January 31, 2008
Going Gonzo on the Beach
It is amazing what a difference a couple of years makes. Going into the 2006 season Luis Gonzalez was the longest tenured Arizona Diamondbacks player on the roster. He was one of the few players left from the 2001 World Championship team that defeated the New York Yankees. For all intents and purposes Gonzalez was the face of the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was by far the most popular player in the history of the franchise. Many casual fans would have believed that Gonzalez would finish his career clad in the purple and teal of the Diamondbacks. They would have of course been wrong on two levels. First the team would bid farewell to their left field mainstay in what some thought was an unceremonious bon voyage where Gonzo was told over breakfast that his services would not be required past the end of the season. Secondly the Diamondbacks would break with the past and eliminate the purple and teal color scheme replacing it with Sedona Red, Sonoran Sand, and Black (notice that once a color reaches team association it rises to a capitalized format. That is something not even Crayola does so in that sense I think my treatment of color is more friendly than the crayon company).
