Milwaukee Milkmen

63

People who are familiar with the history of baseball in Milwaukee know that for most of the past 150 years it has had a team in one league or another, and that most of those teams have been called the Brewers. It started with some Nineteenth Century teams that all either folded or relocated after only a few years in Milwaukee (including one that would eventually become today's Baltimore Orioles), continued with a top-level minor league team that lasted half a century and only left because the Boston Braves moved to town, and of course ends with the current National League team. What even people who know about the history of baseball in Milwaukee may not be familiar with is the series of teams with dairy-related names in town. Interspersed with those short-lived Nineteenth Century teams called the Brewers were some equally short-lived teams called either the Cream Citys (i.e., the full name of the team was the Milwaukee Cream Citys) or the Creams. There were also a couple of occasions in the Twentieth Century when there was a second team in Milwaukee, and that second team were usually called the Creams as well.

With all that in mind, it should come as no surprise that when Milwaukee got a team in the independent American Association and the "Brewers" name was in use, they went with a dairy-related name. It should also come as no surprise that they didn't resurrect the "Creams" name since that's a stupid name. But the "Milkmen" name is still a bit confusing. After all, it may not be as bad as "Creams" but it's not great, either. It's also a bit anachronistic. Milkmen apparently do still exist (I found an article that states that 0.4% of American consumers get their milk delivered, and depending on how they define "consumer" that could be as many as thirteen million people), but it's not exactly a mainstream concept these days, and I'm unaware of that 0.4% of American consumers being concentrated in the Milwaukee area. If I had to guess, I'd say the number of Milwaukee Milkmen is greater than the number of milkmen in Milwaukee.

But hey, this is baseball, where names that would be laughed out of the room in other sports (Cubs, Red Sox, Tourists) are looked upon fondly, and where complaints about needing more modern names are likely to lead to dreck like "Trash Pandas" or "Rumble Ponies". So I'll willingly accept "Milkmen" as being sort of like Camden Yards: a modern invention intended to look old-timey.

Given the throwback nature of the name, you might expect similar from the logo: nothing more than old-timey looking M, or possibly a simple outline of a milk bottle or milk jug. They don't quite go that far, but they don't exactly go far in the other direction, either. The logo features an at-bat baseball player dressed up like a milkman. It's highly stylized so that the only real indicators that he's dressed like a milkman are the cap (and even that's not much of an indicator, since a milkman's cap looks so similar to a baseball cap) and the bow tie (this is a dead giveaway, although let's face it: if there's any sport where you might find competitors wearing bow ties while playing, baseball is that sport). The stylizing is so extreme that it looks like he has no left arm at all, and the angle of the right arm seems a bit strange. On the one hand, you don't really notice either of these things unless you stare at the logo for a bit. On the other hand, it's the sort of thing where once you see it, it's fairly hard to unsee. That said, I am once again inclined to cut them some slack. (I must be feeling generous because of the three-day weekend.) Some people would have made the logo be some ridiculously cartoony-looking animal dressed up as a milkman and swinging a bat. The animal would almost certainly be a cow to get the milk reference in there. (For what it's worth, their mascot is a cow, or more accurately a bull.) I'm glad the Milkmen showed restraint on this point, not only because I'm sick of that kind of logo but also because the idea of a cow delivering milk is something I don't want to contemplate any longer than necessary.

Finally, let's look at the colors. The team went with the simplest color scheme imaginable: white and black. I'm guessing that supposed to evoke the colors the milkmen actually wore back when they were a common thing. (Today's milkmen, I suspect, look like hipsters. I just have this hunch that something as retro as being a milkman in 2021 is the sort of thing that's going to attract hipsters, both as employees and as customers.) It's a bit plain and not all that clever, but then again I've let them get away with being plain and not all that clever on the name and the logo so why change now. It's fine just the way it is. You want someone trying to be clever? Go look at the damn Sod Poodles or some other trendy team. You can have them.

Final Score: 63 points.
Penalties: Alliteration, 5 pts; Script, 7 pts; Player, 51 pts.
Bonuses: None.