For baseball in Lexington, Kentucky, the extra issues change, the extra they keep the identical. Underneath new possession, the franchise introduced immediately that they’re rebranding because the Lexington Legends, reprising a reputation that the crew had deserted only a 12 months in the past.

The franchise has been by means of some adjustments in recent times. After shifting to Lexington in 2001, the Lexington Legends performed within the then-Class A South Atlantic League by means of the 2019 season. The Legends misplaced their affiliated standing within the 2020 reorganization of affiliated Minor League Baseball. After lacking the 2020 season as a consequence of COVID, the Legends joined the Atlantic League of Skilled Baseball, an MLB companion league. The crew modified its identify to the Lexington Counter Clocks after the 2022 season, enjoying with that moniker in 2023.

Simply moments in the past, the franchise’s new possession group, Temerity Baseball, introduced that the franchise will probably be identified as soon as once more because the Lexington Legends. With that announcement the crew unveiled a brand new model that has sturdy visible connections to earlier iterations of Legends baseball, highlighted by a legendary new character, Mighty Lex. Earlier variations of Legends’ identities featured a beefy, burly character. This new man has a barely totally different air about him.

“We loved kind of the swagger of the old identity,” mentioned Alicia Amling, director of Temerity Baseball. “But we really wanted something a little more accessible, a little less masculine and gendered in this big Paul Bunyan way. And we wanted something that a little kid would run up to, that I would put on my hat and be like, who is that cute little guy?”

Per Dan Simon of Studio Simon, the Louisville-based agency that created the brand new model, the character is supposed to evoke a legendary baseball determine, with one vital distinction.

“I wanted to lean heavily into Mighty Casey,” Simon mentioned, referencing the eponymous slugger featured in Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s 1888 poem Casey on the Bat. “The narrative here is, this is Mighty Lex, and Mighty Lex did not strike out. Mighty Lex delivered, and the legend was born.”

The old-timey character evokes a bygone period, sporting a pillbox cap, collared jersey, and—notably—a handlebar mustache. That mustache was an vital a part of the model previous to 2023, and there was little question these new Legends have been bringing it again.

“It was both appropriate for the time period or stereotypical of the time period and it was a big part of the brand previously, so we had to have that,” Simon mentioned.

And whereas Mighty Lex’s spherical determine won’t encourage the identical concern his burly predecessors did, Amling suggests he’s to not be taken frivolously.

“With his wink and his mustache, I think he’s just a debonair guy with swagger who might be packing a lip of chewing tobacco or he might have bourbon in his water bottle,” she mentioned. “He certainly has some swagger.”

The choice to reprise the Legends nickname got here from the neighborhood itself. After assembly with stakeholders and focus teams, the concepts of remaining the Counter Clocks or discovering a brand new identify have been by no means strongly thought of—partially as a result of the Legends nickname was in style and partially for extra pragmatic causes.

“The Legends, they’re legendary. It was a beloved brand in minor league baseball,” Amling mentioned. “And, total transparency, we closed on the team in January and you can’t come up with a good new name and a brand in three months. So when we had this perfect gem of a name sitting there, it was a no-brainer.”

Whereas the up to date model has new parts—most notably Mighty Lex and a customized script—there have been elements of the earlier Legends model, which was created by Brandiose in 2013, that followers of the crew will acknowledge. The inexperienced and blue coloration palette ties the brand new model to the previous, and sure marks, like an L that comes with the state of Kentucky into its letterform, have been carried ahead and up to date.

“Even though we’ve got a new character and we’ve got new lettering, there’s a lot we wanted to bring back, that we intentionally brought back as homages to the history of this ball club in Lexington,” Simon mentioned. “It’s the next in the line of what was a popular brand that represented this club very well.”

The brand new suite of logos incorporates a assortment of marks that double down on the crew’s identify, with textual content that reads “Be a Legend,” “It Will Be Legendary,” and “Legends Never Die.”