In a season where youth is being celebrated for the Kansas City Royals, it's the longtime logo that's garnered the attention of SB Nation's baseball writer Grant Brisbee. As he sought to rank the best of the worst logos in a team's history, it's the Royals who come out on top while a couple of Pennsylvania teams take up the bottom two slots.
When writing of the Royals, Brisbee writes, "The general rule of thumb is that the more classic the logo, the higher it will rank. Other, more historic franchises have had the same logo for longer, but the Royals vault to the top because they stuck with the same basic theme for their logo, and they held steady from their infancy through the weirdness of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. It still came out cool and respected on the other side. The Martin Scorsese of logos."
While the Royals can't hold a candle to the New York Yankees in terms of longevity of their logo (since the Yanks have used the same traditional icon since 1947), they are among the teams who have used the fewest primary logos in the major leagues. The Mariners have already employed four primary logos and they've only been around since 1977. The Royals, besides changing the KC on the inside of the logo, have utilized the same basic format since their inception in 1969.
Special team logos were used at the 25th anniversary of the franchise in 1993 and again in 2009 for the team's 40th anniversary celebration. In addition, three memoriam logos have been used for Dick Howser, Ewing Kauffman and Joe R. Burke.