Saturday night at Petco Park, a little more than a month since the last baseball game played there and a little less than five months before the next one, the Padres will restart history.

On the field, in front of a few thousand invited guests, some of the most popular Padres players will serve as models as the team unveils its new brown-and-gold uniforms.

Brown, same as before. Brown, unlike anything the Padres have done before.

The brown the Padres will wear beginning in 2020 essentially didn’t exist two years ago. The word mark on the caps, helmets and jerseys is new. Other elements of the ensemble are new and/or reworked.


And while those watching live Saturday and those on social media and those who see and hear and read about the unveiling afterward will be focused on the new look, for the Padres this is about more than a color.

It is about a new identity.

In the turning back, there is a turning forward.

In the timing of this change is a culmination and a hoped-for serendipity.


“We’ve talked about two things repeatedly,” Padres Executive Chairman Ron Fowler said recently. “We’re going to start winning in 2020 and brown is going to be part of that process. It’s going to be the color we start winning in. It’s going to be the color we wear when we play for the World Series. So the convergence is big-time.”

Not just a uniform process

A seven-figure investment in consultants and research and focus groups and testing has brought the Padres and their fans to this moment.

During testing over two nights in June 2018, the Padres presented fans spread over 10 groups of 20 to 30 people with uniform prototypes in four different color combinations.

In each group, people used dials to respond favorably or negatively to models wearing brown and gold, blue and white, blue and orange and brown and orange — all combinations the Padres have worn over their 51 seasons. They then were asked a series of questions designed to dig deeper into the specifics of their preferences.


It was not a majority consensus that told the Padres they should return to the brown-and-gold color base they wore in their first 16 seasons of existence. It was, however, the largest and most passionate minority.

“The word distinctive kept coming up,” said Katie Jackson, Padres vice president of marketing. “All ages, all demographics, that word was incredibly important. They said, ‘When we turn on TV and see brown and gold, I know that’s the Padres. Nobody else is wearing those colors. I want to know that’s my team.’

“Those things became the basis for us going, ‘How do we find something that is classy and represents our fans and is also distinctive?’ We listened to the fans. The fans told us what they wanted. The product they’re going to see is the product of those things.”

Somewhat shocking to those doing the research, the blue-and-orange combination the team wore during its relatively successful run in the 1990s finished third in dial testing. The blue-and-white combination worn in the Petco Park era was the second most popular.


Almost as important as which color was most preferred, the second-biggest consensus was that brown and gold was “least offensive” to those who participated.

Together, the preference for brown and gold and the fact the combination was least offensive created a virtual majority.

“It was loud and clear what people wanted,” Fowler said.

So in January of this year, the Padres and their consultants staged another two-night round of focus groups to elicit feedback on different variations of brown-and-gold uniforms. It was there they learned more about people’s thoughts on road uniforms, preference for pinstripes, the popularity of the original Friar logo and the desire of the largest group of people that the team use the word “Padres” across the chest of the home uniform instead of the interlocking “SD” on the breast.


From there, Jackson and Padres Chief Marketing Officer Wayne Partello, the pair that spearheaded the uniform research and implementation, sweated over details and toiled to meet deadlines through various complications.

In Partello’s office are four boxes, a foot tall and two feet wide, of uniform versions the team tested. A couple dozen times, the Padres traded jerseys of varying shades of brown and sand with MLB’s clothing vendors.

It sometimes took four or more to get a version from Majestic, which supplied MLB uniforms up through this season, or Nike, the new uniform supplier. (The Padres also got uniform samples of UnderArmour, which at the time was vying with Nike to be MLB’s outfitter, for the initial testing.)

In the final product, there are changes people will notice, both immediately and over time.


The word mark for the “PADRES” on the jersey is different, less rounded and with the letters all equally sized. The “P” and “S” on the most recent jerseys were larger. Also, the font for players’ names across the back of the jersey has been altered.

There will be a home uniform and two road uniforms revealed Saturday; the primary road outfit is sand pants and a dark brown top. A new military uniform for Sunday home games, which also will be brown, will be unveiled later.

Already, the new brown cap with the yellow “SD” was unveiled when manager Jayce Tingler wore it at his introductory news conference Oct. 31.

The letters are slightly different, with a consistent thickness that was lacking in the previous version and less-pronounced serifs at the ends. Most prominently, though also subtle, the broken straight line on the ‘D’ now actually lines up. On the previous blue-and-white version, where the line of the ‘D’ converged with the middle curve of the ‘S’ was slightly askew to the left of where the line continued below the ‘S’ curve.


All the tweaks were arrived at after testing different versions on caps, computer screens and stationery, in large and small formats. Colors often look different on actual fabric than they do on computer renderings or paper. And vice versa.

“What’s important is that you don’t look at things just on a computer or just on a jersey,” Jackson said. “It was all about the uniforms, but the reality is you use the ‘SD,’ you use a ‘Padres’ word mark, you use all these elements in far more ways. I have to put it on a billboard. Does that work on a billboard? What about a polo a salesperson will wear? … On the website it will be tiny; does that work?”

For the Tingler news conference, there was a lectern adorned with the new gold “SD” and stained the new color of Padres brown, which didn’t even appear in a Pantone book until 2018.

Some clubhouse painting done last year reflects the color change. The blue carpet will be replaced before the 2020 season. Some signage around the ticket windows will go from blue to brown.


That’s about it.

Petco Park’s seats will remain blue, as will the padding around the field’s perimeter. Stadium employees will continue to wear blue.

Fittingly, Petco’s corporate colors are red, white and blue. The ballpark will stay predominantly blue. The Padres are brown.

Said Fowler: “It’s a uniform color.”


For the love of brown

Fowler, who has long driven a brown car, was long saddled with the accusation that he didn’t care for brown uniforms.

While some of his public statements, including a joke about “baby poop” brown, didn’t help with that perception, the more accurate take was that he didn’t initially care about the idea of brown uniforms.

Shortly after Fowler and Peter Seidler, whose colorblindness means he has virtually no emotional investment in the uniform color, took over control of the team in August 2012, they began hearing about the desire of some fans to return to brown.

“We’ve got 5,000 things to worry about,” Fowler recalls as his initial response. “The color of the fricking uniform is not near the top of the list.”


That categorization was confirmed when he learned the timeline of 15 to 21 months required for a such a change.

“But people kept bringing it up,” he said. “It wasn’t exactly like we were winning, OK. But people wanted this. I just want to win. I don’t care what color we have as long as we win.”

Fowler was, he said, “agnostic” about brown by the time the team began in earnest the process of a uniform re-design in 2017.

Now, almost two years later, Fowler said, “I’ve moved on. I had to move on because of other issues that needed to be addressed.”


In a grand sense, Fowler’s view of the move to brown uniforms and his involvement in the process encapsulates the story of how brown uniforms are about more than brown uniforms.

“This franchise is turning the page,” Partello said. “This brand is turning the page.”

The beginning of 2017 was a pivotal time for the Padres.

Petco Park had hosted the All-Star game the previous summer. The organization’s baseball operations department had simultaneously gone about shedding payroll and stockpiling prospects. The team had committed an unprecedented sum on teenagers from Latin American countries, which led to the candid acknowledgment it would take a few years to reach the goal of being competitive and the product on the field in the interim would be subpar.


In January 2017, the Chargers announced they were moving to Los Angeles.

A “brand essence” survey the Padres commissioned in 2014 to discover how they were perceived by fans and what fans wanted was being implemented. In response to feedback that stressed family friendly, community and entertaining among other things, the Padres had installed a new sound system and new video board. Shortly thereafter the team introduced more hyper-local concessions and commissioned murals around the park’s concourses depicting different neighborhoods and areas of San Diego County. The in-game entertainment has undergone tweaks every season, and it arguably evolves in some manner from game to game based on crowd reactions.

Everything the team does, Partello said, is based on the tenets derived from that 2014 survey in addition to ongoing feedback.

Fowler has final say on virtually all significant decisions, but the 75-year-old trusts the detailed work to be done by those who work beneath him and are younger than him.


“They get a lot of flexibility,” he said. “I know I’m not the targeted demo.”

Genuine excitement

When Fowler, Jackson and Partello were asked to frame their excitement in anticipation of Saturday, there was a simultaneous giggle and three different answers that expressed a similar sentiment.

“It’s like your bursting at the seams, like you have a secret,” Jackson said. “We know about it, we know all the work that went into it, we know why we did it. We did it for the fans. We did it the right way. So much work went into one thing that represent the Padres, represents the community, and it’s the future. … It’s a special representation of this team, and it’s a pivotal moment in this franchise. I’m excited for the franchise, and I’m excited for the fans.”

Partello, who is far more visible to the public than Jackson, has over the years developed relationships with and an understanding of several different groups of Padres fans.


“Part of that is getting to know our real diehard fans, which is a big portion of the folks focused on brown,” he said. “Part of (the job) is not getting distracted by that and realizing that is not the entire fan base, and I have to keep a broad approach to how we steward this brand. But once the real work was done, and it drove us in a direction that was going to make (the diehards) really happy — I just know how important their fandom is to them but, really, how important this change is going to be for them. To be able to know the next generation of Padres, when they hold up the trophy, that they’re going to be wearing the colors that make that portion of the fan base so excited, is going to be really special.”

Fowler’s initial response to the question was to reiterate that he has “moved on” and to give credit to Jackson and Partello.

“These people are doing the reveal,” he said, motioning around the table to the pair of marketing executives. “… We did what we said we were going to do. These two people helped us deliver the commitment. The reveal is basically more for them than it is for me. Frankly, for me showing up on field (on opening day) and if the uniforms were there, I’d be perfectly fine.

“There is a fun element to this. They’re the fun people. I’m the guy who deals with the other stuff. But the process was fun. Getting to work with the two of them on this was fun for me. Once the decision was made, once Katie did her tweaks, it was like, ‘OK, we’ve got some problems over here I’m going to focus on.’ ”


The team began dropping hints and introducing portions of the new look weeks ago. Saturday won’t be the end of the reveal.

“They have little things, interesting things that are cute and novel,” Fowler said. “I think the fans will like it. My commitment was that we will do what the fans wanted us to do. My simplistic view of life, we delivered on that.”

Asked if he liked the new uniforms, Fowler said. “Yeah, I do.”

Fowler has essentially assured this will be the last uniform change while he is in charge. Same as he has assured the men wearing them will change the team’s results.


“It was a five-year plan they put together,” Fowler said of the concurrent rebranding effort by the franchise’s baseball and business operations departments. “That goes into 2020 with winning being part of that message. That’s what we focused on doing. It was almost a natural evolution that uniforms would come out of it.

“I think the community understands what we’re about, believes what we’re about. Now it’s demonstrated we’ve got to go out and win baseball games. If we don’t do that in 2020 and ’21, were going to to be very disappointed in ourselves, and the community is not going to be very pleased with us. Rightfully so. Brown and winning are two things we want to be synonymous. We plan to deliver on that.”