The first round of the draft is over providing excitement for all except for you Leaf fans (don't worry, you'll have the 2nd overall pick next year). Columbus and Tampa Bay swung for the fences early, allowing Anaheim and Phoenix to natch up Cam Fowler and Brandon Gormley. Anaheim grabbed local kid Emerson Etem 29th. A few surprises in the first round but no surprises in the top 2. I decided to make up jerseys for all the picks for avatar use.

Mannekin Pis in Montreal Canadiens sweater

I was recently in Belgium for a week to study the paintings of the Flemmish masters drink beer and catch up with my brother and while we were in Brussels we saw what is pictured to the right.

Now the story behind this is about as complicated and/or simple as you want to make it out to be. I will try and hold myself to the latter.

On a street corner in central Brussels is a fountain with a small statue called Manneken Pis. (I'm sure you can derive from the name what he is up to, if you can't see video below.) The statue has become something of a symbol for the city and is often dressed up in small costumes to pay homage to someone famous (Elvis, Nelson Mandella....), in folk dress for different country's national holidays (it was Indonesia and Norway last week), and even in sports uniforms when team's win championships. The last of those one would expect to only be relative to the country of Belgium (it often is), however it does extend to other teams in Europe (FC Barcelona the other day) and even to North America and beyond.

Now, this is not done by fans of these teams, this is done by the city of Brussels and these are not flimsy children's shirts bought at the store either. All of the costumes are meticulously recreated to be as accurate as possible - the amount of work that is put into some of them is truly amazing. In total Manneken Pis has had over 700 of these costumes, and about 100 of them are on display in the Brussels City Museum - which is where the picture comes from (even though it clearly states that you can't take pictures there...). The rest you can view via an interactive display that lets you pick the country from which the costume comes from.

That particular Canadiens jersey was worn by Manneken Pis in 1958, it was given to the city by the Canadian prime minister. The small label beneath him reads "Canada - hockey on ice". A larger picture showing the detail can be seen here. He also donned a Toronto Blue Jays uniform during the 1980's (sadly no pictures, but they had a shot at the museum). Here he is wearing a Latvian hockey uniform after they won in 2006. This is RSC Anderlecht. Here's one from Euro 2000. Dressed for Real Sporting de Gijon's 100th anniversary...complete with cider.

For more info about the history of the actual statue see the page here. For examples of more of the costumes he has worn see here. My personal favorite...frogman or Dracula.Wikipedia definition here. Absolutely abysmal official website found here - ugly Flash warning. For a beer, there is a good bar just around the corner from the fountain called the Poechenellekelder.

That is Delirium Tremens apparently.

No doubt anyone who has ever cared about uniforms is privy to the existence of these, if you aren't then shield your eyes. In 1999 Major League Baseball played a series of games wearing what were supposed to be futuristic uniforms. Not all team's participated, 9 declined (smart) and the Tigers vs. Red Sox game was never played (lucky).

The blame for this whacky idea actually lies with the Mariners who came up with the promotion during the previous season. They played one game with the Royals using the idea, and somehow Major League Baseball decided to expand upon it.

Some teams actually put some effort into these, while it seems others (Atlanta, Philadelphia) really didn't want to get into the fun and simply slapped their modern logo on a short sleeved jersey. If you had to give an award here it would probably have to go to Arizona (honorable mention to St. Louis - those are mechanical Cardinals on a metal bat.)

Below are all of the jerseys, with the exception of the Detroit Tigers, who never actually had their jersey released. There are images about showing what are more than likely prototypes that involve tiger striped sleeves...and tails. The Rockies wore two different jerseys, one for home and one away. Anaheim had two different jerseys, but only wore the blue one.

After the images are links which include photos of the jerseys.

Links

Baseball-Reference.com - Turn Ahead the Clock Night
Uni Watch/ESPN Retrospective
Images of most of the jerseys

There used to be some video circulating of the jerseys in use but it looks like Major League Baseball has since had it removed. In addition to the jerseys some teams also had special hats for the games - but that's another subject.

The jerseys can be found in the database here.

I have updated the website to include jerseys from every college player taken in the first 3 rounds of the 2009 NFL Draft.  I am planning on creating a few more (and correcting some that are wrong).  You can see each round of the draft by Searching for "2009 NFL Draft Round x" where "x" would be replaced by the round of the draft you would like to see.  Unfortunately, I can't put them in pick order.  I did update the wikis for the players in the first 2 rounds with both the position they were drafted and a video vignette from NFL.com.

You may or may not be familiar with the David Cross bit about Rickey Henderson, which involves Rickey calling himself and leaving a message for himself on his own answering machine. None the less, you have no doubt heard other athletes refer to themselves in third person, to exercise this point I have created the Rickey Henderson Translator which will take mere mortal speak and translate it to Rickey Henderson. Eliminating the need to use your basic I, me, him, his, terms and replacing them with the all encompassing "Rickey Henderson". Works great on song lyrics, such as this classic from Led Zeppelin:

"When Rickey Henderson read the letter you wrote, it made Rickey Henderson mad mad mad When Rickey Henderson read the news that it brought Rickey Henderson, it made Rickey Henderson sad sad sad. But Rickey Henderson still love you so, Rickey Henderson can't let you go Rickey Henderson love you- ooh baby Rickey Henderson love you. "

Or the opening lines of the Catcher in the Rye:

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where Rickey Henderson was born, and what Rickey Henderson's lousy childhood was like and how Rickey Henderson's parents were occupied and all before they had Rickey Henderson, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but Rickey Henderson don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores Rickey Henderson, and in the second place, Rickey Henderson's parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if Rickey Henderson told anything pretty personal about them."

Simply start typing or copy and paste in a text and it will translate it for you in real time...Rickey Henderson says do it here:

http://www.jerseydatabase.com/rickey.php

A couple of new things for the 2008-09 Playoffs available over on IceJerseys.com that use jerseys and the database.

The first is a signature make that uses all of the current NHL sweaters and players for making special playoff forum signatures. These are built by simply typing in a team or player and clicking on the listed outcome to add them to your signature. Features every player and jersey in the league, and the cup logo, and has backgrounds specific to each of the 16 teams in the playoffs.

You can check it out and build your own at the following page on IceJerseys.com:

IceJerseys.com Playoff Signature Maker

Also for IceJerseys.com you can add a Playoff Tracker to your website or blog by embedding a line of code that will display the above image. It is dynamically created and will show the Playoffs bracket for this year with updated series standings using jerseys from the database. Clicking on any of the team sweaters will take you to that team's page on IceJerseys.com.

You can see an example at the top of the blog.

You can now test your knowledge of jerseys by taking the "Great Jersey Quiz", simply enter the complete team name of the jersey shown - including city and spelling counts!

You receive one point for each correct answer, miss one and the quiz is over. You have 20 seconds per jersey. Included in the quiz are all of the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB jerseys in the database - thrown out randomly - this entails all styles and years.

If you are logged in and have an account your score will be added to the Top Scores list. I think the current record is 37.

You can take the quiz here, and see how well you know your sports jerseys:

The Great Jersey Quiz

I almost missed this one, but besides Brad Marsh and Pavel Bure today was also Mr. Hockey's birthday.

Happy Birthday Gordie, 81 years young!

This was from tonight here in Sweden. Olmark is a 4th round pick for Edmonton. That is the way to make a name for yourself, even if it's against Switzerland.

At some point I signed up for the NHL newsletter and I guess I forgot to check the box for actual news, but instead only checked the one for "deals in the NHL.com shop". Now, I get LOTS of these e-mails, at least one a day. However, today I actually had to stop and look twice at what they sent me. Not because of the startling good deal, but the amazing lack of taste displayed.

Contrary to my initial intake of the image above, this was not advertising a sale for outgoing products (read: old and ugly) but rather free shipping on orders of more than $50. So, if you want to say buy some of the fine items above they will be sent to wherever you were living in 1993. Since, I'm pretty sure that was the last time anything shown above was considered fashionable. (The one exception being the Wild windbreaker...and maybe the coffee mug...)

Seriously, look at that stuff. How can the NHL, in 2009 be so shamelessly incapable of offering some decent fan related merchandise clothes wise. Everyone else can do it. I mean, the true horror here is that the above items were specifically chosen to intrigue fans into visiting the store. Which is tragic, because it means that they consider that barrage of Hammer Time-era apparel to be the pinnacle of what they've got on offer.

Let's analyze this closer:

From left: Coffee mugs...they're coffee mugs. I'm sold.

Ridiculously ugly Dallas Stars hat with some weird white stuff going on, no doubt includes 6 Rbk logos.

Designed to be uncool Red Wings hoodie thing that has too much going on on the front, including inane two-tone sleeves. Why?

Unretro retro attempt at no longer fun green Sharks St. Patricks ringer. Your friends will be ever so impressed...it even says Old Time Hockey. Try one good idea, rather than combining three bad ones.

Canadiens t-shirt complete with dominating non-subliminal face slapping logo creep. In case you forget this morning that it is the Reebok National Hockey League now.

The aforementioned nearly OK Wild windbreaker...no doubt additional views of this product would provide us with something seriously wrong.

Islanders Rbk Hockey. Two things that work together and one big fat giant Rbk logo in off setting colors to remind you again that it is the Rbk Hockey League and that the important thing is that you make people remember that.

Can you put a price on this amazingly hideous Leafs...thingamabob? How bad does it have to be, to actually be the worst of the bunch featured above. When was the last time anyone could ever wear something like that? It looks like something you pick up at a thrift store....originally bought in 1993. Of course there is some sort of number going on on the sleeve there - cause things weren't cluttered enough - that looks like a 7. So, maybe it 1987 they are going for. Honorable mention goes to the tie down collar. Cause normal people need that. Want to know the price? 90 clams. Nine-zero.

Too much going on Devils t-shirt that informs people that you would like them to stop and take 10 minutes to read what your shirt says. It says you have terrible taste, and the NHL needs to look at updating their profile...oh and that you are a Devils fan.

Please post your glorious finds over on NHL.com in the comments below. Points are given if the item includes more than 4 Rbk logos.