Dave's Most Favorite Uniforms (Part III)

I fear that my friend Joey Coco will disagree, but...

1978 San Diego Padres
The Padres adopted their name from the Pacific Coast League team that played in San Diego from 1936 to 1968. That minor league franchise won the PCL title in 1937, led by an-18-year-old San Diegan named Ted Williams. Here's a photo of Ted's Padres jersey, of which I happen to own a replica from my favorite store ever, Seattle's Ebbets Field Flannels. (My birthday is September 8 and Christmas is only six months away, so shop early.)

In 1969, the San Diego Padres joined the ranks of Major League Baseball as one of four new expansion teams, along with the Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals), Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots (now the Milwaukee Brewers). Perhaps you recall my Seattle Pilots post? If not, what have you been doing?


Between 1976 and 1984, the Padres incorporated a brown road jersey into their array of uniforms, a brown jersey that is so shocking and hideous, yet so beautifully 80s nostalgic, that it is one of my top five favorite MLB jerseys of all time. I'd like to specifically acknowledge the 1978 San Diego Padres set as I purchased a replica home jersey (much less hideous and brown) on a visit to Petco Park a few years ago - see my self portrait at left. By the way, I had to get the home jersey as they only had small and medium left in the brown road jersey. Upsetting, I know.

At that game, there was also a little incident of a foul ball whizzing past my right ear and splatting against the dental work of the woman seated behind me. The sound of the ball smacking into her lip flesh and tooth enamel probably would have made me more sick had I not been immediately leaping from my seat in search of the injury inducing projectile, which I quickly found and shoved into my right pocket. At the same time, as the blood geysered from the woman's lips and gums, I noticed that her crimson life fluid had splattered onto my shorts and my brand new overpriced 1978 Padres home jersey purchased in the Padres Store just prior to the game. Of course I worried not about the possible staining as I handed her husband napkins from the vast supply I always grab due to the food related messiness I inherited from my father. It took an usher a solid 2-3 minutes to attend to her and another 5-6 minutes for medical personnel to arrive. Until then, it was just me, her husband and my bloody new jersey. I removed the ball from my pocket, handed it to her husband and said, "She deserves this a lot more than I do." He gave me a seemingly ungrateful odd look and said nothing. Perhaps because we were forty napkins into it and the blood kept seeping? Funny the damage a 5 1/4 ounce leather-covered sphere can cause. But I digress...

Anyway, here's a sweet visual of that awesome set of unis from the year of the sixth anniversary of my birth, which, by the way is celebrated annually on the eighth day of September.
They dumped the super awesome brown road jerseys after their one World Series game win in 1984 when they decided to suck uniform-wise. To this day, they still wear boring, crappy, and sometimes camouflage uniforms.

Here's the boring and crappy......and here's the camouflage. That wasn't my "anti-cammo for the non-military folk" bias talking. This was the real deal. It's difficult on the eyes, isn't it?