St. Petersburg Times, November 3rd 1995

At first they were going to be blue and gold. Of course they were. Vince Naimoli, the managing general partner of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, is a fervent Notre Dame supporter.

But eventually, at the prodding of - and subliminal dressing by - a key Major League Baseball official, Naimoli agreed to broaden his spectrum as far as the colors that would make up the Devil Rays' uniforms.

Blue and gold were out. Purple, black and a special blending of purple, black, dark blue, light blue, green and yellow were in.

The Devil Rays unveiled their 1998 game uniforms Thursday at the Florida Aquarium.

The home uniform is white with purple trim. The road uniform is gray with black trim. An alternate game jersey is black with a ribbon of multicolor trim on the sleeve. The home and alternate jerseys have Devil Rays on the front, the road jersey Tampa Bay, all three with the words and logo in a snazzy multicolor blend. The jerseys are button-down and the pants belted at the waist.

The team also showed off a purple home batting-practice jersey and a black road batting-practice jersey.

"It's probably one of the more aggressive uniforms of the 30 teams," said Anne Occi, vice president of design service for Major League Baseball Properties. "However, it's also steeped in tradition."

Occi did extensive research on the project, learning about the devil ray and the Tampa Bay area. A key to the uniforms was the use of the gradated color blend, which used a new fabric pattern (glacier twill) and a new process of blending the colors, to better reflect the colors of the area.

Then Occi set about persuading Naimoli and other team officials to use purple and black - two supposedly "hot" colors - as the accents, pointing out that they represent the deep water a devil ray lives in. She went as far as wearing purple-and-black outfits to her meetings with Naimoli.

"Purple is the perfect accent to the different aquatic colors, and the black with the gray," Occi said. "He was sold on the pallette, but he didn't want to be dominant with purple. Then when we started working with the gradation of colors, he fell in love with purple."

The Devil Rays, Arizona Diamondbacks (who also unveiled uniforms Thursday) and Colorado Rockies are the only teams to wear purple.

The more Naimoli saw of the possibilities, the more he liked. At one point, he actually wanted to use more of the multicolor trim, but the team's top baseball operations officials, Chuck LaMar and Bill Livesey, reined him back in.

"We headed more toward fashion, and we worked our way back toward tradition," Naimoli said.

Occi and team officials went through another series of meetings. Three uniform versions were actually produced, then tweaked and altered. There was even a screen test at the ThunderDome, with photographs taken and videos shot of models wearing the uniforms on a green carpet laid over the Tampa Bay Lightning's ice rink.

"It's traditional, especially the road uniform, yet it's something unique too," said LaMar, the general manager. "We walked that fine line between cutting edge and tradition. I think they're great."

The uniforms will be on display Sunday at the team's FanFest at the ThunderDome (11 a.m.-5 p.m.). Authentic versions and replicas of the home and alternate jerseys will be on sale. The team on Sunday is also expected to introduce a third version of its cap - one with a purple top and black bill.

Occi said the Rays merchandise should be a big seller nationally because of the color schemes. "It's going to be awesome," she said.