O Dodger are getting another City Connect outfit on June 17th, and we have an idea.
The team hadn’t even reported to spring training when Mookie Betts said all games against the Dodgers this season would be “the other team’s World Series.” The pitcher they faced on Opening Day, Miles Mikolas of the St. Louis Cardinals, mocked the Dodgers for throwing “baseball checkbook.” And, after Bobby Miller exclude the cardinals more than six innings into the first start of his first full season in the major leagues, a St. Louis writer dryly said that “totally expected” the Dodgers would sign Miller to a 10-year contract the next day.
The Dodgers’ billion-dollar spending spree last winter made them villains outside of Southern California. They could embrace that notoriety, with an all-black City Connect “Villains” outfit.
This isn’t in the works, but you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise after watching a spring training broadcast in which the camera briefly focused on a fan wearing a cap that read “VILLAINS,” with the middle “L.A. ” in interlocking letters that look like those on a Dodgers cap.
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The camera shot was captured on social media and determined fans scrambled to find out where they could get one of these hats.
The answer: A barbershop in South Gate called Villains, with this motto: “We make the bad guys look good.”
“The hat came about because I’m a Dodger fan,” said store owner Anthony Madrid, who said he opened the barbershop in 2013. “You live anywhere in Los Angeles, anywhere in California, you’re going to be a Dodger fan. Dodger. ”
Somewhere in California?
“Even in San Francisco,” he said. “You’d be surprised.”
The lid is not new. Madrid said he sold “a dozen here, a dozen there” over the years, and then a few hundred or more after that TV shoot this spring.
He said the interlocking LA letters on his cap aren’t exactly the same as the ones on the Dodgers cap, but they’re so similar that I asked him if he’d ever heard of the Dodgers.
He hadn’t, he said. He mentioned Villa Tacos in Highland Park, where the logo resembles the Dodgers baseball logo, with “Villa’s Tacos” in place of “Dodgers” and a bat in place of a baseball.
The other day I met Victor Villa, the chef and owner, at the steakhouse. He led his team in singing before the store opened — “Villa’s Tacos, on three!” – and he personally welcomed customers who were already waiting in line.
Villa said he also hasn’t heard from the Dodgers over the years. He said he had just opened a second store, in historic Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles.
“We want to go to Dodger Stadium,” Villa said.
Please do it. Villa’s is a two-time winner of the annual LA Taco “Taco Madness” Competitionand Dodger Stadium desperately needs to take two pages out of Petco Park Handbook: Better food and more partnerships with local restaurants so that Dodger Stadium reflects the best of Los Angeles on and off the field. Shake Shack is okay, but It’s also New York.
On behalf of its teams, Major League Baseball hires lawyers who jealously protect trademarks. The Dodgers and the league could argue that Madrid and Villa are using team logos without permission to do so.
You can put the Dodgers logo on anything from Elmo Posters It is Mickey Mouse Pins for wrestling belts It is skull pins, as long as you negotiate a deal. However, a company that does not enforce its brands risks losing them.
The Dodgers declined to comment.
I even asked Madrid if he would prefer if I didn’t write this column, in case it caused any problems.
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“I wouldn’t mind working with the Dodgers,” Madrid said. “If they want, I’m more than open to working with them. I hope the Dodgers can look at this and say, ‘Hey, that’s a good idea. Let’s talk to this guy. ”
He’d like to make one thing perfectly clear: He doesn’t consider the Dodgers villains.
“Everyone has a chance to spend this money,” Madrid said. “They could pay the luxury tax if they wanted to. The Dodgers talk the talk and they back it up. They see a ball coming, they hit it – and honestly, the last few years, they’ve been hitting home runs.”
The Dodgers could strike another, if they could find a way to work with these two small businesses, active in their communities and eager to celebrate their hometown team, not alienate it. The Dodgers can protect their interests while embracing the owners of a local barbershop and a taco shop, neither of whom are trying to be villains.
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This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.
