Oh,
loyal subjects of the hebephrenic hatter, today I went for a drive with the
wind in my hat, the windows down, and the music blaring. Lo and behold, I’ve
come to realize it’s spring. Yes, that’s
right, the sun is out, and the birds are chirping. Everywhere it’s green, and that frost is
slowly melting. However, the advent of
the sun comes with its drawbacks, and, with the great star in the sky in my
eyes, I nearly drove, nose first, into a pond.
“Oh, cruel fate,” I lamented, “why hast thou given me a hat that does
not cover mine eyes? Why hast thou
cursed me to suffer the rays of the sun?” That’s when I realized that society has moved beyond the hats of
the past, and I have in my possession one of the greatest hat innovations of
modern times. Yes, ladies and gentlemen,
I am featuring the baseball cap.
According
to this place, it took years for professional baseball leagues to settle on a
hegemonic style of headwear. Interestingly
enough, the first baseball team (i.e. the knickerbockers) wore straw hats, and
from the 1840’s through 70’s baseball teams wore a variety of different hat styles. Then in the 1860’s, the Brooklyn Excelsior
wore the precursor to today’s baseball cap.
Yes, it was rounded and had a bill to keep the sun out of their eyes. Furthermore, by the 1940’s we had the
technology to create the baseball cap of today, and, when the mainstream public
caught on, the hat made its way into one of America’s most prominent hats. That’s right!
If baseball is America’s pastime, the baseball cap is America’s choice
of hat, because, according to these people, the baseball cap is an American
icon.
Photo Courtesy of americanaclassicvintage.com
So
if you haven’t incorporated the baseball cap as the de rigueur of your headwear
fashion you might be a terrorist, because the cap is the turning point of
American bourgeois and working class fashion. I guess what I’m saying is: go out and get a baseball cap today or
wreck your car in a ditch. Well,
fellow headwear enthusiasts, that’s it for today’s installment of the
hebephrenic hatter. Goodbye and good
luck!
