Are you ready for some Fightins!!?? I am. Are you ready for some trolls in the comments? I think I am. Yes, it’s time to do a behind-the-scenes for what seems like our most controversial project, the renaming and rebranding of the Reading Fightins. Why the Reading Fightins? Besides being a great Minor League Baseball name, it has a great heritage to it. The Philadelphia Phillies, parent club to the Reading Fightins, nickname is the Fightin’ Phils. The town of Reading is a scrappy Pennsylvania town who has taken some lumps in recently, but is fightin’ it’s way back to its dissevered glory (Reading is one of our favorite towns in the U.S.). There’s a sports tradition of using fightin’ as a prefix. The team was one of the last of the holdouts that uses it’s parent club’s team name. Very rare nowadays and for good reason, it can be very confusing.

Let me back up a little. The team came to us over a year ago about going deeper into the R-Phils brand, and ways to celebrate everything in the R-Phils universe. They were also looking for ways honor more of the Phillies heritage, while appealing to the entire Reading community, including Mets fans.

While changing the name was never the goal, it did enter the conversation. There was a consensus that a name change would only be considered, if the right name surfaced. Plus, the name would have to meet the aforementioned goals. We don’t take any rename lightly, but renaming the Reading Phillies, a classic name in Minor League Baseball history, is a big responsibility. But once the Philadelphia Phillies legendary Whiz Kids name “The Fightins” was proposed, it clicked with everyone on heritage and creative levels.

So we hit the sketch pad with our usual mission of defining what should the Fightin’s look like? We started with very rough sketches. One of our first ideas was to use the Phillie Phanatic as a jump off point. What if we could do a Huey, Dewey, and Louie thing with the Phanatic being the Donald Duck in the family. We liked the idea of tying the club back to Philly with boxing/Rocky references.

We also knew that the Crazy Hotdog vendor, the Ostrich riding hotdog throwing mascot has emerged in the last few years as a fan favorite, especially for kids. So we focused an early round on concepts that depicted the ostrich and the crazy hotdog vendor.

Here are some different “F” options, very crude but you can see the influence of the big Phils logos on the design. With a lot more “Reading circus” thrown into the mix.

Here are some script options. Again, a lot of big Phils inspiration.

Tomorrow, more sketches! Thursday night one of the hat designs will be available in the Clink Room store!

The Eugene Emeralds are the Class A affiliate of the San Diego Padres. Brandiose has designed around 100 official on-field caps for Major and Minor League Baseball teams. This is one we know you’ll love.

Eugene, Oregon is some gorgeous country. Green as all get-up, just the kinda place a Sasquatch would love to call home. Eugene is also the most barefoot friendly place we’ve ever visited. “Barefoot friendly,” you may be asking? From the barefoot runners (Eugene is home to the birth place of Nike and the place where Steve Prefontaine made a name for himself.) to hippie drum circles, to college students finding their way home after a few too many and a shoe or to has gone missing. It’s and eccentric place and the Ems are honoring Eugene’s eccentricities with a few of their own.

Go HERE to get yours! Kick this weekend’s ass Clinkers!

We interrupt this regularly scheduled BTS for a Thursday hat drop. We just have too many unreleased hat styles to wait. And this is probably the last weekend to get the hat in time for Christmas(No guarantees, sorry.). We’ll do a behind-the-scenes for Eugene in the upcoming weeks. But tonight at 9pm PST/mid-night EST the Eugene Emeralds home hat will be available HERE in Clink’s online store!

Don’t worry we’ll get the Hat Club BTS going again next week.

Not sure if the passionate response to the announcement of the renaming of the Reading Phillies has got to your corner of the internet. Here is Scott answering some of the concerns that have been raised around the rebranding of the team. I think he does a great job of explaining what the Reading Phillies intensions are with this renaming. To us, it’s fine if you don’t like what we’ve done when we rebrand a team. We can’t please everyone, even if we try our damnedest to do so, but it would be prudent of you to wait till you’ve seen the name and designs before you weigh in. I’d also add, that everything the Reading Phillies have done in their long illustrious history has been done with love, thoughtfulness, passion, whimsy, and passion(that’s right I said passion twice). So I say, give them a chance to prove themselves up to the task of this monumental change. Just like everything they do, it’s to provide the most fun you can have at a ballpark.

Go HERE to read an article about the change and HERE to see Scott addressing some of the concerns that have been raised.

Lexington Legends Official On-Field now available in the Clink Room online store! Grab yours here. Kick this weekend’s ass Clinkers!