2021

2013

2004 WCH

1999-2000

1995

Some random thoughts from your humble webmaster

April 27, 2012

Mystery of 1928-29 Pittsburgh Pirates solved?

As regular visitors to The Hockey Uniform Database know by now, I strive for perfection -- almost to a fault. For uniforms in more recent seasons (i.e. the modern expansion era), I try to get every last detail perfect -- right down to the letter/number font and the external tagging. For the earlier uniforms, sometimes I'm left to make an educated guess, given the scarcity of information available.

One uniform that has always bugged me was that of the 1928-29 Pittsburgh Pirates. I know that the ones they wore from 1925-28 were black and gold (hence the Penguins' justification for their 1980 color change at the objection of the Boston Bruins) and 1929-30 was orange and black.

I had originally thought that they had carried over their black-and-gold color scheme to their 1928-29 uniforms -- but the black-and-white photography (color photography was still several years away from being invented) cast serious doubt on that. The elements that I thought were black were way too light to be black. So I did a little research. And I finally found the site with possibly the definitive information.

I came across a page on pittsburghhockey.net that talked about the 1928-29 Pirates, and it cites a report in the October 28, 1928, edition of the Pittsburgh Press which states that the team ditched its black and gold color scheme in favor of what the team referred to as "Harding blue" -- a shade of light blue that appealed to then-First Lady Florence Harding. It also contains a color image of a game program from that season that depicts the Harding blue-and-gold jersey.

Therefore, I'm fairly confident that I finally have the colors of the 1928-29 Pirates jerseys accurate for once. I have made the change on the site.

On that same web page, it also shows an image of a gentleman wearing a jacket with the clearest image of the 1929-30 logo that I have come across. So I changed that too.