The best road uniform in Dodgers history

When asked to pick a favorite or best uniform, many teams have various options from which to choose. Yet with the Dodgers, they’ve been pretty stable and consistent in their attire for decades. It’s consistent branding, the bright home whites with script lettering one of the most iconic jerseys in sports.

So there isn’t a lot of actual choice when it comes to picking a favorite Dodgers uniform. But there is some variety in the road uniforms.

You’ll notice there is only one home jersey listed on here. Well, sort of. That “Think Blue” jersey (option number 6) was worn during a homestand in 1999, and the blue top combined with white pants was so atrocious (I’ve come to appreciate the current blue batting practice jerseys worn during spring training games, with gray pants, but that’s a story for another day) that it apparently made Chan Ho Park kicking mad.

So if we put those hideous blue monstrosities aside for a moment (then light them on fire, hopefully in a safe manner), we can see that any sort of choice for a favorite Dodgers jersey really comes down to which road uniform one likes best.

For over a decade, the club has had two options for the road grays — one uniform that says “Dodgers” and another that says “Los Angeles.” There was a time a few years ago when I tracked this, just to see how often the Dodgers wore which road uniform and what their record was in each jersey.

I would love to track this again, if for any reason that would mean we’d have actual baseball back.

The current design is simple and sleek, but to me it’s missing one important thing. The white piping. It nearly mirrors the original road uniforms the club wore after moving to Los Angeles, though without the blue stripe on the sleeves. The Dodgers wore “Los Angeles” as their road jerseys from 1959-69, and “Dodgers” from 1970-76 (as well as during the Brooklyn years).

Those 1999-2006 road jerseys had piping, both around “Los Angeles” (white) and around the neck down the middle (blue).

But I have to revert back to the road uniforms of my youth, the ninth option in the Dodgers’ tweet, that they wore on the road from 1977-98. That not only had white piping around the “Dodgers” on the front, which made it pop, but also had white piping around the names and numbers on the back, and around the blue stripe on the sleeves, which only strengthened the look.

Photo by Focus On Sport/Getty Images

People often choose their favorites early. A study showed men and women are more likely to have their favorite song released when they were early teens. Looking back, this is certainly true for me, absorbing all the Weird Al Yankovic I could listen to. His movie, UHF, came out when I was 13. Boom.

I suppose that’s true for sports teams and uniforms, too. The Showtime Lakers won titles when I was 11 and 12, and the 1988 Dodgers won a World Series when I was 12. They will always have my heart. So it’s only natural that my pick for the best Dodgers road jersey is the one they were wearing when this happened:

Photo by Ronald C. Modra/Getty Images

I’d love to know your favorite Dodgers jersey, and if the home whites are your favorite (completely understandable) let me know your favorite road jersey. Please let me know in the comments below.