Mariners unveil 2023 MLB All-Star Game logo
The countdown to the midsummer classic began Friday night with the Mariners unveiling the official logo to the 2023 All-Star Game at a sold-out T-Mobile Park.
In a ceremony before the first pitch of the much-anticipated restart to the 2022 season, the Mariners dropped a black cloth, showing a logo that features the Space Needle, Mount Rainier, the compass star serving as the hyphen on “All-Star” pointing toward the Northwest, the skyline of downtown, the evergreen pines of the area and all in the navy blue and northwest green of the team’s colors.
“We’re really excited,” said Catie Griggs, Mariners president of business operations. “The process was led by Major League Baseball’s design team, but they worked hand in hand with us. Our team sat down with theirs to talk through: What was important to us; what were the elements that mattered; what is authentic to the Pacific Northwest mean from our perspective. They had ideas, but obviously they aren’t from this market.”
After the initial discussions, the MLB design team started putting together mock-ups for the Mariners to evaluate.
“The first one was pretty close,” Griggs said. “It was directionally correct. There were definitely some things — like little colors and the skyline didn’t quite line up — things along those lines.”
Part of the premise of the logo is it being similar to a patch or sticker that a person might put on a backpack, water container or laptop.
“That was something that we actually came to pretty early on and we really liked that direction,” Griggs said. “It was more about tweaking it to ensure that it accurately reflected the area and that the colors made sense and all that good stuff. It became about the detail work at that point.”
Griggs and the Mariners didn’t want to make the logo only about the Seattle area.
“One of the things that’s super subtle, if you look at the shape, the five points represent our five-state region,” Griggs said. “They’re little things. Obviously, this is occurring in Seattle, but this is a celebration of our entire region in the Pacific Northwest. It was important to us that we reflected that, not just Seattle proper.”
Griggs is optimistic that fans will embrace the logo and the thinking behind it.
“You’re always going to have multiple opinions,” she said. “The conversations that we’ve had with the relatively small number of people who’ve seen it have been really positive. We’re excited about it. From a use-case standpoint, it’s the type of logo that can live in a lot of different places in a cool way and for us as we look to generate excitement around the entire city and region.”
The Mariners want to see the logo all over the state.
Fans attending the sold-out game vs. the Astros at T-Mobile Park had the first opportunity to purchase merchandise that had the new All-Star logo on it.
It was put on display and for sale after the ceremony in the team stores in the stadium.
“One of the things we wanted to do was with the fantastic fan base out here (Friday) was if you’re here, it’s first chance to get it,” Griggs said. “I think it’s going to be one of those things that hopefully fans like as much as we do.”