The No Logo Baseball Hat
And how to spot a serial killer
I have a problem, sometimes I need to wear a baseball hat. For functionality. I have two choices when it comes to accentuating the hat: Sports team logo or brand name logo.
I know what you’re thinking, Matt, why can’t you wear a plain, solid colored hat with no logo?
Because that’s what serial killers, hitmen, Kevin Spacey, and guys, you know those guys who you can’t tell if they’re forty or seventy, they live in the north of England or New Hampshire or somewhere where they’re surrounded by ducks, they always wear twill and wool and fabrics that cause rashes and whether or not they’re married or gay or whatever they seem to be asexual because their homes are decorated with cookie jars and Matryoshka dolls and they have toaster coozies and gardens with gnomes in them and it seems like they’ve given up?
Those guys. And child molesters trying to look covert in the park and failing.
The plain cap is not an option. About a year ago there were a lot of articles such as one in The Washington Post titled “How to Dress Like the Ultra Rich” based on the wardrobes of the characters on Succession. It was awful clickbait, not to mention those characters didn’t look rich, they looked like they were dressed by a wardrobe department. As if wealthy people don’t look trashy on a regular basis in their insipient thousand-dollar Prada glasses. Do you think this phenomenon was more a result of the fact that TV characters almost never wear stuff with logos for legal reasons? The mainstream media has no idea what they’re talking about, it’s weird how nobody respects them.
As far as the sports hats go, I’ve had a lot of trouble. I used to just pick a baseball hat which I thought looked cool, one featuring a fresh logo (I won’t buy a baseball hat with an NBA or NFL team or whatever on it, because that makes no sense on a baseball hat. It would be like the Dodgers making football jerseys. It’s stupid.)
I’d go for the teams with fetching logos, like the Toronto Blue Jays or (long defunct) Montreal Expos for two reasons, as I stated, they look cool, they’re well designed, but, secondly, I wanted something that was a departure from the norm. There are so many guys with Yankees hats and Dodgers hats, so I wanted something different.
This is a double-edged-sword. The more provincial or obscure a team is, the more virulent and dedicated its fans are. So, if you’re wearing an Expos hat, as I often was, every single French Canadian ex-pat (every guy anyway, all guys, great!) will walk up to you and want to talk about Tim Wallach. Then they’re disappointed when you tell them you don’t know anything about the Expos, you just like the hat. They won’t go so far as to call you a poser, I mean, it’s not like you’re riding the Expos bandwagon, they just get sad.
The practical fix is to simply wear the hat of the city you reside in, which for me would be the Dodgers, and it works out because most Dodgers fans don’t know what a ground-rule-double or an RBI is and they usually don’t want to talk to you about baseball. (Of course, if you live in a major city other than where you grew up you will probably wear the hat of the town you’re from, which I consider a good thing because I know who to avoid. Oakland Athletics, no, this seat’s not taken. Philadelphia Phillies, take a walk.
The issue was that this made me feel like a drone lacking in personality. I live in LA. I wear a Dodgers hat. How original. This should really separate me from the other million douchebags on Bumble.
My solution was to start wearing the hat of my hometown minor league baseball team, the Alaska Goldpanners. I was always a Goldpanners fan growing up and still am, especially because my friend Abe now owns the team, and their hats are awesome. The logo is the North Star with the number 49 (the 49th state) in the middle. I’d recommend picking one up from their online store.
The only minor issue I run into is that I’m now one of the Phillies ilk of guys advertising where I’m from, which is fine, but I’ll sometimes get asked about the hat and then get hammered with thirty questions about Alaska (by a guy, of course) and it can harsh my vibe. So I do wear the Goldpanners hat frequently, but often, as opposed to the Dodgers hat which blends in too much, it stands out too much.
Like I said at the top, a plain hat isn’t an option, so the only other baseball hat option is something with a brand logo, and I hate this. It’s like you’re literally letting the corporations define you.
Nike Hat - You have no self-determination. You will obey whatever scenario is presented to you. You will do as you’re told. That’s why your frat brothers called you Nancy.
Volcom/RVCA/Billabong Hat - Your dad is rich and you never finished high school.
Prada/Chanel/Gucci Hat - Your cologne is giving me a headache and you shop at outlet malls. You’re trying to look rich and you look poor. Gross.
Jordan Brand Hat - You are only slightly cooler than the Nike Hat guy.
Ping/Masters Tournament/Pebble Beach Hat - You’re a douchebag and not an interesting one.
Ferrari/Porche/Lamborghini Hat - Your kids literally hate you. You are divorced. The new woman is embezzling your money, you dork.
Supreme Hat - You spend all day on your phone. You have attached your self-worth to a material object. Haven’t you ever wanted to see an orca up close?
Ford/John Deer/Chevy/Milwaukee Tools/Budweiser/Any supposedly American made company logo advertising old-timey Americana Hat - You don’t like black people very much, do you!
Patagonia/North Face Hat - Wow, you can grow a beard at the age of thirty-five. Awesome!
Harley Davidson Hat - Your wife must lose some weight sir.
Okay, so the sports team baseball hat can be tricky, and the brand name baseball hat means you’ve just given up.
There are still a few more options. The trucker hat. I can almost guarantee you’re too old to pull that off. You’re also probably only wearing it because you’re balding. The Vans style skater hat with a lot of patterns on it. Not a bad hat, but unless you’re an elite MMA fighter, people are going to laugh in your face, because you look like the meme known as Scumbag Steve. He’s a real guy, although his name is Blake.
Here’s what I would say about a hat: I want it to tell me a little bit about you, but not too much. If I learn you’re from Oklahoma that’s cool. If I learn you are a fan of the Playboy brand after all these years, too much.
There are a few caveats. Let’s say someone has a hat that reads, I don’t know, Johnson and Sons Sand and Gravel. This could have been mass produced by Old Navy or handed down over generations. In which case it’s a cool item. The rub lies in the fact that a dirty hipster could have co-opted the hat from a Goodwill. Now it means nothing.
I myself was duped. I received a hat as a gift with a Herschell Supply Co. logo on it. I liked the hat. Must be a struggling American made company specializing in textiles, I assumed, just based on the stylistic elements. Wrong. The company was founded in 2009 and manufactures its products in China.
There’s a lot in a hat. I sometimes rock a cowboy hat now, for functionality. Just getting out of the whole baseball hat game. In my opinion, as long as you’re aware of what your hat says about you, you’re good. Get creative.
You can’t really go wrong. Unless it’s the plain hat. That’s like an adult ordering a glass of milk. Red flag.
That’s not a bad idea!
Entertaining piece, but options abound these days: https://www.etsy.com/market/custom_cap.
Get one with a bullseye logo and pimp your Substack when asked about it.