Pirate Marks

		Wiffle Logos in Words
		by Brandon Corbett

One thing I learned long ago, on a ship made of piled cushions with a blanket for a sail, is that every pirate needs a good mark for his flag. I have also learned something about myself while working on this site: I find pirate motifs make incredibly cool Wiffle logos. Wow. Did I really just learn that at nearly thirty I am still a giddy, seven-year-old boy when offered a jolly roger, swashbuckling, swordplay, booty and high seas fantasy? I am going to assume none of that is a problem, and offer you five of my favorite pirate-themed teams out there sailing the Wiffle seas.



Pirates    (HRL)
The HRL Pirates nail what I think works so well for the look in Wiffleball: bold, often bright colors and playful imagery that, even when it hints toward a bit of badass, stays jovial or a bit ridiculous (in a good way). The HRL crew's look is a simple, stark Wiffle-skull and cross bones. It pulls off "mean" in a 'cartoony villain you root for' way, which - along with the font used for the team name - fits the game of Wiffleball perfectly.



No Big Deal    (KWL)
No Big Deal's 2011 logo almost falls into '3 a.m., drunk in a tattoo parlor' design territory with their Wiffle-skull, but the silliness of what is going on saves it. The parrot takes this over the top (note the wing piercing). I really want to train a bird to speed up my swing; I am certain no league has a rule against this, and it guarantees not only an All-Star season but an Animal Planet TV series, as well.



Dead Eyes    (GSWL)
The Dead Eyes of Golden Stick elude the bright colors, but their drab browns work well for them. Any time you can work a term usually reserved for sniping into pirates you are onto something. When that involves the eye patch you are riding high. Throw a unique wiffleball* (5 holes!) into your cross bones mark on top of that and you are just showing off!

* Non-standard hole arrangements are always a welcome touch.



Pirates    (NLWL)
Westside Story and a pirate have a kid; does anyone really want to mess with their offspring? Awesome look. Sure, they use Pittsburgh's wordmark, but the style and color of everything else more than make up for it. The bandanna looks better than its Major League counterpart, while the bowler hat steals the show. At first glance you might miss the 'angry eye' in the details, but that fits this whole "Wiffle and pirates are always fun" theme nicely.



Triad Fighting French Toast     (WSWL)
Breakfast food + big pirate hat + cutlass and cape = swoon!
I am not sure what else you could possibly need me to say; it is a trifecta of hilarity and awesomeness for Triad.

'Seal the Deal

		Wiffle Logos in Words
		by Brandon Corbett

The updated Jason Mattseals logo, our first Wiffle Logo in Words, parallels the work on this site over the past eight months: an idea gotten very excited over, shelved for awhile, grabbed one day, thrown into the mix, and now performing many little tweaks to get everything right. When you hear the name Jason Mattseals, however, you have no time for such symmetry as your mind is hung up on a much more bewildering question: what is a Jason Mattseal?

The name does demand explanation, and the first three quarters of it are simple enough; the captain of the Mattseals is Jason Matt. Sorry, that was not very fun. The last quarter requires much more random meandering, though, I promise. In 2009, when the team first appeared in a Downriver Wiffle (now WSEM) Spring tournament, Jason was struggling to come up with a good name while watching a Pistons game. Jason Maxiell was a Piston at the time. He may still be, but that - much like the Pistons - is not important. What is important is that the reaching connection was made, it stuck, and the silly, fun-loving seal was here to stay.



The original Mattseals logo was thrown together quickly in the excitement leading up to tournament day and having this ridiculously great nickname involved. The logo is based on a Columbus Golden Seals promotional logo used on signage in the early 1970s. The hockey stick was trimmed into a bat, skates were removed, and balancing puck replaced with a Wiffleball. The color scheme - Kelley Green, Royal Blue, and Yellow - is a brighter version of the Golden Seals scheme, to highlight the fun of both Wiffle and the Mattseals character.

The 2009 Spring tournament did not happen (Wiffle is not as big a draw as the NCAA tournament apparently), and the Mattseals were almost lost to history on a design board. It was not until March of 2011, a month before the start of the inaugural WSEM season, that the Jason Mattseals finally, officially became the real-world team that everyone had been hoping to see. However, so soon before the season, there was not time to touch up the logo, so the rough 2009 version was used with only a quick color swap and a "JM" alternate added. With a full season and offseason under their pelts, the opportunity to fix the seal has finally come.



The tweaks performed are essentially like what the Dodgers did this year, or the Clippers before the 2010-2011 season: quality improvements and "duh!" fixes, respectively. Notable changes include rounding the head of the bat and adding the missing knob to better represent the yellow Wiffle bat. The Wiffleball balanced on the nose has also been better formed, and the lines and colors throughout the logo have been greatly cleaned up; though, still leaving just enough wobble to remind that their is kitsch here. The extraneous wordmark below the seal has also been removed.


In addition to the color-switched version of the primary (green outline, blue shorts), two new alternate logos have also been added. The first showcases the "Jason Matt" part of the name in a modified 1970s Denver Nuggets miner logo; having fun out there with a bushy red-beard. The second actually stems from the stopgap result of a near name change to Wild Drinking Men of Ireland. Pleasantly, the name change fell through, and as an alternate the logo works well to show off both the "Jason Matt" and "Seals" parts of the name together.