1975 St. Louis Cardinals Batting Helmet Logo

Thanks to some recent ebay auctions, I've come across a number of pictures which contain shots of a very interesting uniform curiosity - the 1975 St. Louis Cardinals batting helmet swinging bird decal that was worn on the sides of the helmet.  This picture from the Cardinals Hall of Fame shows an example of the helmet with the decal:


 Here is a closer look at the decal:
 
Paul Lukas from UniWatch originally posted this shot of Lou Brock wearing the helmet decal at the 1975 All Star Game


We now have a few more shots of the helmet to add to the collection.  Here is another shot of Lou Brock

This newswire photo is dated April 9, 1975, so it appears that the Cardinals introduced the batting helmet decal at the beginning of the season:

 

This newswire photo is dated April 23, 1975 and gives a better look at the helmet:

 

 This photo of Lou Brock stealing 2nd shows that the logo was worn on both sides of the helmet:

And finally, we can confirm that Lou Brock was not the only Cardinal wearing the decals, as we have pictures of Bake McBride

and Ken Reitz with the decals on their helmets as well:

Its not clear how long the Cardinals used these decals in 1975 as photos from later in the 1975 season do not show the decals.  For example, in this photo from August, 1975, Mike Tyson's batting helmet does not have the decals:

 The only other place I've seen this logo is as a 1976 Fleer Iron On:



The logo is also shown on the back of the wrapper:



If anyone has seen any other appearances of this logo (perhaps in a Cardinals program or yearbook from 1975 or 1976), I'd be interested in hearing about it, since it appears this logo made just a very brief appearance before the Cardinals decided to retire it.

Randy's Excellent Cardinal Contributions!

I recently received a number of scans from The Fleer Sticker Project's newest contributor - Randy Trierweiler. Randy is a dedicated Cardinals collector has been kind enough to share some great images to compliment some of the sets that we've previously covered.

The first item I'd like to show is the gorgeous 1955 Post Cereal Cardinals patch:

In addition to the patch, Randy has the mailing envelope that the patches came in:


I really like the fact that the back of the envelope shows all the team logos / patches - this is a great collectible itself:


Randy also has some examples of the 1968 Fleer Baseball Emblem "trio" stickers which were stickers that contained 3 patches with team names that were included along with the larger patches that contained team logos. When I originally did my post on the 1968 Baseball Emblem set, I did not have any examples of these trio stickers, but now I do thanks to Randy:


And finally, for a really unusual Fleer item, Randy has a scan of the rarely seen Cardinals logo that was briefly used in the mid-1970s that was issued as a Fleer iron-on in 1976:

The back of the pack shows the logo



but now we've got a scan of the actual iron on itself (which is an item I never thought I'd see)!

I'd like to say thanks to Randy for taking the time to scan and send these pictures as they are great additions to the blog. I will be going back to the appropriate posts and updating them with these images as well.