Dodger Blue

Lore & Background

The Dodgers were never referred to as wearing Dodger Blue during their time in Brooklyn, although some now refer to them as representing 'True Dodger Blue'. The concept originated by Tommy Lasorda who popularized it with his saying 'Cut me and I'll bleed Dodger blue.' Lasorda managed the franchise in Los Angeles for 21 seasons from 1976 to 1996, starting in September 1976, and was on the player roster of the Brooklyn Dodgers, though he played for them only very briefly. In 1989, the team's famous Dodger blue was added to a color database. Paul Raveling, a software engineer who in 1989 was working at the Information Sciences Institute at USC, had been 'tuning' colors to be properly displayed on computer monitors. He proposed a major update to the list of color names that were supported by the X11 user interface system, including one called 'dodgerblue'. Eventually, that list of colors would be incorporated into web browsers, which allow programmers writing HTML or CSS to type a color name instead of a code.

In Their Own Story

The sun dipped below the San Gabriel Mountains, casting long shadows across the pristine grass of center field. In section 34, an old man sat beside a young child, both wearing caps that seemed cut from the same cloth despite decades between them. The fabric on his brim was frayed; the child's was crisp and new, yet the hue remained unmistakable—a vibrant, defiant Dodger Blue. As the team took the field, the man tapped his chest where a small blue patch sat over his heart, sharing a silent acknowledgment with the kid beside him. When the first pitch was thrown, the roar of the crowd rose like a tide, a sea of blue hats bobbing in unison, bridging the gap between two coasts and eighty years of history without a single word spoken.

Reader's Guide

The actual blue that the Dodgers currently wear is RGB-hex #005A9C. It is a shade of royal blue. Regarding the web color's RGB values, Paul Raveling notes that 'The color tuning was done on HP monitors and the colors turned out very good then. The catch is that since then, monitors seemed to have standardized on different gamma corrections.' The current standard RGB color space was defined in 1996, seven years after 'dodgerblue'.

Did You Know?

• The web color 'dodgerblue' is not used in the Dodgers' uniform but resembles the lighter blue used throughout Dodger Stadium.
• Tommy Lasorda popularized the phrase 'Cut me and I'll bleed Dodger blue.'
• Paul Raveling added 'dodgerblue' to the X11 color list in 1989 while working at USC's Information Sciences Institute.