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For baseball in Lexington, Kentucky, the extra issues change, the extra they keep the identical. Below new possession, the franchise introduced at the moment that they’re rebranding because the Lexington Legends, reprising a reputation that the workforce had deserted only a 12 months in the past.
The franchise has been via some adjustments lately. After transferring to Lexington in 2001, the Lexington Legends performed within the then-Class A South Atlantic League via the 2019 season. The Legends misplaced their affiliated standing within the 2020 reorganization of affiliated Minor League Baseball. After lacking the 2020 season on account of COVID, the Legends joined the Atlantic League of Skilled Baseball, an MLB accomplice league. The workforce modified its identify to the Lexington Counter Clocks after the 2022 season, taking part in with that moniker in 2023.
Simply moments in the past, the franchise’s new possession group, Temerity Baseball, introduced that the franchise will likely be identified as soon as once more because the Lexington Legends. With that announcement the workforce unveiled a brand new model that has sturdy visible connections to earlier iterations of Legends baseball, highlighted by a legendary new character, Mighty Lex. Earlier variations of Legends’ identities featured a beefy, burly character. This new man has a barely completely different air about him.
“We beloved sort of the swagger of the outdated identification,” mentioned Alicia Amling, director of Temerity Baseball. “However we actually wished one thing a bit of extra accessible, rather less masculine and gendered on this large Paul Bunyan manner. And we wished one thing that a bit of child would run as much as, that I might placed on my hat and be like, who’s that cute little man?”
Per Dan Simon of Studio Simon, the Louisville-based agency that created the brand new model, the character is supposed to evoke a legendary baseball determine, with one essential distinction.
“I wished to lean closely into Mighty Casey,” Simon mentioned, referencing the eponymous slugger featured in Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s 1888 poem Casey on the Bat. “The narrative right here is, that is Mighty Lex, and Mighty Lex didn’t strike out. Mighty Lex delivered, and the legend was born.”
The old-timey character evokes a bygone period, sporting a pillbox cap, collared jersey, and—notably—a handlebar mustache. That mustache was an essential a part of the model previous to 2023, and there was little question these new Legends had been bringing it again.
“It was each acceptable for the time interval or stereotypical of the time interval and it was a giant a part of the model beforehand, so we needed to have that,” Simon mentioned.
And whereas Mighty Lex’s spherical determine won’t encourage the identical worry his burly predecessors did, Amling suggests he’s to not be taken calmly.
“Along with his wink and his mustache, I feel he’s only a debonair man with swagger who is likely to be packing a lip of chewing tobacco or he might need bourbon in his water bottle,” she mentioned. “He actually has some swagger.”
The choice to reprise the Legends nickname got here from the neighborhood itself. After assembly with stakeholders and focus teams, the concepts of remaining the Counter Clocks or discovering a brand new identify had been by no means strongly thought-about—partly as a result of the Legends nickname was standard and partly for extra pragmatic causes.
“The Legends, they’re legendary. It was a beloved model in minor league baseball,” Amling mentioned. “And, complete transparency, we closed on the workforce in January and you may’t give you a great new identify and a model in three months. So after we had this good gem of a reputation sitting there, it was a no brainer.”
Whereas the up to date model has new parts—most notably Mighty Lex and a customized script—there have been elements of the earlier Legends model, which was created by Brandiose in 2013, that followers of the workforce will acknowledge. The inexperienced and blue shade palette ties the brand new model to the previous, and sure marks, like an L that comes with the state of Kentucky into its letterform, have been carried ahead and up to date.
“Though we’ve received a brand new character and we’ve received new lettering, there’s lots we wished to convey again, that we deliberately introduced again as homages to the historical past of this ball membership in Lexington,” Simon mentioned. “It’s the subsequent within the line of what was a preferred model that represented this membership very effectively.”
The brand new suite of logos incorporates a mark that doubles down on the workforce’s identify, with textual content that reads “It Will Be Legendary.”
The brand new-look Legends will take to the sphere when the Atlantic League’s season begins April 25.
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