Brick

Rather than reduce their gaudy markup on traditional lines of Asian made apparel, MLB franchises consistently boost sales via product differentiation (ie tweaking logos, fonts and accent shades). In addition to what the players wear, team shops carry an increasingly dizzy spectrum of unofficial hues to similar end. There's no denying that lots of people actually buy this junk.

  The Diamondbacks plans for 2007, however, trod far beyond MLB's usual marketing practices. Team ownership has jettisoned the entire palette of original, official team colors for some sort of red, black and tan concoction that, in our mind's eye, sounds like a mountain lion driving a Ferrari.

Gone is the purple donned on March 31,1998 by members of Arizona's original MLB franchise. Gone is the turquoise and copper (representing indigenous Arizona minerals) worn by the 2001 World Champions, and with which, fans have always identified their team.

Diamondback fans, how do feel about this? And if you dont root for the 'Backs, how would you feel if the new ownership of your favorite team entirely altered its traditional colors?

Again, we're not talking updated logos, or a subtle shade variation of a uni's piping, but rather your favorite players decked out in color combos utterly divorced from a given club's origins. The Mets in green and pink?  The Yankees take the field at the Stadium ... in brown and burnt orange? Be honest. Wouldn't such a thinly disguised sales ploy, disrespectful of any franchise tradition or fans' connections with those colors, disorient you? Tick you off, perhaps?

Sudden overhauls of official team tints are actually quite rare in sports, likely because of these deeply held, subconscious attachments fans have with "the colors".   

Yet clubhouse insider Steve Gilbert dutifully reports:

In an effort to continue the tradition of making the colors representative of the state, the team chose to call its shade of red "Sedona red" due to its similarity to the famous red rocks in the northern Arizona town of Sedona.

Heh. If an homage to longstanding Arizona tradition is in order, why not go all out with "Escalade Red", after polygamist Warren Jeff's sweet ride? Or "Melvin Maroon", to smartly mark Bob's autumnal tradition of postseason abandonment.

On today's telecast, Thom Brennaman clarified the new dominant shade as "brick" red, which initially souded more like something up the NY Knicks' alley.

Brick.

In different hands, a brick can be a building block - or - an implement to smash things. In the hands of current Diamondbacks ownership, it appears to be both: a crass means to build short term revenue while blithely obliterating many supporters once indelible connections to an increasingly distant franchise.

[ 9/3 Update: Check out the reader comments below Nick Piecoro's brief AZ Republic piece for more perspective on how excited fans are about "brick red".]