In the summer of 2016 when the Colorado Rockies were playing their best baseball they were doing so while wearing their black vest uniforms. The vests with “Colorado” scripted on the front were famously also worn for the Rockies’ best streak ever in 2007. The best-baseball-in-black theory brought out an interesting conversation in the clubhouse prior to a game.
In a conversation BSN Denver was involved in, multiple Rockies players were discussing which of their uniforms they liked best. The topic was being debated right in front of Rockies’ superstar third baseman Nolan Arenado’s locker. While some players have control over what uniform they wear, none can actually design what they put on 162 plus times a year. That didn’t stop the Rockies from expressing their thoughts.
Arenado was vocal about not loving the Rockies current duds, expressing that he wasn’t the biggest fan of how the purple looked. He talked about it being a bit too blue for his liking.
The more we asked around about what Arenado had voiced, the more we discovered that was the general consensus among the players.
This sentiment matches up exactly with what the players have expressed publicly now that the Rockies have changed their shade of purple for 2017.
“I love it! It’s really purple, it’s unique,” Jon Gray told Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post. “Make it purple, not navy. Let’s go.”
“It is cool … it’s lighter,” Carlos Gonzalez said in the Denver Post’s story. “When we played night games (the old jerseys) looked more like blue.”
While it is speculation, the Rockies’ star player—who has routinely been awarded for being best at his position in the National League and will demand an ungodly amount of money on a contract soon—did not love his team’s uniform. And for the first time in 20-plus years, the Rockies changed a detail about said uniform.
Speaking of speculation, could such a significant change give some insight as to the team’s long-term thinking with Arenado? Or … did they just finally pick a purer pallet of purple?
To be clear, we have no concrete evidence that the Colorado Rockies took any of their players opinions into account when deciding this change, but there are worse reasons to make a change than to appease an all-time talent and his teammates, and give the team a new feel moving into a season where they expect to compete.
Maybe the most interesting piece of this interaction was how it ended. As the Rockies suited up for batting practice, Arenado thought out loud that at the end of the day he was just genuinely happy to wear a big league uniform.
