Astros in Red

[DustDevil61]

I've noticed that the Houston Astros have worn their red alternates a lot more lately. Apparently, this has something to do with these red alts. being made out of the Cool Base material. Is this true? Could there be changes coming?

[speedy]

I've noticed that the Houston Astros have worn their red alternates a lot more lately. Apparently, this has something to do with these red alts. being made out of the Cool Base material. Is this true? Could there be changes coming?

Doubtful, but what do I know?

IIRC didn't San Diego do this with their blue alternate on the road because the sand wasn't CB, but the alternate was?

[cappital92]

IIRC, they used to wear them all the time because they were CoolBase. The owners prefer them to the regular grays, so even though they have gray CoolBase now, the brick jerseys are basically the road jerseys now.

[ElwoodCuse]

Yeah, I remember it being news when they actually wore the grays for once (I think because they played someone with a home red alt).

[tBBP]

A piece of me, while completely ignorant to the inner happenings of the organization, wants to effort the guess that the team's owner has a lot to do with the oft-worn red jersey--probably wants to see the colors of his trucking company more often??? I don't know...just a crazy conspiracy theory.

(And yet and still, even in the midst of all this redness, I still don't recall having seen the 'Stros wear red caps with those red jerseys...)

[The_Admiral]

Terrible lettering on these jerseys, by the way. Too small, too spaced out. It's a decent typeface, just horribly rendered.

[Brave-Bird 08]

Yeah, I remember it being news when they actually wore the grays for once (I think because they played someone with a home red alt).

it was Atlanta, on a sunday

[zooropean]

I believe the Astros wore gray in 2 if not all 3 games they played against the Rangers in Arlington this year. I remember thinking it was about time the Rangers wore red again.

[oddball]

I don't mind them, especially since they are consistent in wearing them, and red/brick is in their colors. What bugs me about the Astros set, is the different number color on the front, I thought they were suppose to be uniforms. What do I know? Not much.

[tomás]

It's a shame they don't wear them as often as they used to. Some of the best road grays in baseball.

[cheo25]

I don't mind them, especially since they are consistent in wearing them, and red/brick is in their colors. What bugs me about the Astros set, is the different number color on the front, I thought they were suppose to be uniforms. What do I know? Not much.

Dodgers do it, too (blue wordmark, red number on home and away jerseys), so the Astros aren't the only team doing it. And on the solid whites, the number is the same color as the wordmark. Of all that is wrong with the Astros' uniforms, this is one feature this Astros fan actually likes.

The Astros' all-red, all-the-time bit on the road is nothing new -- this has been going on for about three years now. The gray top makes its appearance whenever the Reds, Braves or Diamondbacks wear their red top at home. The Rangers wore red all three games of the series in Arlington, I think, so that's why you saw it so much there.

And mark me down as an Astros fan who hates the current set and color scheme.

We've covered the Astros plenty here, especially the all-red, all-time-time look on the road.

[Bouj]

As cheo25 said, this got brought up somewhere in that 90-page MLB 09 thread. The Astros wear the bricks almost exclusively on the road because that's the only jersey they have in COOL BASE. It's been going on pretty steadily for 3 years now. Well, 2.5, since they wore the grays on the road from Opening Day 2007 to June 2007, when it started getting hot. They wear the brick COOL BASE on the road almost exclusively now, with the exception of color clashes (potential road clashes against ATL, ARI, CIN, TEX, LAA, BOS, & WAS) and special events (they wore the grays for the road finale in 2008 at Biggio's request, because he liked the gray more).

The Astros only have doubleknit grays, and they've only worn them a handful of times in 2009 (at ATL, ARI, CIN, and TEX). And yes, the red is Drayton McLane's favorite, since it is close to the red color of his shipping company.

And the only time they wore red hats with the brick tops was when they wore the Stars & Stripes caps on the road in SF (not their red brick caps, but red nonetheless). It looked interesting. Not good, not bad, just different.

[BallWonk]

As a matter of general principle, I disapprove of the 1990s style of alternate jerseys, where you just take a normal home or road jersey, change the fabric color, and then flip the script colors to match. That's how you dress a beer-league softball team or a youth-league t-ball team, not a big-league club. However, something about the Astros brick jersey has always appealed to me. And in a larger sense, the Astros are the team with messy uniforms whose uniforms are nonetheless the closest to greatness.

If I ran the Astros, I'd adjust their uniforms only slightly, along these lines:

0. Rename "brick" as "Mars red" and "sand" as "Lunar dust".

1. No more pinstripes at home.

2. Kill the brick cap. (Pains me to say this; I love Houston's brick cap.)

3. Make the piping on the white home alt, now the regular home, either black or a thick double band of the red and tan.

4. Make all undershirts and socks black.

5. Make the road front numbers red. (Again, I love the contrast numbers, but it really only works if the script and the cap are the same color; in my Astros re-think, black is moving to the edges and outlines of the uniform.)

That's it. This anchors the uniforms in solid black at the extremities, and honestly if you're a team named "Astros" you've gotta anchor your identity in black. But it splashes consistent color across the middle of the uniform, and provides generally better differentiation from the D-Backs. Nonetheless, I'd keep the brick alt, despite the D-Backs, because in this model, the Astros are about black caps and red on the chest, and a red alt maintains that aesthetic. (I might change it to a red shirt with a tan star over the right chest, though, just to look less like Arizona.) But if you keep the brick alt as-is, the only actual changes my redesign makes are to the piping of one jersey and to the number color of another; everything else is off-the-shelf.

[cheo25]

As a matter of general principle, I disapprove of the 1990s style of alternate jerseys, where you just take a normal home or road jersey, change the fabric color, and then flip the script colors to match. That's how you dress a beer-league softball team or a youth-league t-ball team, not a big-league club. However, something about the Astros brick jersey has always appealed to me. And in a larger sense, the Astros are the team with messy uniforms whose uniforms are nonetheless the closest to greatness.

If I ran the Astros, I'd adjust their uniforms only slightly, along these lines:

0. Rename "brick" as "Mars red" and "sand" as "Lunar dust".

1. No more pinstripes at home.

2. Kill the brick cap. (Pains me to say this; I love Houston's brick cap.)

3. Make the piping on the white home alt, now the regular home, either black or a thick double band of the red and tan.

4. Make all undershirts and socks black.

5. Make the road front numbers red. (Again, I love the contrast numbers, but it really only works if the script and the cap are the same color; in my Astros re-think, black is moving to the edges and outlines of the uniform.)

That's it. This anchors the uniforms in solid black at the extremities, and honestly if you're a team named "Astros" you've gotta anchor your identity in black. But it splashes consistent color across the middle of the uniform, and provides generally better differentiation from the D-Backs. Nonetheless, I'd keep the brick alt, despite the D-Backs, because in this model, the Astros are about black caps and red on the chest, and a red alt maintains that aesthetic. (I might change it to a red shirt with a tan star over the right chest, though, just to look less like Arizona.) But if you keep the brick alt as-is, the only actual changes my redesign makes are to the piping of one jersey and to the number color of another; everything else is off-the-shelf.

Under the current color scheme, I agree with you on 1 and 2 (and I like the red cap, too). But I'd just call brick "red", black "black" and sand "gold", which is what I do now anyway.

I don't like the piping idea because everybody seems to be going back to the two-color piping. I'm really not that big of a fan of one-color piping, either. And if you're going to kill the red cap and make the solid white alt the permanent home uni, then change the lettering to black to match the cap.

The lettering on the rarely-seen gray road top ought to be black, which is another reason the Astros' uniforms look like mess. I hate the red alts, home and away. Just can't (and won't) get used to red softball tops, especially since they're worn almost 100 times per year when you combine the two.

The better thing to do would be to go back to the navy blue and orange identity (not the rainbow uniform scheme, though). Sorry, but that's the longtime Astros fan in me talking.

[jojotarantino]

As a matter of general principle, I disapprove of the 1990s style of alternate jerseys, where you just take a normal home or road jersey, change the fabric color, and then flip the script colors to match. That's how you dress a beer-league softball team or a youth-league t-ball team, not a big-league club. However, something about the Astros brick jersey has always appealed to me. And in a larger sense, the Astros are the team with messy uniforms whose uniforms are nonetheless the closest to greatness.

If I ran the Astros, I'd adjust their uniforms only slightly, along these lines:

0. Rename "brick" as "Mars red" and "sand" as "Lunar dust".

1. No more pinstripes at home.

2. Kill the brick cap. (Pains me to say this; I love Houston's brick cap.)

3. Make the piping on the white home alt, now the regular home, either black or a thick double band of the red and tan.

4. Make all undershirts and socks black.

5. Make the road front numbers red. (Again, I love the contrast numbers, but it really only works if the script and the cap are the same color; in my Astros re-think, black is moving to the edges and outlines of the uniform.)

That's it. This anchors the uniforms in solid black at the extremities, and honestly if you're a team named "Astros" you've gotta anchor your identity in black. But it splashes consistent color across the middle of the uniform, and provides generally better differentiation from the D-Backs. Nonetheless, I'd keep the brick alt, despite the D-Backs, because in this model, the Astros are about black caps and red on the chest, and a red alt maintains that aesthetic. (I might change it to a red shirt with a tan star over the right chest, though, just to look less like Arizona.) But if you keep the brick alt as-is, the only actual changes my redesign makes are to the piping of one jersey and to the number color of another; everything else is off-the-shelf.

Under the current color scheme, I agree with you on 1 and 2 (and I like the red cap, too). But I'd just call brick "red", black "black" and sand "gold", which is what I do now anyway.

I don't like the piping idea because everybody seems to be going back to the two-color piping. I'm really not that big of a fan of one-color piping, either. And if you're going to kill the red cap and make the solid white alt the permanent home uni, then change the lettering to black to match the cap.

The lettering on the rarely-seen gray road top ought to be black, which is another reason the Astros' uniforms look like mess. I hate the red alts, home and away. Just can't (and won't) get used to red softball tops, especially since they're worn almost 100 times per year when you combine the two.

The better thing to do would be to go back to the navy blue and orange identity (not the rainbow uniform scheme, though). Sorry, but that's the longtime Astros fan in me talking.

I would like to see a return to the previous Navy and Gold set. I've always liked those best as I feel they fit the name of the team best.

[Firefly]

I can't disagree more with the idea of grounding the Astros in black. Partially because I'm sick of seeing black jerseys all over the MLB. Partially because the black is just too damn flat.

The dark, dark navy of the late 90's set keeps a deep dark look while the current black just looks drab. The navy is just a richer dark color. Just look at the early 00's black alt vs. the late 90's navy alt.

Yeah, lighting blah blah blah, but you see my point?

[BallWonk]

I would like to see a return to the previous Navy and Gold set. I've always liked those best as I feel they fit the name of the team best.

I'm a fan of the Astros, and blue and gold is my absolute favorite color combination, but this widespread idea that blue and gold "fit the name" makes absolutely no sense. "Astros" is about space. You know how you can tell that you're in space? Look out the window: If the sky is blue, you're not in space. The Astros may have worn blue for a long time, and so blue may have sentimental value to fans, and that's legitimate. But to claim that blue fits the team's name is simply nonsense. If you're going to choose colors based on the team's name, blue is the absolute second-to-last color you would choose. (Green is the only less-astronautical color.) As far as matching colors to the name go, blue and gold would be an absolutely perfect color scheme for a team named the "Pilots." But blue and gold is inarguably among the worst possible color combinations for matching the name "Astros."

Which isn't to say that blue and gold shouldn't be the Astros colors -- just that one cannot appeal to the team's name in support of that particular color scheme. It makes as much sense as saying that red and white "fit the name" of the Blue Jays.

(Ironically, the dark red, which everyone seems to hate, is an excellent color for a team named the "Astros," given that it's a close approximation of the color of Mars, traveling to which planet is now the primary mission of the manned space program. So the red alt is probably the most literally Astros-esque item in the team's locker.)

[Firefly]

Well, astro literally means stars and stars are all number of colors. In fact, light from our nearest star, the sun, has ever damn color in it.

So, the astros could be any color in the visible spectrum.

[CJworks]

Good point BallWonk. I personally really like their color scheme (and the 'brick' jerseys as well), even if some people speculate it to be too similar to the D-Backs. Every time Houston plays the Cubs in Wrigley 85% of the time they wear the 'brick' jerseys, and I've always wondered why that was so. Interesting

[oldschoolvikings]

Well, astro literally means stars and stars are all number of colors. In fact, light from our nearest star, the sun, has ever damn color in it.

So, the astros could be any color in the visible spectrum.

I agree... BRING BACK THE RAINBOWS!!!