As the All-Star break nears, this year's Astros are the best team in baseball.

The Astros still are vying for that first World Series championship banner, but it's hard to argue they've haven't been dressed for success over their 56 seasons.

When it comes to uniforms, there are few Major League Baseball franchises like the Astros, whose threads have been unique and provided a look distinctly their own. Those togs have been polarizing and innovative, and have come full circle to trendy.

To borrow a line from the folks at The Masters, Houston's uniform history truly has been a tradition unlike any other.

"The spirit of the Astros has always been out of something trend-setting, looking forward with the whole space theme and doing things people have never done before with the building of the Astrodome," said Mike Acosta, the team's authentication manager and de facto historian.

"The way I kind of see the rainbow uniforms and the way they evolved and came through, it's kind of like that 'Urban Cowboy' and 'Luv Ya Blue' type of thing that happened in the late '70s and early '80s. It just became part of the DNA of Houston."

Those rainbows, which went through many tweaks during the 12 seasons they were worn, were donned once again June 24 during the Astros' 5-2 win at Seattle.

Designed by advertising agency McCann Erickson for rollout during the 1975 season, the rainbow uniforms were met with a healthy degree of skepticism - former Astros shortstop Roger Metzger said "I think there were three or four of us who looked at each other and wondered if they (management) were really serious" - but the rainbows' annual appearance in recent seasons has been greeted warmly by fans and even some players.

"I think the rainbows are cool," said righthander Lance McCullers Jr., whose first start coming off the disabled list was in those throwbacks.

"I think the fans enjoy them. It's definitely a different flair as far as jerseys go, even throwbacks. It's really unique."

Unique, but not comfortable enough to wear on a regular basis, as McCullers noted issues with how the jerseys fit, mostly the way they were cut.

The throwback McCullers is itching to wear, however, is from the final years at the Astrodome, when the team's colors switched to blue and gold with an open star logo. He'll get his wish when the Astros wear those Aug. 19 as part of their Legends Weekend honoring the 1997 team that won the National League Central Division.

"I would love to wear the blue and gold," McCullers said, pointing out an Instagram photo with the jersey superimposed on teammate Carlos Correa. "Those are sweet."

Center fielder George Springer, who was memorably pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated three years ago in the rainbow throwbacks, said "I'll wear whichever ones they throw out there.

"Any time you can wear anything that's a throwback or the old school style, it's fun and a nice change of pace from your standard issue stuff. It's fun for us."

Spirit of innovation

Fun always has been a theme of Astros jerseys, whether they're beloved or reviled. From the original Colt .45s look with the smoke forming the C to the beloved shooting star that highlighted the jerseys from 1965-74 to the full rainbows, innovation always took center stage.

"There are a couple other franchises known for unusual uniforms, but the Astros probably are up there as one of the most innovative, wacky or out there or whatever you want to call it in terms of their uniform history," said Paul Lukas, who writes about sports uniforms for ESPN and is the creator of the popular Uni Watch blog.

"And that was right from the start. They used orange as their primary color, which had never been done before. No Major League Baseball team had ever used orange as their main color. That in and of itself was a new thing."

When it came time for the advent of the rainbows, the Astros were the beneficiaries of technological advances during the early to mid-1970s.

"This was a time of flux for baseball uniforms," Lukas said. "Teams were moving away from button-front jerseys and moving to pullovers. They were moving away from belted pants and going to elastic waistband pants and the fabrics were changing from flannels to these stretch knits and polyester double-knits. Which allowed for all sorts of different graphic possibilities.

"That rainbow pattern the Astros wore literally could not have been done prior to 1970 or 1971. The technology did not exist in the fabrics that were being used at the time to create that kind of design. Even if somebody had wanted to do something like that, it couldn't have been done. And I don't think it would've occurred to anybody to try to do that."

The result, of course, was something to behold.

"When that jersey was introduced, I was a kid and I came of age watching a lot of baseball in the '70s and I remember when that jersey came out," Lukas said. "It was crazy. Nobody had ever worn anything like it and what I remember thinking was it was somehow in keeping with the Astros wanting to be space-age, whatever that meant. It wasn't just the rainbow striping on the jersey. That uniform also had the number on the pants and it wasn't just any number - that number was rendered in what we popularly conceived a computer typeface to look like. It set the Astros apart."

And the look that was ridiculed by many at first eventually grew on folks. That included Nolan Ryan, arguably the epitome of baseball machismo during his Hall of Fame career.

"My dad and I were talking about the rainbow uniform (recently) with some people on the field," said Reid Ryan, Nolan's son and the Astros' president of business operations.

"He said, 'When I signed with the Astros, I looked at that thing and thought 'That is ugly and I'm going to hate wearing that.' Then he goes, 'By the time I was done in 1988, I felt like, man, I looked pretty good in that. I liked that uniform.' "

Trending again

Nolan Ryan isn't the only one who likes the rainbow uniforms. Take a look at baseball teams from summer ball to high school to NCAA Division I, and you're likely to find many who wear some version of the Astros' rainbow design, albeit usually not in the original colors.

Area high schools such as Lamar and Deer Park have donned rainbow-themed jerseys, with the latter wearing them en route to a state championship this summer. Louisville donned rainbow-themed jerseys at the College World Series and Lukas even noted that Oklahoma State's women's basketball team wore a rainbow-style jersey during the early 1980s. A 2016 Under Armour catalog included rainbow-themed jerseys in a variety of hues.

"What's cool about the high schools is I see kids wearing it all the time," Reid Ryan said. "My son (Jackson) plays on a summer league team that has a version of it and with the kids today, like all trends, it's come back around to where kids think it's cool.

"When I see high school kids wearing it, I say, 'Hey, that trademark infringement letter's coming your way,' just tongue in cheek. We think it's neat that kids want to wear it and that they're out liking what we're doing."

Lukas' website sells T-shirts and the inventory includes, you guessed it, a rainbow-themed shirt, albeit in green and yellow.

"I've got to tell you, it's one of our more popular items," Lukas said. "It has become iconic in its own way. There was never anything else like it at the major league level and people were somewhat aghast at it when it came out. And like a lot of things that are tied to a particular time in the popular imagination, it became somehow nostalgic."

That nostalgia has returned to Minute Maid Park, albeit in a limited way. The team recently rolled out rainbow-themed shirts for vendors hawking food and drinks in the stands featuring their name and hawker number.

"I asked two or three, 'Are you guys liking the uniforms?,' and all of them gave me a thumbs-up," Ryan said.

Nod to the past

The Astros' current uniform set, unveiled in 2013, is a nod to their past.

After six seasons of blue and gold to close out the Astrodome and wearing 13 seasons at Minute Maid Park with brick red, sand and black with a pinstriped primary home uniform, the team returned to its roots. That meant the blue-and-orange color scheme and the classic logo featuring the H and the star.

Acosta said the team's decade-plus in pinstripes and an assortment of alternate jerseys did little to stop fans from clamoring for a return to tradition.

"We got to the World Series in those, and yet people still identified the Astros as that rainbow with the orange and navy and all those flashy colors," Acosta said. "Just having that star with the H on it again, that's what people really identified with."

Anita Sehgal, the Astros' senior vice president of marketing and communications called the current uniforms "a tribute to the past - the colors and the H logo are an inspiration to the past.

"The 2013 evolution of our brand took a lot of inspiration from our history. We did absolutely make it new, but we didn't start with a blank slate. We started with something that served us well in our history. And people love it."

Rockin' the rainbows How the Astros have fared in their full rainbow uniforms since 1999. DATE OPPONENT RESULT June 26, 1999 Reds L, 8-1 July 4, 2004 Rangers L, 18-3 Aug. 3, 2006 at Padres L, 5-2 June 21, 2008 at Rays L, 4-3 June 1, 2012 Reds L, 4-1 June 22, 2012 Indians L, 2-0 May 24, 2014 at Mariners W, 9-4 July 18, 2015 Rangers L, 7-6 Aug. 6, 2016 Rangers L, 3-2 June 24, 2017 at Mariners W, 5-2

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Lukas, however, offered a contrarian view on the current uniforms, calling them atypical for the franchise.

"A lot of people love them," he said. "I must say I do not love them. I think they're a little too conservative for a franchise that has such a proud history of pushing the envelope design-wise. I don't like them as much as the ones they replaced, the ones with the script. I think if they want to look conventional, like a quote-unquote normal baseball team, I think the previous version was more tasteful and interesting-looking, just a better design than the current one.

"Honestly, I think it's kind of a boring design. And if there's one thing this team's uniform history has never been, it's boring. It's not ugly, I don't mean it that way. This was a team that had really interesting, creative (uniforms). They were never about the basics. So this is kind of a back-to-basics design concept that didn't have any basics to go back to. To me, it doesn't work for this franchise."

The current set also includes a pair of alternate jerseys. The orange ones are worn for Friday home games and road day games, but as the team began to build steam in 2015, they grew talisman-like qualities and were worn more often, including all four road playoff games.

"I love the orange," McCullers said. "The orange is probably my favorite jersey we have. I like the look, the way it goes with the blue hat and the white pants and everything. And you can match it up with some cool cleats."

The team also introduced a blue alternate jersey last year to be worn for Sunday home games. It includes a rainbow paneling on the sides.

Sehgal said the blue alternate is this year's top-selling jersey. She said Carlos Correa's jersey is the top seller, with Jose Altuve "a pretty close second."

Acosta and Josiah Gallow, the team's senior retail buyer, teamed up to design the blues.

"When a player was on the field and standing upright or in position, it would look like a modern navy jersey and you would have an orange hat," Acosta said. "But when he went to make a play, or swing the bat or throw the ball across the field, you saw that flash of history, the exact copy of what those rainbow uniforms were with the orange hat."

What really helps merchandise sales is winning. The Astros' return to the playoffs in 2015 after a decade away and this year's budding juggernaut have provided a considerable boost.

"It's been really, really good here," Ryan said. "Coming out of not being on television to being back on, losing 100 games three years in a row, nobody was buying a (Chia-Jen) Lo jersey or a Paul Clemens jersey. I'm not disrespecting those guys at all because they were players who came through our system, but they weren't connecting with the fans because we weren't winning on the field. Once you start winning, it's all about winning and all about marketable players.

"What's neat is you see people who are wearing Correa or Altuve shirts today and then you see another guy sitting over there with a Bagwell or Biggio open star gold and blue or someone with a Mike Scott or Jose Cruz jersey that's rainbow striped. It really speaks to the generations."

• • •

ERAS OF HOUSTON BASEBALL FASHION

Colt .45s (1962-64)

One of only three teams at the time that had chain-stitched, embroidered logos. Original full uniforms in recent years have sold for as much as $20,000.

Shooting stars (1965-74)





Logo featured a shooting star above the Astros name. Team logo switched to primarily orange with orange caps in 1971. Full uniforms have sold in the $3,000 to $4,000 range, to as much as $10,000 for Jimmy Wynn or Joe Morgan uniforms.

Rainbow (1975-93)

Early years featured encircled numbers on the uniform back. Numbers were used on the right pants leg through 1979. "Shoulder rainbows" became road jerseys in 1980, and the full-body rainbows were discontinued after 1986. Original uniforms with player nameplates range from about $1,500 for early years to $800 for later years.

Open star (1994-99)

Owner Drayton McLane changed things up after purchasing the team late in 1992. Logos were blue and gold with an open-sided, slanted star.

Railroad (2000-12)

Brick red logos with rope-like touches accompanied the move to downtown Minute Maid Park, built on the site of the old Union Station train depot.

Current (2013-present)

A return to the blue, orange and white color scheme with the classic H star logo. The set includes orange (Friday home) and blue (Sunday home) alternates.