“Do you like my hat?”

I suppose there was a time when baseball caps were worn only for playing baseball. I should like to hear the complete and unabridged history of the invention and popularization of the baseball cap.

Just in case you feel the same way, let me tell you it isn’t in the encyclopedia. However if you google baseball cap history, you will return about 1,300.000 entries, which is a lot of history. The first and second sites disagreed on which baseball team first wore them, so history, schmistory, I made one up and here it is.

One hot summer day, at the height of baseball season, Ty Cobb (probably the earliest baseball players that I know of) complained to his manager that the sun got in his eyes when he stood in centerfield (if he played centerfield), and he needed something to shade his eyes. The manager took the problem to his wife who borrowed her son’s beanie and sewed a bill on it.

Ty was a pioneer who wasn’t afraid to show up in never-before-seen headgear, so he tried it out the next game, and it worked pretty well. The seamstress had the foresight to make it in the team’s colors, and the skill to put a block letter on the front of it.

Soon the left fielder and the second baseman wanted one too. And the catcher, who had been looking for something to keep his hair clean when he replaced his mask after throwing it in the dirt around home plate, asked for one too. It didn’t take him long to realize that wearing it backwards was about the only way he was going to be able to wear it at all. (Credit catchers with being first to wear baseball caps backwards.)

Fans and fishermen were probably the first to wear baseball caps off the playing field. Fans wanted to look just like Ty, and fishermen wanted a place to put their flies. From there it snowballed. Truck drivers began to wear them, as did farmers and bald men. Cowboys discovered that a baseball cap fit into the cab of a pickup truck better than a Stetson did, so baseball caps crossed over into the rigid realm of cowboy attire.

Sometime during the 70s it was discovered that the sun got into the eyes of women also, and so the baseball cap crossed another line—the gender line. About that same time denim pants crossed the same line, and one just followed the other.

Baseball caps began to appear in more types of social settings, and they began to be worn to make a fashion statement as well as a literal statement.
Which just about brings us up to the present. Everyone needs a few baseball caps in his or her wardrobe. One to wear to the mall, one to wear jogging, one for visiting friends, one for camp, one to wear to school outside of class, one to wear to work, and oh yes, one to wear to the ballgame.

You can say just about anything with your baseball cap, as well. But pay attention. Make sure that the cap you wear and the way you wear it, i.e. frontward, sideways, backward, inside out, makes the correct statement about your political preferences, your lifestyle, your socio-economic attachments, etc. If you think a baseball cap is neutral, you are mistaken. It can cross the gender line, but be careful about taking it across any other lines. It sits up there on top of your head like a billboard. It isn’t like a wallet that hides in your pocket. Make sure it makes the correct statement.

Well, not a bad reconstruction of history given the evidence in the closet, right? It was easy. Someone needed a sunshade in centerfield and the hat scene is changed for ever after.

I was thinking I could take this history thing a step further and tackle that more useless part of the baseball uniform—the stirrup—but I am having a hard time with it. Which baseball player walked up to his manager and said, “Hey Joe, now my socks don’t match my cap.”?