Designer of Major League Baseball logo dies at 82

Jerry Dior, the designer who created the logo for Major League Baseball, died earlier this month at the age of 82.

Dior's death was not made public until his wife, Lita, confirmed the news to the New York Times this week. He passed away May 10 after a battle with cancer, she said.

Dior recounted how the famous red-white-and-blue logo came to be during an interview in 2008. From the Times:

Per his instructions, he drew a generic baseball player. (In interviews years later, Mr. Dior stressed that the figure was not modeled on Harmon Killebrew as many people, including Killebrew himself, believed.) He executed the design in Magic Marker, originally making it blue and green before switching to a patriotic palette.

"It just came to me," Mr. Dior told The Wall Street Journal. "I did the rough sketch and cleaned it up a bit, and that was that. I never thought anything about it until I turned on the television and saw it on the New York Mets' uniforms," where it was emblazoned for the 1969 World Series.

Dior, a graphic designer from Brooklyn, N.Y., was not credited with the iconic image until more than 40 years after its 1968 creation. He was finally honored by MLB in 2009 during pregame ceremonies at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field.

"Jerry Dior created a symbol that has stood the test of time," then-commissioner Bud Selig said in 2009, according to the Times. "Forty years after its introduction, the 'silhouetted batter' is instantly recognized worldwide as the official emblem of Major League Baseball."