| prisonerno6 |
08-22-2016 08:27 AM |
From the Astros History website:
Since early in the century, major league baseball teams had stuck to a formula of wearing predominantly white uniforms at home and predominantly grey uniforms on the road. Charlie Finley of the Oakland A's introduced (or reintroduced since there were records of past teams who wore non-traditional colors, including the 1903 New York Giants caught on movie film decked in black jerseys with black pants) green jerseys and yellow jerseys into their wardrobes in the early 1970s. While controversial, the colored jerseys gained general acceptance.
Soon afterwards, the Atlanta Braves introduced blue jerseys with tiled art flowers on the sleeves, prompting Astros third baseman Doug Rader to heckle them, "What'll it be tonight, boys? Fast pitch or slow pitch?"
Rader didn't know he'd soon be on the receiving end. Before the 1975 season, the advertising firm of McCann and Erickson was hired to re-brand the Astros. Their creation combined a futuristic use of eye-catching color and a touch of early-century lettering that was outrageous to baseball traditionalists. The early prototype was modeled below by pitcher Tom Griffin:
The white cap was ultimately rejected for the current orange cap with the blue star and the white 'H'. The jersey star was switched to navy. The uniform number was moved up to the right hip from closer to the knee and other minor modifications were made. The "rainbow" uniforms made their debut in April 1975 and they took some getting used to, even for those wearing them.
"We had all heard that we were going to get new uniforms for the start of the season," Metzger said, "and the word had gotten around that they were kind of flashy. But the first day we saw them, I think there were three or four of us looked at each other and wondered if they were really serious."
"We thought it was just one of the Judge's promotions, like the cowboy suits he had us wear," said pitching coach Cot Deal, alluding to the 1962 effort to dress all the Colt .45s in cowboy duds for road trips - an idea that was ridiculed by the players and eventually dropped.
"(The rainbows) were a little bit radical but I got used to them," added play-by-play broadcaster Gene Elston.
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