Milwaukee Brewers ball-in-glove logo

Background

In 1977, the Milwaukee Brewers sponsored a contest to replace the Barrelman logo, receiving 1,932 entries. The winning design came from Tom Meindel, a 30-year-old college art student. His submission used brown and yellow, but the final version adopted the blue the team already used, with a deeper gold as the second color. Meindel received $2,000 but no royalties. The fingers of the glove form an 'M' for Milwaukee, and the thumb and pocket form a lowercase 'b' for Brewers. Meindel designed the logo to be instantly recognizable at any size, from a pin to a billboard.

The logo was used from 1978 to 1993. After that, the team used different logos until 2019, though the ball-in-glove logo appeared occasionally starting in 2006. In 2019 it was used for 53 games. Meindel struggled with depression later in life and died by suicide on May 5, 2018, before the logo's full comeback. In 2017 the Brewers began exploring a redesign, hiring RARE Design of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The company selected the ball-in-glove logo, noting how devoted fans still were to that symbol. The logo was released in 2020 as part of the team's 50th-anniversary celebration, with two slight alterations: the 'M' and 'B' are now connected by webbing, and the ball pattern better resembles a baseball.