Quote:
Originally Posted by thetahat
Interesting question. As you likely know there was a time in the 1940s when the Phillies considered a name change, but did it in a weird way. Tried to gradually turn it over to Blue Jays. So for pennants, scorecards, even uniforms, the jay graphic began to appear. It never fully took so the plug was pulled in 1949. This is when “Fightin Phillies” took root. It seems the phrase had already been used as far back as ‘46 but my guess is that it took off when the blue jay was buried. The team used the script and bat part of the design as if it was an official logo, here are some scorecards that display it, one from 1949 and the other from 1951. (I don’t collect scorecards, these were images I found.)
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If we use scorecards as a guide, they were using a Blue Jay in at least 1945 and 1947 (see scans), and they became the "Fightin' Phillies" for 1948.