The Best: For my money their original look was their best ever look. Why? The font on the jersey. It’s unlike anything that we had ever seen before and unlike anything we’ve seen since. No, it’s not the greatest possible look of all time - if they could put that font on a more modern looking uniform without the racing stripes we’d be approaching the ideal -- but it was distinctive and that counts for something. When they gave it up in the mid-80s they lost something.
The Worst: This all boils down to how you feel about red vs. blue. I think the detour into red they took in the mid-90s -- and with which they have continued to dabble as an alternate -- was a mistake. The Rangers should wear blue as their primary color in my view. I mean, this happened in a white-and-blue jersey, so why don’t you stick with it? The classics never go out of style.
I forgot to touch on the Senators in the Minnesota Twins entry, so I’ll double up on both iterations of the Senators here. Yes, I know it’s two different franchises, but I think you can handle it.
The Senators’ Best: Because of the 1960s version of the team is more prominent thanks to more plentiful color photography and baseball cards and things, I would not be shocked if most people thought of the Senators as always being a primarily red team. Nope. They really didn’t go with that look until the last four years of their existence. It was a good look -- one the Nats seem intent on recapturing, curly-W and all -- but it’s not the best. For me it’s the late-version of the original Senators’ run. Which, not surprisingly, looks a lot like the early Twins/current Twins’ alternates.
The Senators Worst: The plain jane uniforms the Senators wore in the 30s and 40s were neat and clean -- kind of like the Penn State football uniforms in terms of satisfying minimalism -- but they were something less than inspired.
Assessment: For years I was shocked that the Rangers didn’t co-opt the Cowboys’ big star in order to try and get some of that uber-popular juju working in their favor. Given how awful the Cowboys are in just about every respect these days it’s probably a good move that they didn’t.