Team colors: Phillies

According to the color wheel -- if my hazy recollection of school art class is correct -- red and green are complementary colors.

Topps must have known this because during my first collecting period, it seemed to pair green up with Phillies' red on its cards a lot (1978, 1981, 1988).

It also used other strange colors with the Phillies, like purple and yellow.

We know the Phillies' team colors now to be red and blue. But back in the '70s, I wasn't entirely sure what the Phillies' colors were, and maybe Topps didn't either. The Phillies seemed to have this burgundy/cranberry thing going. And I don't remember any blue in their uniform at all, except for those powder blue uniforms they used to wear, which half of the baseball teams in the majors wore.

By the 1990s, the Phillies began to return to what it wore back in the '50s, solid red and blue. And Topps followed suit, by using those two colors more often as the 1990s became the 2000s.

So, let's see if red and blue won out over the green and purple and pink that Topps was using in the '70s and '80s:

1964: light blue and black
1965: blue and red
1966: gray and red
1967: yellow
1968: gray and red
1969: gray and purple
1971: light green and yellow
1972: gold, light green and blue
1974: red and white
1976: gold and pink
1977: pink, green and yellow
1978: pink and green
1979: purple and pink
1980: purple, yellow and red
1981: green, red and yellow
1982: pink and gold
1983: red, blue and yellow
1984: red and yellow
1985: purple and gray
1986: red
1987: red
1988: green, purple and light green
1989: purple, blue and pink
1991: blue, gray and burgundy
1992: gray, burgundy and blue
1993: blue, light blue and red
1994: orange, red and light green
1998: blue
2000: red
2002: red and blue
2003: red
2004: red and blue
2005: red and blue
2006: red and blue
2007: red and blue
2008: red and gray
2009: red
2010: red

Once again, I only used the Topps sets that selected design colors based on the team featured on the card.

By the way, this is yet another attempt to give the team I'm rooting for in the playoffs a kick in the booty. I'm not sure how well it worked for the Rangers. Pretty good, I guess. We'll find out more later tonight.

But we're going to find out what colors Topps has associated with the Phillies right now.

Ready?

Phillies' team colors: red and blue

What Topps thinks are the Phillies' team colors: red and blue!

But it's a good thing the 2000s came along or red would be barely clinging to a victory over the likes of yellow, pink and purple. (By the way, I think gray looks awesome with the Phillies' team colors, especially when they'd wear those burgundy pinstripes).

All right, enough color commentary.

Go Phillies!

Carve up and squash that pumpkin-colored team tomorrow.


(The tally: Red-22, Blue-13, Gray-7, Yellow-7, Purple-6, Pink-6, Green-4, Light Green-4, Gold-3, Light Blue-2, Burgundy-2, Black-1, Orange-1, White-1)