'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.