Padres Owner: Maybe Brown (Maybe Not) for 2020

Could the San Diego Padres finally be making the move to brown uniforms full-time?

Who knows, but at least we’ve got an update on the painfully long process into figuring out if their fans want them to wear brown or not (hint: they do, obviously).

On the latest edition of the “Beyond the Booth” podcast with Jesse Agler, Padres Executive Chairman Ron Fowler brought us up to speed at around the 30 minute mark (listen here).

Fowler: “We completed an exhaustive round of dial research, looking at our existing uniform, the ’98 uniforms, and two brown uniforms — now I would not call those consistent with the ‘baby poop brown’ uniforms that the late Tony Gwynn did not like, but they are brown uniforms. The largest minority likes a deep brown uniform, they think it says ‘we’re San Diego’, it ‘differentiates us’ but it’s a minority. The second largest minority is our existing uniform.”

Now I’m not surprised a brown uniform won this poll, I am surprised the current blues came in second; I’ve *never* heard a word of support for the current look in all my interactions with Padres fans over the years, in fact most I’ve spoken to seem to prefer the 1998 blue-and-orange from their World Series run.

To confirm my suspicions I ran my own super unscientific poll on Twitter last night and, well, see for yourself:

It’s not even close!

The current look is *not* the uniform of choice by *over* 90% of the 3,000+ people who voted in our poll… now, I’m not entirely sure what our margin-of-error would be for this, but I highly doubt it’s 30%.

Fowler continued with details on what’s going to happen next…

“We are going to further test in the next 60-90 days, we expect brown will prevail in a side-by-side vs four other uniforms and we will probably move in a direction, in that direction hopefully for the 2020 season. No uniform got close to 50 percent.”

Like the Padres, our poll also showed nobody close to 50 – but that was because the vote was split between the two brown options; brown combined made up 70% of the vote.

80's are great, but we need a new brown design to claim as our own. pic.twitter.com/c4IfOQGdnO
— Big Brown Machine (@b19brownmachine) July 17, 2018

So the Padres might have a new uniform in 2020 – remember, that’s the first year the league will wear Nike uniforms (*gulp*)… either way I hope Fowler and others in the Padres offices see the results of this poll before making any final decisions.