Are A’s new uniforms gold or yellow?

Posted on April 4, 2011

Coco Crisp of the Oakland Athletics slides safely into third base with a triple during the game between the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics on Sunday, April 3, 2011, at the Coliseum in Oakland, California. (Photo by Brad Mangin/MLB Photos)

 

Yesterday afternoon marked the third game on the schedule for the 2011 Oakland A’s. More importantly for photographers like me it was their first day game under the wonderful California sun. The big excitement for me surrounding yesterday’s game was which uniform would the A’s be wearing? The A’s have a wonderful traditional home white uniform that dates back to the first year I started shooting big league ball back in 1987. Of course in the past decade they have gone through many variations of the dreaded “alternate” jersey, usually chosen by the days starting pitcher.

Over the years they have gone from green to black to green and back to black the past few years. The black jerseys suck ass. Especially for photographers trying to make good pictures under the harsh sun. I have been hoping that they would get rid of these awful black tops for a few years now. In the middle of last season I heard from team photographer Michael Zagaris that they were gonna ditch the black tops and go with gold in 2011. Anything but black! I was excited to see what the gold (or is it yellow?) tops would look like.

When I was the kid rooting for many bad San Francisco Giants teams in the 1970’s the A’s set the standard for the new revolution of colorful uniforms. Owner Charles O. Finley outfitted his world champion teams in Kelly Green, Wedding Gown White and Fort Knox Gold. The A’s would be reaching back to their past, but with a new twist for 2011. I wanted to shoot the new unis as soon as possible. Luckily the A’s were sending their terrific young lefty Gio Gonzalez to the mound on Sunday. This was going to be my chance. Gio always chose the black tops last season, and since they were not available this year I figured he would go with the gold (or is it yellow?). He did!

I had a great time shooting the game yesterday, and much of the fun had to do with shooting the A’s in the new gold (or are they yellow?) jerseys. It was also cool to shoot some of their new players, especially Japanese star Hideki Matsui. I look forward to shooting many more A’s games this year, and will no longer live in fear of spotting bat boys in the dugout around 45 minutes before first pitch wearing black. Those things were just awful.