Dodger Blue’s Checkered Past

The Dodgers’ uniform, for my money, is the embodiment of perfection in athletic fashion. The blue script “Dodgers” runs across the front of a pristine white jersey at an upward angle, underlined by a swoosh. The small red uniform number balances the scripted name and stands out against the white jersey like a single cherry atop a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Simple, yet elegant.

But it wasn’t always so. The current incarnation of the Dodgers’ jersey has been in place since 1952, when the Dodgers were the first team to put a uniform number on the front. The script dates back further, to 1938. Road jerseys with “Brooklyn” script were worn until 1945. Jerseys with “Los Angeles” script were worn in the early 1960s and recently revived. [Please note that these links are to photos on sites which sell these jerseys, but that my linking to them does not constitute endorsement of those merchants].

But the Dodgers have had some bizzare uniform variations over the years, as Dan Simon points out on mlb.com’s site. Simon knows a little something about bizzare Dodgers’ jerseys–he had a hand in the Dodgers’ blue alternate jerseys introduced a few years ago (much to my outrage).

Among the strange ones Simon points out: a couple of pinstriped varieties, including one with “Brooklyn” running vertically down the buttons, a godawful checkered version that looks like the players are wearing graph paper, and reflective powder blue satin jerseys worn for night games in the 1940s.

Unfortunately, the article’s photos are all in sepia-tone. You can get some idea of color by looking at the replica hats sold here. Some of the early ones are interesting. The 1912 versions feature a logo with a block “B” in the center of a diamond, done as a solid blue for home games and white with blue pinstripes for road games. The 1916 version is the graph-paper nightmare, but it does have the “B” in the style which carried (more or less) through the rest of the team’s Brooklyn history. The 1917 version has red and blue pinstripes and for some reason reminds me of a box of popcorn you get at the zoo. The 1930 and ’33 versions have double pinstripes running down the hat in six sets; the 1930 one features a red “B”.

But the strangest of them all is the 1937 one–it’s GREEN! If the Dodgers do a retro uniform night, they could honor one the man who broke the franchise’s single-season home run record, Shawn Green, at the same time.