A look at weird baseball uniforms

Our journey starts in the 1940s, which is when the Brooklyn Dodgers came up with the bright idea to wear powder blue satin uniforms for night games. The Los Angeles Dodgers actually wore the design back in 2011 as throwbacks, but sadly they didn't replicate the satin part of the look.

Recently, the New York Mets dug incredibly deep into the vast catalog of New York baseball uniforms to pay tribute to the Brooklyn Royal Giants of the Negro Leagues. It's one thing see teams decked out in powder blue from head-to-toe (as teams regularly did in the 1970s and '80s), but it's another to see a team in royal blue from top-to-bottom.

The Oakland A's would become infamous for their crazy uniform combinations in the 1970s, but things actually started for them in the late '60s, which is when the team debuted a sleeveless all-yellow uniform. This was the precursor to what would be a whirlwind era for baseball uniforms in the following decade.

The Oakland A's of the 1970s made funky uniform combinations cool before the Oregon Ducks and Nike did in the present day. This all-green number was a prime example of the A's pushing the baseball fashion envelope under the watchful eye of former owner Charlie O. Finley.

Baseball had never seen anything like what the Houston Astros came up with for uniforms back in the 1970s, and we'll never see anything like it again at the MLB level. The "Tequila Sunrise" uniforms will live on forever as some of the most unique uniforms that MLB has ever seen.

The Padres may have boring uniforms right now, but these all-yellow unis with brown trim were anything but yawn-inducing. We'll let you decide whether or not that's a good or bad thing.

The Pirates were the National League's answer to the A's in the 1970s when it came to funky uniforms. They had a handful of uniform combinations during their World Series run in 1979, and it's also a good bet that it'll be a long time before we see an MLB team wearing black jerseys with yellow pants as anything other than throwbacks.

The Philadelphia Phillies and Baltimore Orioles also experimented with all-color uniforms in the '70s, but the Cleveland Indians were notorious for their blood-red uniforms back then. Just look at the contrast to the relatively tame uniforms of the Boston Red Sox here.

Of all the wacky uniforms in the 1970s, nobody had a weirder look than the Chicago White Sox. If this look shocks you, then we suggest you go look for the version of this uniform that came with shorts. You read that right — shorts.

While pinstripes are all well and good, sometimes you can reach a level of overkill. The Cincinnati Reds of the mid-1990s accomplished this feat when they topped what would have been a classic uniform with pinstriped hats.

While the 1970s were a weird time, teams in the 1990s figured that the future would be even weirder. Hence, the infamous Turn Ahead the Clock uniforms, which is where we got oversized logos on the front and vertical nameplates on the back. 

When the Devil Rays entered MLB in the late '90s, they did so with gradients all over the place. There were gradients on the hats! There were gradients on the jerseys! Gradients on the sleeves! It looks wacky now, but it was cool back then.

The designer of the Rays' "faux-back" uniform deserves props for coming up with a historically imaginary uniform that would fit right in with all of the zany uniforms that we saw back in the '70s. 

The Rays went a step further in 2014 by actually coming up with an away uniform for their imaginary throwbacks. Again, if the Rays actually existed back then, these uniforms would not have looked out of place at all.

The Arizona Diamondbacks pushed the baseball uniform envelope to the extreme with these uniforms that included strange piping, mini-diamond patterns on the bottom of the pants legs and the back of the jerseys, and an inexplicable splash of teal on their alternate uniforms. The uniforms were so extreme that the Diamondbacks actually toned it down a bit for 2017, which means that you're looking at a bit of a rarity here.

If you think things are weird here in North America, then take a look at these plaid uniforms that the Orix Buffaloes from the Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan wore in 2016. You won't see anything like this at Yankee Stadium, that's for sure. 

However, Japan has nothing on what the minor leagues deliver on a normal basis. Yes, the El Paso Chihuahuas actually wore this uniform on the field for a regular-season game. 

No, the Eugene Emeralds aren't out there stretching in casual wear. Those are actually baseball jerseys and pants. Welcome to "Portlandia."

Minor league baseball teams have paid tribute to plenty of TV shows over the years, but none of them went as far as the Frederick Keys did when they decided to dress their entire team in the outfit that Chuckie from "Rugrats" wore. 

Of all the weird minor league baseball uniforms out there, it's hard to top what the Fresno Grizzlies did when they had their team wear baseball versions of the mariachi get-up that the main characters of the cult classic "Three Amigos" film wore.