Fresno Grizzlies release 2017 taco uniforms, acquire the taco emoji

New year, different taco uniform.

The Fresno Grizzlies, who every Taco Tuesday play as the Tacos, revealed their 2017 alternate uniforms Tuesday. The hats don’t appear at all different from the Grizzlies 2016 versions, but the jerseys have been altered a bit.

Wait no longer. Here are your 2017 Fresno Tacos @FresnoGrizzlies https://t.co/AOFUyehrV3 pic.twitter.com/CbDdLGfrHC

— Minor League Promos (@MiLBPromos) January 17, 2017

It’s a clean, fresh look for the Tacos, who are the Triple-A affiliate of the Houston Astros. But that wasn’t even the most daring announcement of Tuesday.

Fresno also revealed it has acquired the sponsored rights to the taco emoji. That’s a real thing.

🌮🌮🌮 It was important to us to adopt the taco emoji as a gift to Fresno/the Valley. It's ours forever!! 🌮🌮🌮 https://t.co/GxnvSlNcyY @unicode

— Fresno Grizzlies (@FresnoGrizzlies) January 17, 2017

To acquire the emoji, the Tacos donated $5,000 to The Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit that helps “modern software and computing systems support the widest range of human languages.”

“This is another flag in the ground to pay homage to taco culture in the Central Valley and cement Fresno as the Taco Capital of this country,” Grizzlies GM Derek Franks said in a news release. “We will be very good keepers of our newly adopted emoji. In fact, we encourage as many people as possible to use it.

“It’s available to borrow from us, for free, at all times, forever. We wouldn’t have been able to live with ourselves if Taco Bell had ended up adopting it. Now it’s home where it belongs in Fresno.”