Sharing the Continental Baseball League

[TrapperJohn]

The San Antonio Dreadnoughts

I'm a big fan of this team identity, which combines elements of a bunch of different concepts to produce a look that maintains a little western flourish and enough steel to be serious. Dreadnoughts is a bit of an oddball name, I'll admit, but I can't take the credit or blame for it—I believe it was a pre-loaded Madden relocation option, in fact, and carries at least a tenuous connection to San Antone. The Dreadnoughts play at SBC Stadium, and are a consistently dangerous squad. The real MVP, of course, is this logo, which I edited based on a San Antonio Missions (I think?) concept from a terrific dodgeball concept on SportsLogos. Does the Alamo have anything to do with a dreadnought ship? Well, it does now.

[TrapperJohn]

The Shreveport Engineers

Pennzoil Park is home to the Engineers, who if nothing else provide an interesting color contrast to the rest of the league. Once again, I looked to the well of SportsLogos to borrow a nice logo and wordmark for my Shreveport squad, and I think it results in a sharp, unique look for this middling team. Why the Engineers? Shreveport, as I understand it, is a historic railroad hub—it seemed like a decent enough match.

[TrapperJohn]

The Waco Invaders

The final team in the Gulf Coast Division is a weird one down in Waco—the Invaders of L3 Park. Are they different? You better believe it. Are they shocking? Indeed. Are they good at baseball? No, not particularly. Waco has been saddled with a gonzo sort of name (and a gonzo sort of history, incidentally), so—there being no team in Roswell (spoiler alert)—it felt like the right spot for an alien homage. I know I took a lot of this imagery from somewhere, but I'm afraid I cannot for the life of me remember where... somewhere far, far away from here, I'd imagine.

[bchevy]

Any update on a quickstart or a download with all the teams? Love the designs but it's quite tedious manually renaming all the files since imgur assigns random filenames.

[cmcgill]

These have been great. I might use the Burlington Black Bears for my Green Mountain League. I've been struggling to come up with name that I like for Burlington, and this is as good as anything. Plus, the logo, uni, and cap are already done.

[DustyElbows]

Hoping that TrapperJohn is eventually able to make it back here and finish off this great logo set! Looking forward to using the entire set and hoping that he has not left us for good!

[Lord PichuPal]

I just noticed this and it looks great. Was hoping there was a quickstart attached but seems not. Hopefully we get one soon though.

[TrapperJohn]

Pardon the hiatus, folks—got wildly busy with work, but I'm committed to getting the rest of these teams over to you, in addition to a quickstart in the near future. I may be a touch slow to post, but I won't leave you in the lurch. For now, we're on to the Big Thicket Division, the third of twelve in the Western League. First up:

The Arlington Bats

Bats (the creature) have always been, to me, a curiosity associated with Texas; we don't have quite so many where I'm from, and the concept that they're just darting around overhead all the time is alien and fascinating to me. I knew I wanted a "Bats" team in my league, and Arlington seemed as good a spot as any. This squad, whose look I adapted from a dynamite preexisting Bats logo & wordmark from Sportslogos, plays middling ball at Globe Life Park.

[TrapperJohn]

The Fort Worth Marauders

The Marauders have the distinction of being the earliest team I established... back when I was probably eight years old (a decent number of decades ago) making up fake football teams for reasons that still surpass understanding. Even then, they belonged to Fort Worth, a city I couldn't have located on a map with a thousand guesses. I'm old enough now that I don't even remember where I stole these identity elements from, even though it was probably only a couple of months ago—the design and font are classic Low, though, so I assume the credit goes to he. My Marauders play at Burnett Park: a power-hitting squad that can flirt with the playoffs most seasons.

[TrapperJohn]

The Independence Trail Blazers

If you thought the sleepy town of Independence, Missouri, was in line for a CBL squad... well, look at you, all prescient and whatnot. The Trail Blazers are another tiny-market team that got grandfathered into the majors, Green Bay Packers-style, in the fictional history of this league I haven't really thought through at all. They play dusty, old-school, 81-win ball at Harry S. Truman Park, sporting faded greys and blues and slapping singles like union soldiers on their lunch break.

[TrapperJohn]

The Kansas City Marshals

George Brett Park is home to the fearsome Marshals, consistently one of the most successful teams in the whole of the Western League. 'Marshals' is a somewhat offbeat team name, but it pays homage to the lawmen of the wild west and rolls off the tongue well when paired with Kansas City (nothing beats a nice little trochaic triplet, am I right?). I adapted the logo and wordmark from someone's (sorry!) creative design, changing the colors to match the vaguely Chiefs-y scheme I had in mind.

[TrapperJohn]

The Lincoln Bighorns

Ameritas Park is home to the Bighorns, a well-rounded club and the first of two Nebraska entrants. I'm a big fan of this shade of cloudy blue, paired a bit unusually with bold maroon for a unique color combination that sets the squad apart. I'm also a fan of the 'Bighorns' name—unused, as far as I'm aware, across most sports, but intimidating and somewhat regionally-appropriate without being too cornball.

[TrapperJohn]

The Lubbock Lightning

Back to Texas for another one of the Lone Star State's fourteen—count 'em, fourteen—squads (second only to California's ludicrous seventeen). The Lubbock Lightning play ball at Buddy Holly Park, sporting a rad, Greek-inspired logo I stole only recently to replace a generic, meh anthropomorphic lightning bolt. Two blues and a yellow can basically never be wrong, so I'm cool with how this one played out.

[Clovidequano Dovatha]

Trapper John, could you please change Kansas City to Dodge City, or KC to DC, as might be appropriate, and also remove the date on the related logo or logos, for the Marshals? The current colors can certainly stay, but I would really like to see a city name change here, if it's not too much trouble for you. Okay? And thanks to Low for the original source material here as well, for sure. Thanks in advance if you can help me out here, too. Keep up the great work, both of you, I hope. CD out.

[TrapperJohn]

The Oklahoma City Tatankas

I'll be brief, here—I just outright stole this sensational identity from Hockey13Playa; there's simply no way I could come up with a better team name or logo/uniform set than he did for OKC. "Tatanka," a Lakota word for bison, is just about the coolest word I've ever come across. Say it with me: *tatanka*! It never gets old. My Tatankas are a playoff-caliber squad that plays at Chickasaw Park.

[TrapperJohn]

The Plano Rifles

Back again to Texas and Capital One Park, where the Rifles were one of the last teams to earn a spot in the CBL. It took me a long time and many iterations to find a good-looking identity for this squad, who were mired for years in shades of brown and mustard. Credit to whomever stylized this pioneering P, from whence emerges the whole of the design. The green is bold; the team is rancid. Here's hoping they one day turn it all around.

[TrapperJohn]

The Topeka Suns

I got a little weird with the Suns, incorporating elements of the logo into the sleeves of the home jersey (I searched to find from whom I repurposed this logo, but can't seem to track it down). It's not the precise color scheme you'd ordinarily think of for a Suns identity, but I think the darker red gives it more of a telluric feel—like Kansas soil? At the very least, it's a unique look for the boys of Payless Park.

[TrapperJohn]

The Tulsa Twisters

Back south to Oklahoma and ONEOK Park, where the Twisters cycle through logos and uniforms faster than just about any team in the league. They currently sport this excellent Low creation—I didn't do much apart from re-sizing the caps and wordmarks—though I may revert at some point to their original purple-and-yellow duds. The Twisters are a speedy, scrappy club that has yet to break through in my league; perhaps in yours they'll make their case.

[TrapperJohn]

The West Texas Lone Stars

Crutcher Scott Park in Abilene, Texas, is the home of the Lone Stars—one of the few squads in the league to sport a geographic name that isn't its home city. With so many Texan teams, it seemed borderline unfair to award the Lone Star title to just one; it felt appropriate, however, for a squad representing a broad portion of the state. I love the way this look turned out once I found the right state outline—in my head, it was always a star-studded right-white-and-blue affair.

[TrapperJohn]

The Wichita Flyers

On to the last team of the Big Thicket Division! The Cessna AirField is where you'll find the Flyers of Wichita, a city known for its historic and ongoing ties to the aviation industry. This is another set cribbed off of Low, who once again bested my previous iteration (I was happy to keep them in blue and yellow, however). The Flyers are an over-performing small market squad, frequently boxed out of the playoffs by Kansas City, Independence, and OKC despite their best efforts.