The Orioles have finally returned Baltimore to the front of their away jerseys after a 37 year absence. It has been a big deal in Baltimore and I must say that the Oriole uniform, both home and away is one of the best looking in baseball. I'm biased, of course, but that bright orange paired with jet black is one sharp color combination. In fact, if the Orioles uniform featured the cartoon bird on the hat or on the sleeve, and if the road uni's were a charcoal gray, I would say that they had the best looking uniform going.
The new Oriole uniform got me to thinking about the sharpest looking uniform in my lifetime. The Reds uniform of the mid-60s featured vest tops with black trim around the arms, a large C surrounding Reds on the right breast, and a white hat with a red brim. These uniforms were also pinstriped, at least for a couple of years and while I am no fan of pinstripes, Cincinatti pulled off the look as well as it's ever been done.
The Cardinals uniform is certainly one of the classiest in baseball with those cardinals perched on either end of the bat which is slid through the upper end of the C in Cardinals. That classy St. combined with the L on the hat is as recognizable as Detroit's olde English D or the Yankees overlapped NY.
Nevertheless, my pick for the best looking uniforms in my lifetime goes to the Houston Colt .45s. You have to be as old as I am to even remember that before they became the Astros in 1965, Houston's franchise was named the Colt .45s. These uni's featured an orange .45 in block numbers on a navy blue hat and Colts emblazoned in orange and outlined in black. Underlining Colts was a Colt peacemaker and the C in Colts was designed to look like smoke curling up from the revolver below. This might represent the most clever logo in the history of baseball.
Today, entire segments of our population would fall down with apoplectic seizures if anyone even suggested naming a team after a firearm, but then those were simpler times. You know, simpler as in a very low murder rate, no mass murders, no drive-by shootings, and no gun control, either.
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