The Better Half of the Color Scheme

When I was a kid the competitive events that most stirred my adrenaline were not Little League games (parentally forbidden to join), nor intramural sports (too scrawny), but the annual summer camp meets known as "Color War." Subsequent history may have made that term as un-p.c. and archaic as "Ayds" diet wafers, but at the time this was an innocent reference to the division of the campers into two teams for athletic and a few intellectual contests. (My performance created a mixed bag of memories. I vividly recall dropping a line drive to lose a crucial softball game; the image is as clear to me now as that of the shark attacking the chum in "Jaws." But then, I annually kicked ass in the Spelling Bee.) The two squads were designated by the camp colors--in the case of Camp Marudy, red and gray. Team members were encouraged to dress appropriately, so one team was clad in monochromatic grays, whites and blacks, and the other donned oranges, pinks and reds. Prepubescent girls would lead the fight songs with lofty lyrics like "We're the red team/we're the red team/We're the better half of the color scheme/We can dance/we can prance/we can tell at a glance/that the other team doesn't stand a chance."

Little did they know that 40 years later some idle researchers would delve into the science of team colors and determine, as reported in the Los Angeles Times last week, that "red" teams do have an advantage over any other color, and have won a disproportionate number of games, in both college and professional sports. I had some trouble reconciling this finding with my experience. Most great professional franchises I've known--the Yankees, Cowboys, Dolphins, Celtics, and Dodgers--fall to the blue/green side of the spectrum. Okay, the Patriots, current football kings, do wear red, as do the Red Sox, though neither has a history of domination. Baseball teams with red trim include the Cardinals, Phillies, Rangers, Angels and (duh) the Reds, a mixed bag skewing slightly favorable. Red does not appear on a lot of NFL jerseys. College teams are more likely to showcase scarlet hues, like my alma mater, Pennsylvania ("Hurrah for the Red and the Blue"). Notably, Penn's athletic program, trifling by NCAA standards, is usually tops in the Ivy League.

Trying to enumerate the performances of all red-hued teams is an exercise better suited for geeky computer statisticians, but it leads me to consider the status of red as perhaps the favorite color of human beings. The preference is not culturally specific. Americans love red, but in China it is even more revered, as denoting good fortune. In fact, didn't we used to call their land mass "Red China" in the pre-Reagan era? The fact that the International Communist movement swathed itself in red banners never really created a cultural backlash in the Capitalist world the way German terms like "sauerkraut" were quashed during World War I or French fries became "Freedom Fries" after Dubya's Iraq invasion. Okay, there was the "Red Menace" and "red-baiting," and we still rolled out the red carpet for swanky events. Red is just too pretty.

I was never a major red rooter, though I do appreciate its standout quality. It always seemed rather garish and unsubtle. I prefer blue, whose myriad shades connote a variety of moods, usually relaxing to the spirit. There aren't as many vareties of red, and all of them tend to excite and convey heat or intensity (whence, perhaps, comes some of its athletic utility). Blue is an ethereal color, the sky providing our universal scenic backdrop, and is reflected in our seas, creating our "Big Blue Marble" planetary icon. Red provides the occasional punctuation on the landscape, in fields of roses, in tomato gardens, and most regrettably, in the blood constantly being shed in the nature's battle for food and mankind's battles for God and Country.

To my eyes red is as much a disquieting, alarmist tone as a hue of luck or beauty. Aren't fire trucks red? When we "see red," it's in anger, not joy (though to be fair, there is also the phrase "feeling blue"). We don't want our finances to be in the red. If you drive a red car you are more likely to be stopped for a traffic infraction than for any other shade. Red is the color of embarrassment. Although the "red carpet" connotes status, do we really want a red carpet in our homes--or on our bedroom walls? For every "red-letter day," there's a scarlet letter on some poor woman's chest. Let's face it, a little red goes a long way. The only place I wear red is in Las Vegas. (Well, a billion Chinese can't all be wrong).

For the record, in my seven years at Camp Marudy, I was on the gray team six times, the red team only once. In those seven year the red team won three times, lost four--a statistic unlikely to have been included in that research project, lest it undermine the final results. But for all the success of the Gray Team, you don't see a lot of professional squads donning the Good Old Gray. Graying is not something our culture likes to celebrate.