Sports Uni-Verse: Houston's Shameful Legacy

By Drew Shirley
KVUE Sports Reporter

Houston is the place of my birth, the place I grew up, the place I will always call home. But I can no longer be silent about Houston's dark side, a legacy of shame that is a blight on Houston's metropolitan conscience.

I am speaking, of course, about Houston's sports uniforms.

Houston has been a professional sports town since 1959, and from the very start, Houston's team uniforms have been consistently horrible. They've been wimpy (Oilers), they've been ridiculous (Rockets), they've been an abomination (Astros). It's got to stop.

The Oilers started Houston down this road to ruin. Ignoring for the moment the fact that there is no such thing as an "oiler" -- a man who works in the oilfields is an "oil man" or a "roughneck" -- why, oh why, would a football team pick BABY BLUE (officially, "Columbia blue") as its primary color? I always thought football was a game of toughness and aggression. Baby blue uniforms do not exactly strike fear into opponents' hearts. "Oh look, here come the Oilers... I wonder if I could borrow one of their jerseys for my baby's blankie."

The Dallas Cowboys have some of the best uniforms in sports: royal blue and white jerseys, silver pants, and the Lone Star on the helmet. They have won five Super Bowls. The Baby Blue Oilers won two AFL titles 40 years ago, but were a consistent NFL disappointment, never reaching the Super Bowl and pulling off the worst playoff collapse in league history. Coincidence? I think not. And now the Oilers will never win anything ever again, because now they are the Tennessee Titans, complete with their own impressively awful uniforms (what is that logo, a flaming thumbtack?).

The NBA Rockets moved from San Diego to Houston in 1971, and for a while there, the Rockets actually had sharp-looking uniforms. "Rockets" is a perfect name for a Houston team, a reference to the NASA space program. The Rockets' colors -- red, gold and white -- were also perfect, the colors of fire or "the Rockets' red glare" (indeed, Rockets fans cheer during this part of the national anthem). Wearing these terrific uniforms, Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets won the NBA title in 1994 and 1995, Houston's only pro sports championships. After winning these two historic titles, and with the Rockets' fan base and national interest at an all-time high, the Rockets...

committed sartorial suicide.

The Rockets jettisoned the classic red, gold and white uniforms and unveiled... pajamas. Pinstriped pajamas, no less. Two-color pinstriped pajamas with illegible futuristic-type numbers and an atrocious, giant logo that makes "ROCKETS" look like "ROACHES." Did I mention the baby blue rocket that circles the logo? It has TEETH. It's a rocket with teeth! I can't even imagine the thought process that went into that decision. What in the world would cause even the most deranged graphic artist to say, "hmm... you know what this rocket really needs? TEETH."

The Rockets' uniforms are by far the worst in the NBA, and that's saying something. They may be the worst in the history of the NBA. They are, of course, fully responsible for the Rockets' miserable playoff performances over the past seven years. The Rockets won two NBA titles and then tampered with their success, angering the sports gods in the process. Did the Lakers, Celtics and Bulls start wearing pajamas after their titles? Until the Rockets go back to the classic red, gold and white, they are doomed to disappointment.

But any discussion of horrible uniforms must start and end with my beloved Houston Astros, who have had awful uniforms for so long, and in so many different ways, that they probably deserve some sort of prize. The really sad part is that like the Rockets, the Astros started out with so much promise.

Houston's baseball team debuted in 1962 as the Colt .45s, which I believe was the first and only time a professional sports team was named after a firearm. There would be no baby-blue wussiness for the Colts, who had a giant .45-caliber handgun embroidered right on the front of their jerseys. Now that's intimidation. With an attractive orange and navy blue color scheme, a distinctive ".45s" on the cap, and that big revolver on the jersey, the Colts looked good, and very tough, even if they stunk on the field.

In 1965 the Colts moved into the Astrodome, the Eighth Wonder of the World, and became the Astros.

(Again with the bizarre name. What the hell is an Astro? If you want a NASA-themed name, what's wrong with the Stars? It evokes the space program AND the Lone Star State at the same time. But I digress, and besides, it's far too late to do anything about that anyway.)

Nevertheless, the Astros looked pretty good, with a shooting star logo on the jersey and the H-over-the-star on the cap. The road uniforms were classic grey with "HOUSTON" in a classic font across the chest. The Astros were dressed for success and slowly began to improve during the early 1970s.

Then came 1975.

When the Astros took the field on Opening Day 1975, they wore the Worst Sports Uniforms Of All Time. From the almost-neon orange caps, to the spectacularly bright red, yellow and orange bands clashing with one another as they circled the players' torsos, to the uniform numbers on the PANTS LEGS, the Astros' new threads re-defined ugly. They inspired nausea. They made the Astros a laughingstock.

Guess what happened to the Astros in 1975? After finishing at .500 the year before, the Astros lost 97 games and finished with the worst record in the major leagues. Call it the Curse of the Technicolor Nightmare. Ignoring the obvious fact that their uniforms were dooming them to failure, the Astros continued to wear some form of the rainbow-colored horrors for SEVENTEEN more years. Houston had several excellent teams in the 1980s, but never reached the World Series, partly because the Curse struck down All-Stars Dickie Thon (beaned in the eye) and J.R. Richard (stroke) in the primes of their careers.

In 1994 the Astros finally got rid of the Technicolor Nightmares -- I'd like to think they were thrown in a pile and torched, in a lovely red, yellow and orange bonfire -- and introduced new uniforms, with a new color scheme (gold and blue) and a new logo (an open star with a tail). They weren't bad, exactly, but I was disappointed, mainly because I hate to see any team abandon its original colors. Orange and navy can be a fine color scheme for a sports team -- see, e.g., the Denver Broncos -- but not when orange is screaming at the top of its lungs. The Astros gold and blues were mainly unremarkable, as if someone had just designed them in a few minutes without much thought or inspiration.

Anyway, the Astros played pretty well in the gold and blue, never reaching the Series but winning their division several times, including 1999, their last year in the Astrodome. In 2000, the Astros moved into Enron/Minute Maid/Your Ad Here Field/Park. A new stadium, a new millennium, a new uniform.

Blech.

On the positive side, the new unis do have more of a "classic" design, with the team name in a traditional script and pinstripes adorning the home jerseys. The problem is the new color scheme -- officially, the Astros' colors are black, grey, "brick" and "sand." BRICK and SAND? What is this, a yuppie home renovation project? "Yes, I think we should take the solarium brick and sand." It turns out that the Astros new colors were intended -- get this -- to match the new stadium.

Match the new stadium?!? Never in my life have I ever heard of a team designing its uniforms to match its stadium. Can you imagine? If the Astros had used that strategy when they played in the Astrodome, their uniforms would have been concrete grey, rodeo brown, and two-week-old-nacho-cheese yellow. But never mind -- brick and sand are terrible colors for any sports uniform, no matter what the reason. And here's proof: in the Astros' first year in black, grey, brick and sand, they went from division champions to fourth place, and they've still never won a playoff series.

(Sigh.)

So here we are in 2003, with the Houston Rockets still wearing baggy pinstriped pajamas, and the Houston Astros still wearing the colors of death, decay, and interior design. It's depressing, rooting for teams that look so terrible. But all is not lost. I have hope, real hope, for the future of Houston's sports teams, and all because of the Houston Texans, who already have the best uniforms in Houston's history.

The Texans are the babies of the Houston sports scene, but they certainly aren't wearing baby blue. They wear the colors of the Texas flag -- red, white and blue -- along with a superb logo, a stylized bull's head with a Lone Star for the eye. They look fantastic. And you know what? In their very first game in these glorious new uniforms, the Texans beat the Dallas Cowboys on national television.

I hope the Astros and Rockets were paying attention.

© (c) 2003 by Drew Shirley <dshirley@kvue.com>

The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Belo Corp. or its employees.

This article was granted to the SSUR by the author.  All rights reserved.