Maryland crab, beer and Orioles flash

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A bold flash design centred on a blue crab with raised claws, a beer bottle with a cartoon face and foam top, and black-eyed Susan flowers. Surrounding it are an Old Bay seasoning tin, a baseball with an O's logo, crossed American and Maryland flags, and the word MARYLAND in script above. Thick black outlines and flat fills in yellow, red, blue and green give it a classic traditional look.

Traditional Crab Sunflower American flag Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third pitcher went flat before anyone at the long table noticed, which Dessie Pratt took as a sign. He wiped his hands on his apron, shook a fresh tin of Old Bay over the newspaper and watched red dust settle on the pile of steamed blues. Outside, the flags over the bar were snapping in the wind off the harbour, and somebody's uncle was already arguing about the bullpen.

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The new girl on the shift, Rhiannon, had asked him twice why every crab on the menu board held its claws up like a boxer. Dessie had no good answer, only his father's. Lenny Pratt had never once let a crab go down without a fight, and he swore the Orioles were the same, always one stubborn inning from something. Dessie pulled a bottle of amber lager from the cold box, its label gone soggy, and set it in front of her with the foam already climbing over the lip.

She poured it slowly, the way his father used to, and foam ran over her knuckles. 'That's cheating,' she said. 'Half of it's on the table.' 'That's the crowd,' Dessie said, and nodded at the baseball on the shelf above the register, the orange O stitched red at the seams, the one Lenny had signed in 1983 and never let anyone touch.

Rhiannon picked up a claw and cracked it clean, the meat coming away white. 'Still not finished,' she said, and held it up the way the crabs on the board did. Dessie laughed for the first time all week and reached for the Old Bay.