Acme Packing Company
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...
