200 Years of Baseball in Staten Island: Garibaldi BC, Red Shirts, Reds, G's, T's, etc

[20_range]

I received the following prompt: "I was reading earlier today that Giuseppe Garibaldi once lived on Staten Island and I know you have somewhat of a NY/NJ lean and I thought you might think it would be a good idea to have Staten Island Redshirts logo idea"


Well I did think it was a good idea! I've invented a complete history for the team, starting in 1865, with many name changes, logo changes, ownership changes, and affiliation changes. I've finished about half of it, so I'm going to start posting. I hope to advance in chronological order.


Original name: Garibaldi Baseball and Cricket Club

Founded by Civil War veterans, mainly of 1848/leftist European revolutionary expat backgrounds, the team was named in honor of Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi. He had lived in Staten Island for a few years between revolutions in South America and Italy. Soldiers of the 39th NY, the Garibaldi Guard, had played baseball up and down the Eastern Theater, on fields all over Virginia, then founded the team back home in NY at the time of their victorious discharge in 1865.

This makes the team older than the modern country of Italy. Decades before my ancestors on ny mom's side made it out of Naples and Sicily, there were Italians in America, fighting for the Union and playing baseball.


I imagine that the team lingered as a respected, high quality minor league club well into the 20th century, like the old Baltimore Orioles with Lefty Grove. They finally went bankrupt during WWII, and new owners finally affiliated with a Major League team (unfortunately for them, it was the bankrupt Philadelphia Athletics, and then the expansion Mets). They were able to hold onto the leftist/socialist/international ideals of their founders up until then.


Naturally, in the era before standardized uniforms, the club wore variations on the puffy Garibaldi red shirts, in some cases actually repurposing the garments they'd fought the civil war in. The red uniform became a longstanding tradition.


Note on the colors. You can see that the red is variable throughout the team’s history. I thought that it would be realistic if they oscillated between a red-orange color like the Italian Red Shirts (and like the color that the Union Army unit wore), and a darker, more official red from the Italian flag. For simplicity I used the official green and white from the flag.


If possible, I would love some feedback and criticism on how well I am mimicking the various eras. I have seen incredible fictional historical work from tm61, lbl Brendan, sfgiants56, txranger etc and while I am not at their level, I decided to use this project to try to learn how to produce faux specific historical era logos.
A huge thanks to Ramzavail for sending me a one sentence idea and a Wikipedia link! Here is what I did with it

[20_range]

1865


So old, the members of the club also played cricket, like early baseball players such as the Wright brothers and James Creighton.


Uniforms were red shirts, modeled after the Red Shirts of the Italian Revolutionaries, and the special uniforms worn by the Garibaldi Guard in the Civil War.


The club experimented with several symbols stitched onto their uniforms in the early years.


The club symbol is from II Corps, the Corps that the regiment served in. The G is for Garibaldi, the R for Richmond. The circular symbol is the Italian Cockade, marked with a GG for Giuseppe Garibaldi and for Garibaldi Guard. The slogan Dio e Popolo appeared on the regimental flag.

The team name refers to the county of Richmond (Staten Island), which is not yet part of New York City.


Inevitably the team’s very long name would be shortened into nicknames in newspaper reports and popular discourse: The Garibaldis (like Eckford of Brooklyn), the Reds and Red-Shirts (like the Red stockings), the Guards, Guardsmen, GGs or RRs.

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More early logos for the Garibaldi Club of Richmond (logos are coded for Richmond Red Shirts)

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1882:


The year of Garibaldi's death. By then the team has long dropped cricket. After Garibaldi's death, the team increases his representation, and he appears in this program (unlikely that he would be stitched onto the uniforms proper). In remembrance, the team wears a Black cockade GG, and declares it will eternally follow Garibaldi's revolutionary principles.


Officially known now as Garibaldi BC of Richmond, they are known in the papers as the Garibaldis, Guards, but mainly by the color of the uniform, the Red Shirts

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1900:


Now that Richmond, Kings, Queens, Bronx and Manhattan counties have been unified into New York City, the team name Richmond begins to fall into disuse, replaced by Staten Island. They debut in 1900 their first SI monogram. Red Shirts, also rendered as Redshirts and Red-Shirts, becomes the dominant nickname for the team, fitting in with contemporary teams like the White Sox, Dark Blues, Red Sox, Cardinals, and Browns who are named after the color of their equipment.

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1910s-1920s:


The team name is now officially Baseball Club of Staten Island, and they debut a slightly more modern monogram. Stitched Staten Island script appears on the away jersey; the team is variously called the Red Shirts, Reds, and Statens in the press

**coming up later, 1930s radicalism, a co-sponsored Negro League team, and the Red Scare :0

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1920s, 30s:

The 1920s and 30s see resurgence of popular leftism. The Depression, unionization, the New Deal. Like many other sports teams around the world, they adopt the socialist red star as their symbol. (With a white outline separating it from their red shirts).
The dominant nickname becomes the Staten Island Reds. Briefly in the 1936-38 seasons, the star becomes three pointed, in solidarity with the International Brigades fighting in the Spanish Civil War (including the Garibaldi Battalion).


It's also the period of greatest success for the team on the field, fighting for the pennant every year with the old Baltimore Orioles in the highly competitive International League.

Staten Island is known for being very conservative, but maybe this history can change that?

Fantasy baseball.



It's a little far-fetched for a 1930s team to have a sleeve patch like this, but like the Athletics elephant, they experiment with a stylized representation of Garibaldi on the sleeve, hoisting the red flag.

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1930s:


Bonus teams: in this era, the team shared its stadium and resources with a Negro League team, variously known as Black Stars, Black Garibaldis, Black Reds, Red Giants, and New York Elite Guard. Their Garibaldi sleeve patch held a black flag, and they wore a black star. SI monogram is based on St Louis Stars



Note: I am a white person, making a fictional Negro League team, and I hope I didn't **** up. The team is obviously not going to be called the Black Shirts (not linked). I also note that there is some ugly history in the US around groups called the Red Shirts (not linked), but I've chosen to highlight the Italian and socialist thread of Red Shirts, which predated that


Here are the logos for the New York Black Stars and the New York Elite Guard. Special thanks to Brendan and his amazing thread of fictional Negro League Logos for inspiring this.

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1953


The Red Scare grips the United States. Like the Cincinnati Reds becoming the Red Legs, there is pressure for a name change. Also, the team has lost its independent status and become affiliated. Terrible baseball follows as they align with the doormat Philly A's and St. Louis Browns. New ownership is embarrassed about the team's political past.


At first they retained the heroic sleeve patch, replacing the red flag with the stars and stripes, and they turned him around as well.


Due to the Red Scare, the red star of socialism that the team has used for decades is no longer acceptable. There are suggestions to bring back the Civil War club shape, but it would just suggest a playing card to a modern audience. The team tries to address this dilemma by changing the symbol to a simple circle, and rebranding as the G's, with hopes of being nicknamed the GI's, like the patriotic Bronx Bombers.


Instead, fatally, the circle invites endorsement of a long time derogatory comic opposition name for the team, one which they were already often called, and they become universally known as the Tomatoes...

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1950s-early 1960s


Another desperate rebrand after more terrible play.. the heroic Garibaldi becomes Slidin' Giuseppe (logo based on the Sacramento Solons)



Later in the decade they finally lean into the name, replacing cartoon Garibaldi with an llustration of a happy sliding tomato. Known officially as the G's during this time, they are usually called the T's.

Sometimes it feels like Italian Americans assimilated by embracing stereotypes. The team that was once dedicated to the revolutionary ideals of the Revolutions of 1848, the proud Reds who Sacco and Venzetti rooted for from their cell, maybe, have now fully turned Giuseppe Garibaldi into Joey Tomato. Don Draper’s in the lab working on a hard-hittin’, saucy new character, Tommasina Tomato, when, suddenly…

[BBGiovanni]

This is a super interesting concept, as yours all are, and well-done. SI is forgotten even in NY but a good idea for another NY squad! The park is so great IRL, I don't think I'll make the Atlantic League season this year but I love riding the ferry over and walking to the park.

If you go to Italia and talk to your relatives you may find they have a very, very different view of Garibaldi and the Mille! The book "The Leopard" by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa is a classic of the type, a prince confronting the downfall of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Not to derail anything, just pointing out hero worship of Garibaldi is definitely not universal in Italia, even on the left

Thanks for the link about the Regiment too, I didn't know about them... and find it funny that out of 11 companies there was only one Italian one

Anyway carry on, reading on with interest I love these alternate concept teams that evolved from amateur clubs after the Civil War.

[20_range]

Thanks! It's meant to be a general idealistic characterization. Even i had a hard time convincing mysel that, like, Wobblies were running a minor league baseball team in Staten Island in 1930. Any specific historical meaning remaining is definitely going to be lost with the 1968 logo

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I've also been to that stadium, back when they were a Yankees affiliate. The whole thing was amazing, walking there from the ferry terminal, sunset with Manhattan beyond the outfield.
I forgot to mention that they play at the Staten Islad Cricket Club. I think I'll have Robert Moses build them a little-Shea, and then they'll eventually implode it and move up o the current location.

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by 20_range

I've also been to that stadium, back when they were a Yankees affiliate. The whole thing was amazing, walking there from the ferry terminal, sunset with Manhattan beyond the outfield.
I forgot to mention that they play at the Staten Islad Cricket Club. I think I'll have Robert Moses build them a little-Shea, and then they'll eventually implode it and move up o the current location.

Just keeps getting better and better

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1963


Meet the New York T's, the class d affiliate of the brand new New York Mets! Friends to headline writers everywhere, the team is terrible, constantly being crushed, pasted, and simply going splat.


(this is Mr Met as a tomato. Um it's a little bit like Chief Wahoo, which is certainly true to the era, but um. Well. I don't know which is worse, the recolored one or the one with the wider tomato head. The NY mono is from the original Mets logo)

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1968: The New York Garibaldis

In our timeline, Mets owner Joan Payson (a Whitney, of the Whitney Museum founding family) had what were by 1968 very traditional tastes in art, impressionism, post-impressionism, Winslow Homer. But in this timeline, maybe one of her kids is in charge of the minor league club, and commissions a logo from a more contemporary artist.


The new Garibaldi is seen everywhere, well outside the sports world, and the team becomes a small scale international symbol, like St Pauli in Hamburg.
But also, like Che Guevara, how many people wearing this face as a shirt or stencil are familiar with the specifics of 19th century Italian politics? Does a good beard make a person a rebel? Has mass reproduction removed all meaning, leaving only an icon, a celebrity? The face gains universal recognition, but many people know it not because of history or baseball, only as "that guy with the beard", and somehow this 19th century general who represents a minor league baseball team becomes a hippie countercultural icon

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1969


what have I done lol

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1976


The new stylized minimalist version, like Ajax Amsterdam, is drawn with nine lines, one for each player on a baseball team, but unlike that logo, it is not a success (this is the first time I've ever tried to make something in this style, with predictably bad results). If anyone wants to improve on his one,please do. It wants to fit in with the Brewers ball-in-glove, the Atlanta arrow, the Expos… thing, etc

[BBGiovanni]

Step away from the wine bottle

I'm a little confused with Mr. Tomato, shouldn't the head be red and the jersey orange? Just a thought, I imagine it's hard to work with that dark shade of red and keep details/features.

[20_range]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Step away from the wine bottle

I'm a little confused with Mr. Tomato, shouldn't the head be red and the jersey orange? Just a thought, I imagine it's hard to work with that dark shade of red and keep details/features.

It should be, but it was even more racist that way. It was absolutely terrible