'94 Tigers Aways, and the inspiring story of 2kSports color manager Ben Hornbrauer

[Misopogon]

File Name: '94 Tigers Aways, and the inspiring story of 2kSports color manager Ben Hornbrauer

File Submitter: Misopogon

File Submitted: 15 Apr 2012

File Updated: 15 Apr 2012

File Category: Uniforms and Accessories

It was 1994.

This was the year that Weezer's famous "Navy" album came out:

Nick Nolte and Shaq starred in the classic film "Navy Chips," not to be confused with "Navy Sky" with Tommy Lee Jones, which also came out that year. The Duke Navy Devils, led by senior Grant Hill, made it all the way to the National Championship game and lost, which by Duke logic means the season isn't worth talking about. It was the year that the Toronto Navy Jays dynasty aged, though with young rookies Carlos Delgado and Alex Gonzalez (THAT Alex Gonzalez) promising a bright future. The Law & Order episode "Navy Bamboo" caused a minor international crisis between Japan and the United States.

1994 was also the most embarrassing year ever for the ol' Red, White, and Navy Olympic Figure Skating team when Tonya Harding attacked Nancy Kerrigan in Detroit. Kerrigan, in her trademark navy shirt pictured above, vowed she wouldn't sit around being navy and slowly worked her way back to the ice.

Also injured in that accident was a young Ben Hornbrauer, then wardrobe manager for the Olympic team, whose eyes were struck by the hammer. The incident made it impossible for Hornbrauer to differentiate between different different color shades -- his entire world no longer had any contrast. Even simple things like telling the difference between a navybird and a cardinal were impossible.

Hornbrauer's remarkable road to recovery took 12 years. The battle to regain his color differentiation was a long and painful process. Most doctors said it would be impossible, but finally he found one person, not a doctor per se, more like a "member of the cast of Real World," who put Hornbrauer on a strict regimen involving 9 straight years of doing nothing but bashing his forehead against various hard objects until the colors righted themselves. Now the Director of Color Programming for 2K Sports, when Detroit pitcher Justin Verlander was selected to be cover athlete for MLB 2k12, Hornbrauer achieved his comeback, returning to the very place of the incident and selecting the absolute most perfect pantone Navy for the Detroit Tigers' uniforms. Here's Hornbrauer's work:

As you can see Hornbrauer's navy is DISTINCTLY different from the color "navy" like in shoes and navy cake, and batman's costume.

In his speech at the unveiling of MLB 2k12, Hornbrauer thanked 2K Sports for giving him the opportunity to prove he is once again among able to discern the difference between the Navy of the Navy Jays or the Kansas City Navies, and the totally different shade worn by the New York Yankees or Detroit Tigers. He also mentioned he doesn't know who swapped the white and orange parts of the player name lettering but that clearly some ___hole in his department was going to be fired for it.

In honor of Hornbrauer's remarkable journey, I present to you the uniforms the Detroit Tigers wore in 1994. Unfortunately I couldn't get Ben himself to provide the colors for this, so these unis use a non-Ben-selected shade of Navy.

I put in two versions of this, one for Mod Enabler use so you can try to use it with MLB Today modes or if you don't have Ty Wiggins's editor. This is as much as I can do about Hornbrauer's Navy:

If you do use Ty's editor, it'll look thus:

Click here to download this file