The Best: With the exception of the most minor of variations, they’ve always looked the same. A few fewer purple accents now. The vest. The substitution of “Colorado” on their road jerseys instead of a repeat of “Rockies.” Which was a good move, because teams should always have the city name on their road jerseys rather than the nickname. I can’t think of an exception to this at the moment, and any team still doing the nickname-on-the-roadies things should probably cut it out now. If I have to pick a best, fine, here you go. It’s all basically the same.
Worst: This look was . . . special. Overall, though, I’m not enamoured with the Rockies’ uniforms and never have been. Their color scheme is clearly the result of an early 90s fixation with black which followed the marketing success of Los Angeles Raiders hats and the like. The purple accents are of that time too, though we’ll cut the Rockies a bit of slack due to the mountains’ majesty and all of that. I can’t help but think that they’d do something different if they were launched in 2003 instead of 1993, and I can’t look at them without thinking of David Nied and Color Me Badd and every other creative and competitive dead end that was popular for a brief time when I was a sophomore in college.
Suggestions: Someone with the Rockies’ organization should be forced to get in their car and drive around the Rocky Mountains for a week or two. When they get back, they should try to incorporate some of that raw beauty into the Rockies’ color palette.