Major League Baseball logo

• 1. Introduction

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  The Major League Baseball logo has appeared on every on-field uniform in the sport since the 1969 season, yet for decades almost no one knew who made it. Jerry Dior, a designer working for the marketing firm Sandgren and Murtha, drew it in a single afternoon in 1968. The silhouette of a batter, split into red and blue color blocks, became so ubiquitous that it inspired a wave of imitators across American professional sports. But its origins were clouded by a rival claim that persisted for years. Who actually designed it? And why did its creator deliberately make the batter impossible to identify?

• 2. One Afternoon, One Batter

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  Jerry Dior completed the logo in a single afternoon, which makes its endurance even more striking. The Batter logo was commissioned by the Major League Baseball Centennial Committee, and Commissioner Bowie Kuhn introduced it to mark a major milestone: the 1869-1969 Professional Baseball Centennial Celebration, held on the 21st of July, 1969, in Washington, DC.

  Dior drew the batter silhouette with reference to photographs of several players rather than any single athlete. That choice was deliberate. The figure was designed to be ambiguous: the batter could read as right- or left-handed and as belonging to any ethnic background. The committee wanted a symbol that belonged to everyone who watched or played the game, not to any one face.

  The original colors ran royal blue, white, and red from left to right. That palette held for fifty years before a single adjustment: in 2019, dark blue replaced royal blue while the white and red stayed in place. The logo also carries additional text when it appears on the annual All-Star Game, adding the host city and year alongside the familiar silhouette.

• 3. The Disputed Authorship

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  For many years, two designers each claimed they had created the Batter logo. Jerry Dior had a documented trail through his work at Sandgren and Murtha. James Sherman, a comic book illustrator, said he had designed something strikingly similar.

  In November 2008, ESPN writer Paul Lukas investigated the competing claims and settled the question. When Sherman was informed that MLB had been using a logo matching his description since 1968, his response removed any lingering doubt. "That's not my logo, and I was totally unaware that it existed," Sherman said. He explained that the logo he created was very similar, but that he had designed his version in the early 1980s, more than a decade after Dior's work appeared on uniforms. "All I can say is that I was so sports-unaware that I didn't know about the earlier logo," Sherman said. "I feel like a total idiot now that I didn't know about it. I'm flabbergasted."

  With Sherman's own words clearing the record, Dior's authorship is no longer in dispute.

• 4. A Template for American Sports

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  Alan Siegel, who oversaw Dior's logo at MLB, deliberately modeled his next major commission on it. In 1969, NBA Commissioner J. Walter Kennedy asked for a logo that would create a family relationship between the sports seen as distinctly American, and Siegel used the MLB Batter as his template. The result placed Jerry West in silhouette against red and blue blocks, following the structure Dior had established.

  The influence spread well beyond basketball. The basic formula, an athlete or sport-specific equipment rendered in silhouette and flanked by contrasting color blocks, was later adopted by Minor League Baseball, the Women's National Basketball Association, the Arena Football League, U.S. Figure Skating, Hockey Canada, the American Hockey League, the PGA Tour, the National Lacrosse League, the Indy Racing League, and Major League Gaming. The logo even found its way into satire through Major League Eating.

  Individual MLB teams sometimes shift the coloring to match their own uniform palettes, and small variations in the shades of blue and red have appeared over the years. Beyond those adjustments, the design Dior completed in a single afternoon in 1968 has not changed since the day it was adopted.