End-Of-The-Season Thoughts and My First Pro-Model Cap

First off, congrats to the San Francisco Giants on winning the World Series! In my opinion, both the Giants and Rangers deserved to win. However, since I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, it feels great to have a local team win. Unfortunately I didn't get to watch it, I was driving to Los Angeles and had to listen to it on the radio.

I learned an interesting cap-related fact while watching the Series. Apparently Giants manager Bruce Bochy has such a large head that his cap is a custom-made size 8 1/8!

Now that the season is over, it's time to wonder what new caps will debut next season and which ones will be phased out. Apparently the Cleveland Indians have ALREADY introduced a new alternate cap and got rid of the one with the cursive "I". I am always too slow to go out and buy recently-phased-out caps before they disappear from stores. The last one I bought was the Chicago Cubs road cap that was phased out after the 2008 season. That cap is one of my personal favorites, and was the first pro-model cap I ever owned. I don't remember when and where I got it, but I wore it practically every day of my life between the ages of nine and ten. I wore it so much that the "C" logo turned white. I don't know what ever happened to it, I'm sure my mother probably threw it away. Below is a picture of yours truly, I'm guessing circa 1995 or 1996, at my grandmother's house on Easter Sunday. My aunt's old wiener dog is behind me.


Feel free to share your story of your first cap in the comments section!

Comments

  1. My first pro-model cap was a traditional blue & orange Mets one, bought when I was either finishing junior high or starting high school ... probably about 1990 or so.

    I wore it quite frequently, but it got retired by the end of high school because it didn't really fit so well anymore. I'm not sure what happened to it after that.

    Funny thing, I didn't get another Mets blue & orange cap until last year.

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  2. My first-ever baseball cap resulted in me picking my baseball team. It was 1984, and McDonalds was having a mesh cap giveaway of the Cubs & Sox. I looked up at the menu board at the pics of the two caps, and my mom asked me which one I wanted. I thought about the Cubs one first, but then decided, "I think I'll take the Sox one", which surprised my WGN-obsessed mother. At the time, I was 5 or 6 years old, and figured I'd be back soon to get the Cubs cap. It never happened. Luckily I learned that you shouldn't like both Chicago baseball teams: it's one or the other. It would be another 3 years before I watched baseball on a regular basis, and another 2 before I started reading about it in the Tribune & became a full-fledged baseball fan. The '89 NLCS slammed the door on any possible Cub fandom, and good riddance.

    I remember the 1980s as being a heavily Cubs town, with classmate ratios of Cubs/Sox fans about 30:2. Once the Sox revealed in 1990 their new black & silver colors and with a brand new stadium to boot, the trend overwhelmingly reversed. Until the Strike and the rise of Sammy Sosuck, of course.

    As for my first pro-model cap, it was a 1991 The Pro White Sox cap size 7 with the 1992 added MLB patch on back, which I bought for $17 at Sportmart. Growing up with horrible awkward, itchy uncomfortable mesh snap-back caps, seeing & owning my very own fitted wool cap was pretty damn cool. Tho the MLB patch was about 1/2" too high on the back (just above where the top of the sweatband was), which my asshole middle school classmates thought to mock. Soon I detached the patch and sewed it lower by hand with thread & needle. I wore that thing all the time, eventually it got so soiled with sweat & oil, I had to wash the sweatband by hand which only resulted in temporary cleansing, and the logo itself which was flat, got stained brown, where I eventually used WhiteOut to restore the whiteness. Eventually after daily use, the sweatband at the front wore away itself, and the cap no longer fit me. The cap was tossed along with a few other smaller & sweat-stained MLB caps of various teams (Padres, Marlins teal/black brim road, road Cardinals, home "M" Brewers) pro-model caps a few years later.

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  3. Oh I want to add that changes for MLB teams for the next season is usually June 1st, and teams typically debut new season gear just after the World Series in time for Black Friday & holiday sales. The days of waiting until Opening Day to unveil are long gone. The 1992 Phillies were I think the last team to do it.

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  4. My first pro cap was bought in 1972, a KM Pro NY Mets cap purchased at Joe Torre's sporting goods store on 83rd and 13th Avenue in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. The store was amazing as it was full of Joe's memorabilia as a Cardinal having just won the NL MVP in 1971. Prior to this, I had never seen a pro field cap anywhere before and had wanted and looked for one since I started following the Mets in 1968. What was really great was that the Torre brothers were able to get every teams' caps and they had them all, every team. The price.....$8.95. I wore that cap every day, 12 months a year and bought a couple of them but wore them out over the years.

    I very recently picked up a brand new old stock KM Pro Mets cap size 7 3/8 in perfect new condition (never worn) but it is from the last year KM Pro produced them in the 70's and has the white cloth sweatband. I'm still looking for a leather band KM Pro in 7 3/8 if anyone knows of one. To me, my favorite baseball cap of all time. I would also love to have an Orioles cap from the late 60s/early 70s with the smiling bird....always loved the look of that cap.

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