70s & 80s Milwaukee Brewers

[wdm1219inpenna]

I know they were the Seattle Pilots in 1969 and that their team colors were blue & gold, but I could swear big time that the 70s & 80s Brewers used purple and not blue.

 

 

 

Henry Aaron's cap looks purple to me.  THe "M" on George Scott's helmet looks purple too.  At the very least a blend of blue/purple is how I see it, but perhaps I am totally wrong.  Maybe the gold color makes the blue look more purple to me.  But even the ball in glove logo on those World Series tickets look to be more purple than blue to my eye anyway.

[kimball]

Um, serious question, are you color blind? Purple/blue confusion is one of many kinds.

https://enchroma.com/pages/types-of-color-blindness 

 

 

[MilSox]

This is the first I've heard of anyone thinking the Brewers wore purple.  The Twins are usually the team that everyone has a Mandela Effect of remembering being in purple.

[chcarlson23]

5 hours ago, NicDB said:

This is the first I've heard of anyone thinking the Brewers wore purple.  The Twins are usually the team that everyone has a Mandela Effect of remembering being in purple.

This is the first I’ve heard of people thinking the Twins are purple...

[Old School Fool]

6 hours ago, chcarlson23 said:

This is the first I’ve heard of people thinking the Twins are purple...

 

There was a conversation about it maybe a year or two ago on here. It was weird cause I could kinda relate but at the same time I know it was totally wrong that the Twins wore purple. I don't know how, when, or why it even happened.

 

As far as the Brewers, you might have a colorblind problem. Arguably old pictures can sometimes have warped color and whatnot, especially stuff from the 70's but I'm not seeing it in your examples.

[Sec19Row53]

Short answer, no. It was always the True Blue Brew Crew

[BBTV]

On 5/9/2021 at 11:16 AM, wdm1219inpenna said:

THe "M" on George Scott's helmet looks purple too.

 

That's the only one where if someone told me it was purple from day one, I could see it (just like since I've always known it as blue, that's what I see.)  His sleeves look kinda like the Lakers "forum blue" too.  In fact, if his jersey was white and not light blue, and someone didn't already know it was a Brewers uniform, you could probably convince someone that it was purple and gold (just like the Lakers.)  But there's all kinds of reasons for this - mostly old photography and the sun.  It's blue.

 

 

[Gothamite]

Color fading can give everything a strange tint.  You see this a lot with motion picture film too - the cyan and yellow dyes fade, leaving behind a distinctly magenta-tinted image.

 

Look at Hank here.  These two pictures were taken within the same couple months, in similar lighting conditions, but because of film stock or storage or some other factor they have aged in very different ways.  One is now overexposed (presumably as two of the dye color have lightened), and its colors have red-shifted.

 

 

The right is much closer to reality.

[gosioux76]

On 5/9/2021 at 10:16 AM, wdm1219inpenna said:

I know they were the Seattle Pilots in 1969 and that their team colors were blue & gold, but I could swear big time that the 70s & 80s Brewers used purple and not blue.

 

 

 

 

 

Out of curiosity, does George Scott's uniform read as powder blue to you? I ask because I can't imagine a team that uses purple and yellow as its primary colors creating uniforms that are powder blue, even if that was a defining trend of the era. I think every team that adopted powder blue double-knits at the time also had royal or navy in their color scheme. (Twins, Royals, Phillies, Cardinals, Rangers, etc.)

 

Regardless, this is an interesting topic. 

[SFGiants58]

On 5/12/2021 at 9:16 AM, Gothamite said:

Color fading can give everything a strange tint.  You see this a lot with motion picture film too - the cyan and yellow dyes fade, leaving behind a distinctly magenta-tinted image.

 

Look at Hank here.  These two pictures were taken within the same couple months, in similar lighting conditions, but because of film stock or storage or some other factor they have aged in very different ways.  One is now overexposed (presumably as two of the dye color have lightened), and its colors have red-shifted.

 

 

The right is much closer to reality.

 

Yup! As a guy who has been in the film scanning scene for a while (research-wise), Eastmancolor film prints (and presumably some brands of their color still film negatives) have a notorious problem with color fading. This is most evident during the '70s-early '80s, in between the relative decline of IB Technicolor prints and the arrival of low-fade positive stock in 1982. A best-case scenario Eastmancolor print would have minimal fade. There'd still be notable color information, but it'd go very pink. A single color-correction pass in a modern video editor could fix that.

 

An IB Technicolor print (which were rarer in the '70s, but many movies still had them) would not fade.

 

Of course, prints were frequently "treated" in the late-'70s to early-'80s, which enabled the destructive vinegar syndrome to destroy many release prints. 

 

My guess for the Hank Aaron photo is that one was shot on a Kodak negative stock prone to fading (and scanned from the negative), while the other one is likely reversal/slide film (which is less prone to fading, IIRC).

 

EDIT: The Aaron photo could also be an issue in processing, as the C-41/E-6 photochemical processing is prone to errors (especially in the ‘70s).  Ektachrome from the ‘70s (Kodak’s popular slide film) has also had fading issues, but were not as prone to severe fade as color negatives or movie positive prints. 

 

Either way, this goes to show you that photo references for colors are very fallible, especially when we’re talking ‘70s sports.