DENVER -- Purple is purple is purple (finally), no matter where it shows up in Rockies Nation.
From the franchise's outset, purple has been the club's identifying color as a nod to the line, "For purple mountain majesties" in Katherine Lee Bates' lyrics for "America the Beautiful." But the problem has been that the Rockies' purple majesty has shown up in too many shades.
So the Rockies have updated the purple and believe they have found a specific shade that shows up the same on caps, on protective gear, on one of their alternate jerseys, on various hoods and jackets on authentic gear. They believe the shade they've found also can be matched on replica merchandise, printed items, promotional items and the like.
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For those scoring at home, under the Pantone Matching System (PMS), the Rockies will be wearing PMS 2685. It replaces PMS 273 on the color chart.
"The purple that we had, the issue was for something that's such a part of our core -- the Rockies and purple are synonymous -- that purple had a lot of variance," Rockies director of retail operations Aaron Heinrich said. "So this isn't a change -- that kind of symbolizes breaking away, a rebrand. We are defining a Rockies purple that we can use -- one that is communicated consistently on-field, one that we believe looks good over the media when you see it on TV, and one that we can be consistent with."
Especially maddening for the obsessive among us was the purple alternate game jersey.
"Just watching us on games, at different parks it looked different based on the lighting in the ballpark," Heinrich said. "In some ballparks, it looked like we were wearing blue. In some ballparks it was a dark purple."
This answers a question several fans have raised on Twitter, after noticing that the purple in official caps sold by New Era shows brighter in online advertising.
"We think we honored the purple -- who we are -- and kept that tradition, but we made it something that is more consistent," Heinrich said.
Heinrich said the consistency should hold up in spring 2020, when Under Armor takes over for Majestic as the official MLB uniform supplier.