How Many Is Too Many?

For the vast majority of the history of baseball, most teams wore just one type of cap per season. In the mid-19th century, "Road/Away" game caps began to appear. Then "alternate' caps and "spring training/batting practice" caps. In the 90s came patches on the caps of players in the All-Star game and on the caps of teams in the World Series, which gave birth to patches on caps for the post-season in general. Since then, we've seen patches on caps for multiple reasons, most notably retiring Yankees players and an American flag patch on 9/11.


 1995 Atlanta Braves cap with World Series patch.


In the last decade we've begun to see "theme" caps. Caps that may differ in design and/or color from the regular on-field cap for a specific team. Most prominently is the "Stars and Stripes" collection worn on the 4th of July and camouflage caps worn on Memorial Day. Teams have also done green caps environmental causes and pink caps for Mother's Day and breast cancer awareness. "Turn Back The Clock Caps" are another story...

2014 Chicago White Sox Mothers Day Cap

Minor league teams have just begun to catch on to this trend. Minor league teams have never done patches on caps very often. Usually they're done if a team is hosting an All-Star game that season or if the team had won a championship the previous season. Minor League teams have been doing theme jerseys for a while now, but some teams have decided to go all-out with matching caps. In fact, my local San Jose Giants wore a total of FIVE different theme caps this past season (they already have four different on-field caps) to go along with corresponding jerseys. They have been doing this for the past three seasons. They wore even more special jerseys but paired them with one of the four on-field caps the team regularly uses. Some teams may just do one, and some teams don't do any at all.

2015 San Jose Giants Caps (on-field bottom row, theme caps top row): Batting practice/alternate, home, road/alternate, alternate. Memorial Day, "Relay For Life" Cancer Charity, 4th of July, Breast Cancer Awareness, Italian Heritage Night)

Common Minor League Theme Caps:

"Turn Back The Clock" - Common in MLB but not MiLB, However, some teams still do it.
"What Could Have Been" - Team wears a prototype uniform or a different name that was being considered before the team's first season
"Memorial Day Camo" - Identical to MLB
"4th of July Stars And Stripes" - Identical to MLB
"Cancer Charity/Awareness" - Typically a purple cap
"Breast Cancer Awareness" - Typically a pink cap
"Heritage Night" - celebrates an ethnic group, usually Irish or Italian

The questions now are... How much is too much? Should every cause or celebration get its own cap? Should teams stick with a couple of regular caps, or the more the merrier? Personally I enjoy many of these caps, much to the dismay of my bank account...

Comments

  1. general managerOctober 13, 2015 at 8:26 AM

    Beautiful cap,.
    searchexpert

    ReplyDelete
  2. mp34October 18, 2015 at 12:28 PM

    I'm going to go against the grain here & say 3 is too many. Home & road caps are enough. I've never liked the Stars & Stripes caps or the camouflage thing and I don't think anything needs to be celebrated. My issues are caps being made in China, polyester instead of wool, 3-D embroidery & all these patches & MLB logos but most importantly logo accuracy.
    The whole problem is sales are the only motivation behind this. There's no logical reason why a team should wear a cap only once or twice in a season then discard it. It's wasteful. But worst of all, most of these alternate caps are ugly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. mmastroNovember 1, 2015 at 12:48 AM

    Hi,
    I just got this Yankee cap and its a strange hybrid
    The NY logo is Roman's stitching from years 61/62 from what i could tell (with McAuliffe logo still in business )
    The logo says KM pro
    The bill has 7 rows of stitches like a KM pro
    but without the stamp and no zigzag on the inside front. also the white fluting around the inside is plastic like the NewEra caps of the late 70s.



    Thanks.
    Mike Mastrogiacomo

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rose MariaDecember 2, 2015 at 9:25 AM

    How do you wear a beanie?
    Beanie Hats

    ReplyDelete
  5. STEVENMay 29, 2016 at 7:12 PM

    I know that,most of the game are needed ball cap.Baseball game is also needed Ball cap.You talk about this.For baseball game we also needed
    best softball bats.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownDecember 10, 2016 at 7:36 AM

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  9. linnea sandelOctober 19, 2021 at 4:27 AM

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