national hat day or an obsession
Looking at social media, I found out that January 15 is National Hat Day. (Yes I agree, there is a ‘national day’ for waaay too many things.)
Nonetheless, clearly it was my civic duty to participate and share my hat collection with the internet. If there is a National T-Shirt Day, I may have to participate in that as well.
So clearly I have an over abundance of baseball hats. Why, you ask?
There are a couple of reasons beyond that I just like wearing them.
As a golfer, I have been a member of the USGA for a long time. And every time you pay for your renewal, they send you a golf hat (really a baseball cap) with the logo of that year’s U.S. Open Championship. So there’s all those.
Next, when my boys starting playing little league, their teams would mimic the names of MLB teams, so I would get a couple of hats of each of their teams and their team would change each year.
Being from Buffalo, I just couldn’t have one hat from the Buffalo Bills football team, Buffalo Sabres hockey team, Buffalo Bisons Triple-A baseball team and Buffalo Bandits lacrosse team. I hat [sic] to have many.
So there’s that.
Then, because the Bills weren’t making it in the playoffs, I would get a hat for the NFL team I was supporting in the playoffs to wear to football parties. The Bills weren’t in the playoffs for a loooong time.
Then the rest of the hats just sort of accumulated. If I went to a MLB game, I would buy a home team cap if I didn’t already have it. And it grew from there.
Radio Imaging Voice Talent Peter K. O’Connell participating in the 2018 #Cans4Cans Food Donation event, sponsored by Benztown
I’m kind of partial to a particular style of baseball cap. ’47 Brand has a style called The Cleanup. I do NOT wear the standard, boxy baseball style cap seen on MLB players and nothing with half cloth, half mesh (guess I’m a bit of a baseball cap diva).
Being from Buffalo, I do have various styles of baseball caps from New Era Cap company. Although I don’t know how many more I will buy from them because New Era Cap is closing their Derby, NY plant, displacing hundreds of workers who helped build the company to what it is today. A majority of their manufacturing is going overseas with only the actually MLB team caps still being made in New Era’s Miami plant . I understand that other manufacturers (like ’47 Brand) make hats in other countries, but I always held New Era Cap to a higher standard, because of local pride.
There you have it, the somewhat brief history of my hundreds of baseball caps. More to come!
