Missing Orange

By Josh Elwell

Sitting at my family’s house, winding down a day of graduation festivities for my sister, I’m surrounded by orange. It’s her favorite color and Mrs. Elwell went all out to make everything match accordingly. But on a day where we completed an impressive four game sweep of the Mets – it’s been a haunting color. As excited as I am for the newfound momentum going into this week’s Dodger series, I still miss having orange as the uniform’s secondary color, as opposed to sandy beige matching the navy blue.

Orange reminds me of 1998, when we had a team truly capable of winning the World Series. It reminds me of the better, and much more aesthetically pleasing days.

Leaving Qualcomm was easy, because Petco is a baseball lover’s paradise. Leaving the navy blue and orange wasn’t so easy, because the Petco-flavored, navy blue and beige is Kevin Towers’ paradise. (This is ignoring the sad outlier that is Sunday home game, military jerseys.)

Okay, I’m stopping right there with the pessimisity (much more fun of a word than pessimism). As disappointed as I’ve been in KT this year - his team is currently kicking major, corporal ass.

After setting a slightly underwhelming record of winning four straight, 2-1 scored baseball games, the ‘navy-beige‘ team pulled off a not-so-underwhelming comeback that left me excited for what else is to come.

Brian Giles is reinventing himself as a dependable table-setter; he’s no longer a power threat, but he’s getting on base for Adrian Gonzalez. (Gonzalez, by the way, is on pace for 43 HR’s & 142 RBI’s…wait, and he’s a Padre?)

And our pitching staff has been refreshingly consistent; with Jake Peavy coming back to the mound on Thursday, it should remain that way.

The low-note of the week was Tadahito Iguchi joining Peavy, Chris Young, Josh Bard and 57 relief pitchers on the DL. Adrian’s little brother, Edgar Gonzalez, has been filling in well, but Iguchi’s 0 errors and 1.000% fielding isn’t easy to come by at 2B.

Again, I’m stopping right there, this week has been too good to be pessimistic.

But I do miss the orange. No question. The beige is just…beige. It represents blandness; orange represents life and fruits of the spirit - all of that exciting Biblical jargon. No pessimism intended for the ‘blue and beige,’ just sentiments and recalled optimism for the orange.

Sentiments dreaming of the ‘90s, where orange treated the team well; navy ‘bleige’ only treated the team to 4 seasons that ended disappointingly below expectations. These were seasons where the team tried to be like the A’s and Twins, who thrive in spite of low payrolls. In a year that may serve as the finale for a gaggle of overpaid veterans, maybe we’re getting closer to that model after all.

But until we do find post-season success with this new, 4-year-old mismatch of colors, it will continue to represent failed promises.
And until that changes: I’ll continue missing the orange.