From the Desk of Friar Gully

The Padres may be young and unproven, but the start of the 2010 season shows this team is different.

Change is the key word in San Diego and, as I mentioned in my last column, new owner Jeff Moorad and his crew are starting to put their own stamp on the Padres franchise. There is a new attitude and a new way of doing things at Petco Park.

The fact that your humble writer is also a uniform buff, is a new look for the Padres also right around the corner?

When new owners take over, they usually not only put their imprint on the team, front office and the community, they also give their team a branding and visual makeover. With the staggered purchase process for Moorad over the past two seasons, the time came and went last season when the work could have been done to change the brand and the on-field uniforms for 2010. The team has said, in recent interviews with Tom Garfinkel, that they are considering some changes.

Moorad, when he became the managing partner with the Arizona Diamondbacks, also pushed the reset button on the Snake’s outdated, southwestern motif for the new Sedona red they currently wear on the field. He has a record of changing things up and the Padres won’t be any different, if he follows the same track.

I for one, would welcome a change, or perhaps, a rewind.

When John Moores unveiled the team's current “wave” inspired logo and color scheme, it was largely met with yawns. While they were better than the Padres previous blue and white uniforms (which replaced the popular pinstripes of 1996 and 1998), they were very “corporate” and not as traditional as some had hoped.

Moorad now has the opportunity to really make the Padres brand and uniforms unique. Let’s not try and be the Milwaukee Brewers this time. The team can create a brand that will excited and motivate the fan to buy more merchandise.

A visit to the Padres Store inside Petco Park may point the owner into the right direction. When I visited this past Sunday, nearly half of the store is filled with brown and yellow Padres throwback gear. That tells me there is a demand and that the stuff sells. Dare I suggest the Padres go back to (what some dub) the dreaded brown color scheme the concocted in 1969?

Before you start talking about how ugly brown is, let me give its due.

If you look at the Padres 1969 uniforms, they are as attractive a uniform as you can have with the brown scheme. They resemble the off-white, creamy color of the current San Francisco Giants uniforms with small amounts of brown and yellow. The solid brown hat with interlocking “SD” also was great. The road grays did the same thing with “San Diego” on the front replacing the home “Padres.”

Many people argue against the brown because they say it doesn’t sell as well. Perhaps that was true, but today’s styles and designers use brown effectively. As was evidenced by the Padres store this weekend, brown is back and people are willing to plunk down cash to buy it.

For me, the other option would be to replace the current blue and sand theme for a dark green and sand theme. If you look at the Padres hats for Sunday military games, that’s a nice hat. The dark green and sand color are very unique and look like nothing else in the Major Leagues. To that end, there still needs to be a logo, mark and uniform redesign if they go that way.

I for one would love to see Moorad celebrate the heritage of the Padres and the meaning of the team name and go back to the 1969 brown and yellow uniforms, with a little modernization. They’re subtle, traditional and they don’t overdue the colors as happened with the “banana” duds of the 1970s.

Either way, we will see a new look in San Diego next season. Let’s hope it’s a throwback to a time when the optimism in Mission Valley mimics what we’re seeing today downtown.

Follow FriarGully, aka Scott Gulbransen, on Twitter @sdgully. You can find him in Section 134 on Wednesdays and Sundays. Just be aware he’s allergic to Cubs and Dodgers fans.