We knew about it three months ago but it appears to now be officially official, the St. Louis Cardinals have changed their “STL” logo.

Following a “soft launch” throughout the 2019 season, the Cardinals have tweaked the STL logo which is seen on the front of their primary red game caps as well as their road alternate blue caps. The new caps are already for sale at MLB Shop.

Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post Dispatch spoke with Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III about the change, during which DeWitt revealed the tweak started during plans for “a decorative oversized logo” when the team first noticed the inconsistencies in the design.

From Goold’s article:

“It looked sharp in the drawings,” said Bill DeWitt III, the club’s president. “It comes to this super sharp point, and we can’t have that if people are going to moving around it, and not if it’s the same at the bottom (by feet). Then I looked. Why isn’t it at the bottom of the ‘S’?”

The Cardinals synched up the top and bottom serifs, rounded the pointed edges, straightened the arm of the “T” — which previously had ended at an angle on both ends, reduced the thickness of the navy blue outline (to increase the negative space), all of which gives the logo a better overall balance.

Check it out:

It’s the first major change to the Cardinals “STL” cap logo since they introduced the previous version in 1964. Prior to that, the 1950s STL logo actually incorporated some of the changes the team is reintroducing for 2020, including the serifs at both the top and bottom of the “S”.