The Astros have a very interesting uniform history. The team started in 1962 as the
Houston Colt .45's. The name came from a contest. The Colt .45 is an iconic gun of the old west. After three years the team moved into the Astrodome and became the
Houston Astros. Over the years the Astros would try out several
uniform styles. The most iconic of these styles is the
Rainbow or Tequila Sunrise uniform. This style was first seen in 1975. Some pictures of players wearing the rainbow uni can be found
here,
here, and
here. By the mid 80's the Astros really toned down the rainbow portion of their
uniforms and sort of demoted the iconic (and often called ugly) rainbow uni to alternate status. Houston went through another
change in 1994 before settling on their current set for the
2000 season.
1997 saw the debut of the short-lived
Big Star jersey. Here is a picture of
Randy Johnson wearing it after he was traded to Houston.
That first set of the new 2000 uniforms had 8 different jerseys. They have since brought it down to 6. This was one of the more difficult teams to re-create so I wanted to complete them first. Now that Houston is out of the way, I have turned my attention to teams like the Rockies and Rays. I will be posting short histories of those and other teams very soon.
