Last night, the San Diego Padres unveiled their new uniforms. With a promotional campaign #BrownIsBack the team prepared its fans for the upcoming change. The change was so much anticipated that tickets for the promotional show were sold.
With the presentation of the club’s new manager, a few days ago, the new cap was shown already. A friars brown hat with an interlocking yellow SD logo on the front. But still, the “old” brown alternate Padres jersey was worn by the new manager. The interlocking SD logo is still the same as the one the Padres sported in the past few years as the D is still interrupted.
A two-year research and testing phase anticipated the unveiling of the new uniforms. Several designs were shown to selected fans that operated in groups of thirty persons.
Eventually, the club decided to go with the jerseys that were presented tonight.
Even though the lettering is similar to the previous one, there is a significant difference. The old jerseys sported the team name and city name with the first letter and the last letter quite a bit bigger than those in between. With the new jerseys, all letters are at the same size.
Perhaps the biggest change is the return to the pinstripes. The last time the Padres sported pinstripes on their unis was in 2001 when the uni sported navy pinstripes.
The new home uniform sports brown pinstripes and brown lettering with a yellow outline. The road unis are absolutely awesome. The regular road uni sport a brown jersey (which has a darker shade of brown than the previous alternate jersey) with even sand-colored pants, the alternate road jersey is in sand color with pinstripes. The latter was at the request of MLB that wanted a light version of a road uniform as well. It is good the Padres turn away from the dull grey road uniforms. After the Arizona Diamondbacks presented their new uniforms yesterday and turned to the regular grey road unis again, the Padres are the only club in MLB that sports a road uni that isn’t grey.
A nice twist to all uniforms is the striping around the neck.
“Something that we really love is the A, which is somewhat representative of the ‘mission bell’ that’s a part of our brand.”, Padres VP of Marketing, Katie Jackson stated during the presentation. “We have a hall of fame closer who’s sonic branding is a bell, so we like how the way the ‘A’ turned out, we felt it was a nice nod to the brand.”
According to the Padres, they made this change for the fans. They were the ones who asked for this. When they tested this without the pinstripes the fans said it was lacking something, so the Padres gave it another dimension.”
It must be said that the Padres did a tremendous job in restyling. The pinstriped home uni is excellent but the alternate road uniform is even better. Tomorrow the club will present two military-style alternate jerseys to complete the restyling. The Padres fans must be happy with this new look.
Dutch Baseball Hangout 
I was thrilled by the return of them, although I think their all white and all blue shirts were actually really nice, but I really do not like these. I don’t like the brown stripes on the uniforms and the all brown uniform looks like a sheriff or a security officer. However, the reactions I have been reading agree with yours so in general it seems Padres have success with the new style.
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