Wearing of the Green

A story about how the Reds broke out green uniforms for St. Patrick's Day in 1978:

Throughout Florida and Arizona, baseball goes green today, and it has nothing to do with recycling or carbon footprints. Green caps, green bases, maybe an occasional green bat donut -- and sure and begorrah to all.
But long before St. Patrick's Day became sort of the unofficial holiday of Spring Training, even long before the Majors had their own snakes to cope with -- the Diamondbacks, of course -- there was only a former Ice Capades honcho with an eye for hoopla.
Back in 1978, March 17 around Spring Training camps was known simply as ... Friday.
Maybe Cincinnati Reds general manager Dick Wagner was bored after tooling the Big Red Machine into back-to-back World Series winners in 1975 and 1976. Maybe he grew nostalgic for the days when his gimmicks popularized the Ice Capades. Or maybe he just liked pulling a fast one.
Whatever it was, months before the Reds departed for their Spring Training camp in Tampa, Wagner had this brilliant thought. Most people struck by ingenuity would be eager to call others and share their idea, but Wagner went the other way: He kept it to himself.
The sole exception was Koch's Sporting Goods, the Reds' longtime outfitter. Wagner had the team's equipment manager, Bernie Stowe, order a roster's worth of green uniforms, with specific instructions of where and when to deliver them, under a veil of airtight secrecy.

Update: 14 days until Opening Day