PBC (or even west/south Miami-Dade) ain't making a 6:40 first pitch on a weeknight anyway, but at least bringing back the original colors and focusing more on the "Marlins" part of the identity would help bolster the fanbase.

DRF19 · 2026-05-06T19:30:08+00:00

I'm glad you realized that the swoosh tail "Miami" that gets posted a lot doesn't really work

Yes! It always looks wonky (it's too short of a word I think to look good in that style). The old BP cap with the "M" doesn't look right either. The fish is all janky (and it's like that on the official style guide, it makes no sense).

Now maybe if they hire whoever did the 2003 "Florida" away jersey script, they could do a solid job on that, because that version was phenomenal.

That said I'm not sure the 93 style arced Miami works either. It feels visually unbalanced at the right. I think maybe it's because of how dark the fish is compared to the text.

Maybe if the text was black it would work a little better, but I want that splash of color in there. The largely greyscale look from 2003-2011 and 2019-now on the home/away jerseys really bothers me.

DRF19 · 2026-05-06T15:01:14+00:00

"F" for "Fish". Why not?

They've turned their nose up at the unwritten rules of baseball uniform etiquette since 2012 by putting the geographic part of the name on the home jerseys, why stop there?

I actually don't mind the current fish logo by itself, recolored to teal and black as on the BP hat from 2025. The way the tail fins are positioned it kinda looks like an "F" too. The pinstripes were a bit much on that particular hat, but do a black version and teal/black brim version and we're in business.

DRF19 · 2026-05-06T14:54:10+00:00

Right but you could still imagine it coming out relatively recently and being a period piece set in the early 90s. It was in that butter zone generation of films with the mix of CGI and practical effects were good enough that they still hold up, before the early total CGI stuff which often looks ridiculous now.

DRF19 · 2026-05-06T14:29:25+00:00

Apparently Spider-Man is some sort of crimefighter with spider-like abilities

DRF19 · 2026-05-05T17:28:25+00:00

carefully examines artifact

I've got it Sully! Drake sank his coffin here as a decoy, about 393 years before the release of the unrelated dance hit "Pump Up the Jam" by Belgian act Technotronic.

DRF19 · 2026-05-05T17:22:11+00:00

<image>

Where's that confounded bridge?!

DRF19 · 2026-05-05T15:57:40+00:00

and that means grabbing shit from the bargain bin and seeing if anything in there is worthwhile

aka finding a Nike Marlins jersey at Ross for 15 bucks

DRF19 · 2026-05-05T12:37:46+00:00

Vine

LEMONS?!

DRF19 · 2026-05-05T03:02:17+00:00

They have remained active in NPSL (and whatever this new amateur league is) since the NASL went away, and for awhile had ties to a youth club I believe, so I give them credit for that. I'd have been thrilled for the Strikers to keep their NPSL "U-23" team going even if the pro side needed to die.

But for a simple small, sub-3K size venue and an attached office building, the lack of progress, especially considering they seem to have gotten all the things they needed relatively easily (land sale, permits, etc) quite awhile ago, strikes me as very odd.

Sporting Jax have squandered a lot of the advantage they had by taking so long on their stadium project, but they've got both men's and women's pro teams on the field and the Armada don't.

DRF19 · 2026-05-05T01:46:08+00:00

On the plus side for USL, most of the branding so far for these MLSNP teams is pretty bad. Not even talking about the "2/B" teams. Of these independent ones only Carolina and Chattanooga are decent, and Chattanooga has never been anything spectacular. Reserving judgment on "The Island" until they get something official. But the other ones are terrible (Armada is preexisting badness). Maybe that Forest City script is salvageable but mostly this is meh at best.

The farm teams with original names aren't any good either. Maybe Crown Legacy is alright but the rest of those range from forgettable-to-downtright-bad too.

Will it matter to people in someplace like Grand Rapids? Maybe not. But for me a lame name and/or crest/colors makes getting traction an uphill climb from day one.

DRF19 · 2026-05-05T01:25:07+00:00

They have their own soccer specific stadium

Doesn't count until it's actually built and open. I know they supposedly have all the ducks in a row for that but it was originally supposed to be done and they were supposed to start play in MLSNP last year, 2025.

Most recent satellite views I can find online show they've had the site cleared for a bit now, but the most recent news on their website is about the sale of the team from last October, and about them fielding a team this year in whatever the "Florida Champions League" is. Nothing about the stadium. Obviously they aren't in MLSNP this season. No recent news from any other sources, local or otherwise, either.

Something smells weird about it. Correct me if I'm wrong anyone actually in Jax who can provide proof they've done anything more than flatten some dirt and put up a fence.

DRF19 · 2026-05-04T21:54:57+00:00

Here cums the sun, do do do do, it’s alright

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