LA Dodgers Almost Dropped Blue for Purple in 1990s

Imagine pulling into Dodger Stadium, finding your way to your seats, just in time to welcome the Dodger nine onto the field… all dressed in purple.

Well, according to the team’s Design Director, that unimaginable thought came very close to reality.

During an appearance on the most recent episode of Unified with Paul Lukas and Chris Creamer, LA Dodgers Senior Design Director Ross Yoshida dropped that previously unheard story on both Paul and myself when prompted to share “something we’ve never heard of before”.

You can watch the episode here, Yoshida’s segment begins in the second half of the video (but the whole show is pretty great, just saying).

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“I was told this by several people because I wasn’t there at the time, not in my role as I am now”, Yoshida warned before continuing, “but apparently when Fox bought the team in 1997, they were interested in changing the Dodgers colour to purple.”

I know what you’re thinking, but remember this was the 1990s, nothing seemed off the table, things now considered untouchable were being changed without much consideration for what exactly was happening.

“Purple was a very hot colour back then and I’ve heard from several sources it went pretty far up the chain”.

The Los Angeles Lakers, of course, had long worn purple by that point, the Los Angeles Kings were in the process of re-adding purple to their look after dropping it a decade earlier, and the brand new Los Angeles Sparks were also very purple. Los Angeles could’ve been a (mostly) purple sports city had the plan happened.

Of course, in all reality, if this move did end up taking place, the Dodgers would’ve long since switched back from purple to blue as the push for tradition across sports design quickly faught back against the wildness of the ’90s, undoing many of those bold changes.

You can check out our entire chat with Ross Yoshida and hear our thoughts on the new Boston Red Sox yellow City Connect jersey right here.