Astrology Signs to Real Teams, Part 1
Here’s a little trivia about my Astrology Baseball social media presence: I only follow the accounts of 12 MLB teams. This isn’t necessarily because I’m a fan of those teams more than any others, but because those are the 12 teams I would pick to represent the 12 signs of the zodiac in a simulation of the Fantasy Astrology Baseball League (such as in a video game). Last Sunday I explained how such a simulation requires looking at the signs’ essences, rather than their elemental associations, and this time I’ll go through the process of selecting which teams to have stand in for the signs.
The first factor to consider is divisional placement. Remember, MLB’s East, Central, and West divisions match up to the astrological Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable essences, but not necessarily in that order. Furthermore, since the divisions don’t have any special relationship to each other, the link between division and essence doesn’t have to be consistent across the two leagues. The only thing that matters is that the two signs that share a polarity and an essence must be in the same league/division.
The next, and most aesthetically important factor is color scheme. As you can see in the above chart, each sign is associated with a color, and it’s important that each sign’s representative team has colors that are at least in the same… ballpark. This is less important in the days of next-gen video games when you can create your own custom uniforms – a practice I painstakingly went through in my copy of MLB The Show 21. But for anything older than the last few years (including the best baseball video game of all time, MVP Baseball 2005), the choice of team really sets the tone as far as getting a visual sense of the zodiac.
I outlined my step-by-step thought process of team selection on my Old Blog, so I won’t reiterate that here. Rather, I’ll go team by team through the astrology-sign-to-real-team connections that I find the most convincing.
Gemini – Pittsburgh Pirates
Gemini is the easiest sign to start with, since the Pirates are the only team with yellow prominently featured in their color scheme. Pittsburgh’s current uniforms are a pretty good fit for how I would design threads for Gemini, but something about the cutoffs that the Pirates wore in the 1960’s (and then again in the early 2000’s) really emphasizes the duality of Gemini.
Taurus – Oakland Athletics
Similar to Gemini and the Pirates, only the Athletics have uniforms with dark green, which is traditionally associated with Taurus. The gold (or yellow) secondary color doesn’t quite fit – if I were creating these uniforms, I would replace it with the lighter shade of green that the A’s had on their uniforms from when they first moved to Oakland in 1968 until they darkened it in 1982.
Aries – Philadelphia Phillies
There are plenty of red teams to choose from: the Cardinals, Reds, and Angels come to mind, plus the Indians, Braves, Nationals, and Red Sox make use of the color as well. But only the Phillies have the cool red pinstripes that I think an Aries uniform designer would appreciate.
Leo – San Francisco Giants
There are two MLB teams with pretty much exactly the Leo orange and black color scheme, the other being the Baltimore Orioles. But if you’ve been following along, all the positive signs have been National League teams, so it’s got to be the Giants. Plus, I think Leo’s in general would take themselves too seriously to be associated with the Orioles’ goofy cartoon bird logo.
Virgo – Boston Red Sox
Even though Boston’s team has Red in their name (and on their Sox), their primary color is dark blue, much like the color associated with Virgo. However, I would replace their red secondary color with another different blue, possibly the same shade used by the Royals (or Dodgers, or Blue Jays).
Cancer – Chicago White Sox
The gray/silver color associated with Cancer is that every team wears gray on their road uniforms. The thing that gives Chicago AL the advantage is the absence of any other colors. For my custom Crabs jersey, I would take a page from the Aries book and give them silver/gray pinstripes. I’d also put them in cutoffs, like the Sox wore as alternates in the early 2000’s, but with silver/gray sleeves.
Looking back at this list, I realize it’s the front half of the league, going by position on the zodiac wheel. Is that a coincidence? It can’t be, right? Either way, next week I’ll look at the teams I’ve linked to the signs in the bottom half of the league, as measured in terms of recognizability.