Happy 2009!
So, it’s official, the Saitama Seibu Lions changing the team logo and colour are both official, new uniforms will be announced at a later date. The explanation for the new navy colour is that it’s a mixture of the Nishitetsu Lions black and the Seibu Lions sky blue. The new “Lions” font comes from the Nishitetsu throwback uniforms the team used in 2008, and that’s nifty, but the franchise could have paid respect to their Nishitetsu days without messing with the classic Tezuka Osamu Leo logo (were the royalty payments getting too high?) and the Lions sky blue that is associated with the franchise’s golden era in the 80’s (the Leo logo will remain on the club flag). And the navy just means that there’s yet another NPB team with navy as its team colour, after Chunichi, Yokohama, Orix, and Tokyo Yakult.
The new logo with the paw grabbing a baseball looks minor league as well. The team had obviously planned all this big change for the franchise’s 60th season in 2009, but it ended up being timed horribly because the Lions had just won it all, the Pacific League, Japan Series, and Asia Series and created goodwill with a reboosted and reconnected fanbase. Oh, and “legend blue” is a pretty lame name for the colour as well.
