The Charleston RiverDogs are a farm team for the New York Yankees based out of South Carolina. Like plenty of minor league baseball teams, they throw a lot of themed promotional event nights to help fill the stands, including a Human Cannonball to celebrate the season's opening weekend, and a Presidential Election Bobblehead night in August.

They had also scheduled an OJ Trial Night for May 26, which they described as:

The trial of the century gets a juicy new spin. We will finally receive the verdict that everyone has been waiting for … pulp or no pulp?

Fans will act as our jury, voting with custom paddles to reach verdicts on various topics throughout the night. The eyes of the nation will be upon us. Fans will receive an “OJ Trial” shirt upon entering the stadium. If the shirt don’t fit, you must … see if we have a different size.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, an event that involves paddling and is themed around a violent criminal who "allegedly" murdered his ex-wife was received in poor taste by many a person. And alas, OJ Trial Night at the RiverDogs has since been cancelled.

I know this was the responsibility of the RiverDogs management, and likely not condoned or approved by their major league affiliate franchise. But it does remind me of an old New England adage: "Fuck the Yankees."

Charleston RiverDogs scrap OJ Trial Night promotion amid backlash [Derrek Asberry / Charleston Post and Courier]

Image: U.S. Air Force photo of the Riverdogs by Airman 1st Class Michael Cossaboom / Public Domain Read the rest

Not sure what Yankee Stadium food vendors wear now but, apparently, sometime in the late sixties or early seventies they donned this far out, font-heavy number. Baseball photo historian Baseball by Bsmile shared this recently on Twitter and points out that the shirt was designed with ketchup/catsup and mustard colors.

A 2008 Uni-Watch (a site that follows sports teams aesthetics) article shares:

...Reader Paul Wiederecht has provided a wealth of interesting background info...

I saw that vendor’s shirt used from 1968-72 at games I attended. Sorry, no pics, but I think I may be able to shed some light on the shirt’s design history.

Much of the Yankees’ look during the team’s CBS ownership era can be attributed to Lou Dorfsman, who was CBS’s creative director for more than 25 years. Except for the eye logo, which was the inspiration of his predecessor, William Golden, Dorfsman was responsible for CBS’s corporate and on-air look. His contribution to graphic/interior and set/broadcast/advertising design is legendary, he set the high standard that artists like me have trying to measure up to our whole careers.

Anyway, back to the shirt: If you look here, you’ll see an example of the three-dimensional wall treatment in the CBS employee cafeteria, which was executed by Herb Lubalin (a typographer of note in his own right). You will see many design similarities [between the wall treatment and the vendor’s uniform], and similar design treatments can been seen in many Yankees publications from that era. I would not be surprised if Dorfsman used Lubalin’s design studio for many Yankees projects, possibly even this shirt.