27 Aug 2009, by Ted
There's an interesting profile about the New Era hat makers in the New York Times today. It's a business that has, more and more, catered to an audience outside of baseball purists, including fashion taste-makers. Despite the overall trend towards flashy fashion caps, as tirelessly documented on the Strictly Fitteds blog, the recession has caused New Era to return to its core business of selling fans official MLB hats.
The article is a good enough reason to think about baseball caps for a minute or two. We might start with the players themselves, who get a brief mention in the article, describing a visit to MLB clubhouses by a New Era dude:
Each year, Dave Aichinger from New Era visits every clubhouse in the majors to make sure the players have enough caps. These days, the biggest issue for the players is the height of the crown. Younger players like a lower crown while older players prefer a higher one.
Some players pull out the white gauze that absorbs sweat on the inside of the cap. Other players want their hats to have a starched look. Some players consider it bad luck when extra decals are added to commemorate anniversaries.
“It’s all about tradition and superstition,” Aichinger said.
Each team has a credit through M.L.B. to buy caps. The Boston Red Sox, one of the more superstitious teams, rarely change a thing, while the Pittsburgh Pirates issue new caps almost every month, Aichinger said. Roger Clemens used to change his caps several times a game to stay dry, while Orel Hershiser used to paint the underside of his visor black to help him focus.
The players have enormous influence on the marketplace, whether it’s a well-worn cap made famous by John Wetteland or the caps with earflaps that became popular after the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays wore them in last year’s World Series.
There are many more strata of baseball caps in the stands, without the rigors of MLB standards.
You'll often see those soiled, decrepit caps that seem welded onto the head of a given fan, even if it's a cheaply made promo cap given out at a mid-season game in 1988. "Why don't you wear that bad boy into the shower every once in a while," a nearby fellow fan wants to whisper. There must be a story there. Maybe it was a great game, or a game attended with someone special. It's a cap with a story, whatever that might be.
Others wear the pristine "dad cap" that looks like it's been kept in a glass case at home. I call it a dad cap because it's worn the way my dad wears his baseball caps: high and tight, looming over the brow like a general. (Omar Vizquel wears a dad cap.)
[caption id="attachment_879" align="aligncenter" width="184" caption="Dad cap."]
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Caps are also a simple way for fans to declare their favor for one of a team's logo iterations over another, via the retro cap. If you still like the Rangers' blocky T from the Nolan Ryan era, go for it. Never much cared for the new Blue Jays modern artwork? Fire up that Kelly Gruber white panel number and live it like it's 1990. With a baseball cap, unlike a jersey or a jacket or even a t-shirt, kicking it retro is possible without being overbearing. It's a simple statement, the cap, in complicated times.
Then there's the New Era era cap, with all manner of gyrations and patters and logo sizes apparently, according to the above article, ushered in by Spike Lee's 1996 request for a red Yankees cap. Call it a complicated statement in complicated times, with a post-modern commentary on tribalism and the sanctity of symbols. Is a Yankees hat still a Yankees hat if it's red? Or is it something else entirely? Is an American flag still an American flag if it's upside down, or on fire? Not every fashion capper considers these ponderous questions, but it's not a stretch to suggest that even a few color changes can change the visual landscape of fandom, like a user-driven Wikipedia of symbology.
I've experienced the downside of this fashion cap era myself, as I'm guessing you have too if you've spent any time in an away city. On several occasions I've seen folks around with an Astros cap on. "Hey, Astros," I've said awkwardly, throwing out the double thumbs up. But the Astros-cap-wearer gives me a funny look: "Oh, sorry man, I just like the hat." Punch to the gut. I've committed this minor sin myself in the past, sure, but since those incidents I've stuck with the cap of the team I actually support, as I don't want to take an unwitting fan on that grueling emotional roller coaster.
I'm guessing that a fan's cap of choice typically correlates to the manner in which that fan conducts the rest of his or her life. A frat boy sleeping on a pile of dirty socks every night is more likely to sport the stinky chapeau, whereas a lawyer from the suburbs keeps his cap on a hook at night, next to his leather suspenders. Not rocket science. The fashion caps blur the lines a little more. I've even had the notion to buy one, but I've stopped short, feeling that I couldn't "pull it off," that my daily wardrobe couldn't support a super-flashy head piece.
My personal cap rotation consists of one up-to-date New Era Astros cap, chewed to smithereens by my dog and sliced around the edges for a looser fit, and one adjustable mesh-back (the fancy mesh, not the trucker hat) with the Astros logo from the 80s and still the finest cap design the Astros have ever worn. So I cover all of my bases, you could say, with the authentic modern and the sporty slightly alternative retro. The former is a little severe (the Astros cap being black with orange logo) for daily wear, so I tend to use the retro logo when casually around town.
I am curious to know what caps you keep in your stable, and under what circumstances you wear which one?
Eric: "I wear the standard blue dodger cap with relative frequency. I need a new one though."
26 Aug 2009, by Eric
August has been slow at Pitchers & Poets, but fear not. We're getting back into the swing of things. Ted and I have a great new project underway (you'll hear a lot about it in the coming weeks), and we've both settled nicely into the semblance of routine after cross-country moves. Good things are coming so take this as a reminder to check back frequently, add us to your RSS feed, and engage with us on as many social media platforms as you possibly can.
You have been warned:
25 Aug 2009, by Eric
This week's poem by Robert Creeley comes to us via The Good Form, a blog "where sports and poetry meet to talk it out." The kind (and kindredly spirited) folks over there contacted us a few weeks ago, and we're sorry it took this long to introduce you. Anyway, they present Creeley's poem in the context of a kind of funny, but kind of morbid story about a rainy Saturday night spent in the company of the Padres and Nationals. As for me, I'm still trying to figure out what exactly old Bob Creeley is trying to say here:
*Update: Ted found this mp3 of Creeley reading the poem out loud: Robert Creeley -- The Ball Game
The one damn time (7th inning)
standing up to get a hot dog someone spills
mustard all over me.
The conception is
the hit, whacko!
Likewise out of the park
of our own indifferent vulgarity, not
mind you, that one repents even the most visual
satisfaction.
Early in life the line is straight
made straight
against the grain.
Take the case of myself, and why not
since these particulars need
no further impetus,
take me at the age of 13
and for some reason there, no matter the particular
reason.
The one damn time (7th inning)
standing up to get a hot dog someone spills
mustard all over me
24 Aug 2009, by Eric
Dear Spaghetti Arms,
I try not to engage in criticism. That is, I try to avoid using this blog as a platform to shout about why a certain player should bat in a certain place, or why Joe Scouting Director should be Fired Immediately. There are plenty of blogs for that, but we at Pitchers & Poets pride ourselves on a different kind of thinking. We try to examine the game from both a greater distance and a much more intimate, immediate angle.
We’re much inclined to gently criticize a point of view, or go off for a thousand words on some inane theory on fandom than make actual concrete predictions. Most of this is because Ted and I don’t see baseball as just a collection of results. But another part of it, at least for me, is that I hate being proven wrong by insurmountable piles of data and cold hard facts.
So it’s with a heavy heart that I apologize to you Jim Tracy. I not only questioned your hiring as manager of the Colorado Rockies, but berated the team’s management for it. Here are some of the silly things I wrote:
In both Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, Jim Tracy was epically dull, notably un-dynamic, and completely void of compelling traits.
Okay that’s still true.
Even on an interim level this might be the least inspired managerial hiring in the history of baseball.
Here are some statistics:
70-54 as of today
19-28 on May 29 when Clint Hurdle was fired.
51-26 since you, Jim Tracy, took over the club.
You can’t see it, but I’m actually looking away from the screen as I type this, so shamed I am by the numbers above.
It’s not Jim Tracy’s fault he’s dull and ineffective and keeps getting hired. I’m sure old Spaghetti-Arms is a nice enough guy and he certainly won’t screw things up too badly.
If you discard my sarcastic, mocking tone, then this statement is actually accurate too.
Anyway, the point is I was wrong about you Jim Tracy. Your arms remain discomfortingly long and your gaze remains eerily unaffected, but you certainly have the capacity to manage a baseball team. As much as I’d like to hold on with contemptuous pride to the words with which I described you (words like unsurprising, conventional, representative of a managerial stases in the MLB bloodstream, and retread), I must let them go. They were inaccurate and unjust and I have learned my lesson.
In the future, more esoteric, off-kilter, semi-obsessive posts on fandom, less pretending I actually know something about the inner workings of the Colorado Rockies. Alright, Jim. May you win the Wild Card, but fall comfortably short of the Dodgers in the NL West Race.
Warmest Regards,
Eric
20 Aug 2009, by Ted
[Quick non-sequitorial question: am I the only one who leaves Fire Joe Morgan in my RSS reader, even though nothing new ever pops in, as a kind of memorial?]
Yesterday, a friend of mine claimed she could smell Fall on the air. I acted like I didn't know what she was talking about, but it's hard to deny that the sad and joyful truths of this baseball season now feel set in stone for most of fans of most teams. The halcyon days of summer can no longer mask the gray pallor of failure for the lion's share of the league, and the long middle days are giving way to the short, action-packed ones.
For the teams with a chance at postseason access, the season is heating to a glow. The Texas Rangers, of all teams, are challenging the Red Sox and the Rays going into the final turn. I have general awareness of three or four of the Rangers pitchers, but as far as I can tell they are a band of unknowns doing an above average job as led by old Millwood, holding the line while the artillery--Kinsler and Cruz and Young and Blalock--pepper the enemy from three trenches back. At a glance, though, no Ranger hitter is having a world-class season, a Pujols-type year, but rather a bunch of them are hitting well enough at once. After wowing the baseball world last year, Josh Hamilton has been cooled by injury and ineffectiveness. One of the go-to storylines of this past offseason, Michael Young's move to third to make way for Elvis Andrus, seems to have worked out just fine, if only to keep Young still-potent bat readily available. It's a team that has milled a winning product from a tenuous blend of well-balanced averageness. Hardly a dynasty-making proposal, but at this time of year it's not dynasties that matter, but flashes in the pan.
That simple exercise above is another symptom of this time of the year, when the glamour of spring has worn away to the grind of late summer, which is to say the parsing of all of the stories. Every season has its Texas Rangers, and literally hundreds more when you take into account the breakout years and the remarkable runs of fortune. One can hardly follow all of these stories without devolving into a post-modern zombie state, so we, I think, take a moment here and there to investigate them from afar, to put ourselves in the shoes of, for example, the typical Rangers fan. He or she is no doubt halfway to the moon right now with a kind of desperate hope, that this team will drive forward on the wings of optimism and make a real run at it. My brief synopsis does little to capture the crescendos of passion that come with a season like this Ranger one, but sometimes it's the best that we can do to live vicariously for a few minutes.
Other notable (and pleasant) surprises: the Giants looking to recapture the Bonds era success, the Rockies looking to repeat 2007, the Marlins who are a surprise every year, the young and powerful Dodgers, the unsurprising surprising Yankees.... The sour apples of the bunch: the Unmazing Mets, the fire-saling Indians....
So what's the flip side? Joe Posnanski has chronicled the putrid Royals franchise with the zeal of an Egyptian royal scribe, so there's nothing more I can add to that unadulterated pity party. My Astros team might be a less extreme example of the anti-Rangers (or Phillies or Rays of last year) storylines. The Astros have had a remarkable run in the last decade or so, with late season triumphs and under-the-radar buzzes of the tower. But this year, mediocrity has come home to roost, with healthy winning streaks undercut by an overall malaise, despite some legitimate star power. Unlike the Rangers, the Astros have been unable to balance their faults with their strengths, so it's been a long year that around this time seems ultimately futile.
I don't introduce the Astros just to insert my home team for no reason. Rather, their 2009 tale embodies the plight of most teams, those trending towards the middle of the pack, with seasons that rise and fall but ultimately end up smack dab in the middle, which is, in the baseball universe, nowhere. Optimism and pessimism for fans is leveled out into a broad plain of normalcy. The list of teams that aren't out of it but aren't in it is filled with last year's surprises and next year's surprises, with solid clubs and clubs over-performing even to reach average--the Cubs, the Braves, the White Sox, the Twins. Some twists of fate could put them in the running easy, but for now they're mellowing out in the middle.
If I've rendered the regular season too complete, then I've gone too far. Whatever doldrums this time of the year contains, there are just that many or more plot deviations standing at the ready to confound the predictive nature of the past. A four-game series can change the fortunes of the last three months in a half a week; a minor slump mixed with a minor run of luck is an intoxicating cocktail. So let's not close out our tabs too early. Except for you, Posnanksi, you're the designated driver.
