A seller claims a jersey from Paul Hornung’s rookie year is actually black. Is that possible?
It’s one thing to auction off a game-used jersey from one of the most notable players in Packers history. It’s an entirely different thing to claim that the jersey actually rewrites that history.
But that’s what’s going on right now at Heritage Auctions, where the venerable sports memorabilia company is selling a jersey from Paul Hornung’s rookie season — a jersey they describe as being black, rather than the Packers famous green or historic blue.
Speaking with the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Heritage consignment director Tony Giese says after examining the jersey, he believes it’s definitely black, which would obviosly be a significant development. The Packers did wear dark blue uniforms throughout the early portions of their history, but Giese says a close look at the Hornung shirt reveals that it’s black.
“The thing that really switched this whole thing was when you could peel away a little bit of the 5 (on the Hornung) jersey, and you can see it is definitely black,” he said. “Without that, I don’t know if we could really definitively say it was black or if it was navy. … When the jersey faded, it did give the appearance that it might have been grayish or a little bit of blue in it.”
That’s an extraordinary claim and, as the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Can we find any to substantiate Giese’s claims, other than what he says he saw? As the Press-Gazette writes, “If that number on the back of the jersey wasn’t missing, and the jersey wasn’t photo-matched, it might be a lot more difficult to convince doubters, although some longtime Packers fans and collectors might still insist it’s blue.”
Well, I guess you can consider me a doubter, because if there’s evidence from someone other than Heritage Auctions that the Packers wore black in 1957 — or in any other season — it’s in extremely short supply.
Let’s start with what the Packers say about themselves. If the Packers wore black uniforms in 1957, they were wearing something that ran counter to what the team itself described as its official team colors. According to the Packers’ 1957 Media Guide, available here via the Internet Archive, the Packers’ official colors in 1957 were “navy blue, green and gold.” That’s significant, because that would have been Hornung’s rookie year, aligning with the photo matching from Heritage Auctions.
Heritage Auctions also claims they’ve matched the jersey to several games outside the 1957 season, including an intra-squad scrimmage in August of 1958. Here’s a photo of Hornung from that game; you can see pretty clearly he’s wearing a dark-colored jersey, but is it black? Obviously it’s impossible to tell from the picture itself, but referring again to what the Packers themselves said, Hornung was playing for the “Blue” team in the Packers’ preseason intrasquad Blue/White games. Here’s the box score for the scrimmage — Hornung scored a touchdown for the Blues. Why would the Packers call them the Blues if they wore black?
Digging further into Packers history, I think there’s even more reason to be skeptical of the claim that the Packers wore black. The uniform design in question first appeared in 1954, and we can find an article from 1955 addressing a fun controversy that directly speaks to our uniform question. In September 1955, the Bears were slated to visit the Packers in Green Bay, and the Packers requested that the Bears wear contrasting uniforms — because their uniforms were an identical shade of navy blue to what the Packers wore. Here are the crucial paragraphs from the article in question (emphasis mine):
Since the Packers changed to their blue jerseys last year, efforts have been made by the Bays to get the Bears to switch from their blue jerseys for the game in Green Bay. The Packers had no luck last year. Ditto ‘55!
Under league rules the home team has the choice of jersey and the visiting team is supposed to provide a contrasting jersey…which is what the Packers did when they played in Chicago last year; they wore all-gold so that they wouldn’t blend the Packer blue with the Bear blue. Both, incidentally, are Navy blue.
That gives us another data point about what the Packers were wearing; if the uniform design Heritage Auctions claims is black actually was, it would have had to be identical to the Bears’ uniforms from the same era, but someone who saw both teams play said they were both in navy blue. I don’t know if that’s quite a smoking gun, but it’s close.
Incidentally, the Bears didn’t back down from their stance. They wore navy blue for their trip to Green Bay, and boy the photos from that game are a mess. A bad uniform matchup aside, the Packers won 24-3.
There is other circumstantial evidence to consider. Game programs from the 1950s regularly show the Packers in blue or green — never black. This program, in particular, shows the Packers with an almost identical set to the one in the Hornung auction. Sure, there was a lot more artistic license for game programs back then (check this wild one out!), but if the Packers were wearing black, it feels important that nobody seems to have put it on the record.
The same goes for sports cards of the time. Bart Starr’s 1958 card is the closest to looking like any kind of black uniform, but his 1957 rookie card looks pretty blue to me. Same for this 1958 team photo card, this 1959 Jerry Kramer card, or this 1957 set of cards. If Hornung’s 1957 jersey is black, it seems like he was the only player from that era with a jersey that color.
So is the jersey now being sold by Heritage Auctions actually black? I’m not going to say definitively without seeing it myself, and fabric colors can always change over time. But if we’re going to try to rewrite Packers history, there’s a lot more work to be done. I feel pretty confident saying the Packers have only worn green, blue, gold, and white jerseys on the field. For now, the only black Packers uniforms you’re going to find are marketing novelties.