Ball Cap Nation. Jim Lilliefors
case you’re wondering, was never seen; the only thing we knew about her was her name: Mrs. Hadler.)
On the rare occasions when Mr. Hadler did come outside, he wore a dirty white T-shirt, carried a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and had the strangest-looking thing on his head. It was a ball cap, but unlike any I had seen or would see again—grungy, sweat-stained, of indeterminable color. The reason he came outside was to look at the bushes beside his house and say “Shit” several times.
The only other occasions when I would see ball caps in those days were on our road trips through the Midwest. My father liked to stop at those open-all-night restaurants along the turnpikes, where we would all sit at the counter and have a slice of pie and ice cream and a soda at some ungodly hour of the night. I never felt safe when we did that; I always imagined that the other customers were conspiring to rob us, tie us up, and steal our car. Typically, there would be three or four truck rigs parked outside and two or three men sitting at the counter. The men would be unshaven and drinking coffee, mumbling to themselves, and occasionally staring at my mom. Many of them wore a low-rent cousin of the baseball cap, also known as the “trucker cap.”
And that was it. Besides my mom, only oddballs, aliens, and truck drivers wore ball caps (I should mention here that some of my favorite people are truck drivers). But it was a situation that would change dramatically during the 1970s, for reasons that some of our best minds are still trying to explain. After several ridiculous headwear fads came and went—the “floppy” hat, the headband, the oversized knit cap—baseball caps gradually became acceptable and then, inexplicably, fashionable.
By the mid-1980s, ball caps were becoming a fad, and a burgeoning industry. In 1992, even our Presidential candidates wore them, presumably to show their kinship with the common man and woman. Bill Clinton and Al Gore jogged together wearing their ball caps. George Herbert Walker Bush—at the time known as “George Bush”—wore one on the campaign trail that read, “The Other White Meat.” (Yes, he did.)
In true American style, people soon began wearing them inappropriately, as well—backwards, sideways, indoors, and even in church (see Chapter Eight, “Cap Etiquette”). Caps had become, in a sense, cultural equalizers. When President George W. Bush snuck away from his Texas ranch in 2003 to visit the troops in Iraq for Thanksgiving, his escape was enhanced by the use of a ball cap. These were the President’s own words: “I slipped on a baseball cap, pulled ’er down—as did Condi. We looked like a normal couple.” The classical violinist Joshua Bell in 2007 donned a ball cap, jeans, and a T-shirt and stood by the escalator at the L’Enfant Plaza subway stop in Washington, D.C. for forty-five minutes, playing some of the most gorgeous music ever written. Bell routinely sells out Carnegie Hall, but nobody in Washington even stopped to listen for more than a few seconds.
Yes, caps have become an easy way of seeming “normal”—the goal of a growing number of Americans, apparently. Throw on a ball cap before you go to the store and no one will give you a second look, regardless of what’s underneath. If you haven’t shaved or your skin is full of blemishes, the clerk won’t pay you any mind. If you have two mouths or a tentacle where your left eye should be, no worries. We’re all just normal folks when wearing our ball caps.
Many theories have been proposed as to why we’ve become a “Ball Cap Nation.” The salient one, of course, is that ball caps finally solve a problem that has stymied great thinkers for decades—bad hair days. But does the ascendancy of the ball cap also reflect some fundamental change in the structure of our thoughts and feelings over the past three decades? What does it really mean that we have become a Ball Cap Nation? What does it say about our values, our priorities, and our character? Once you start asking these sorts of questions, it is inevitable that other, related questions will arise. “Why has the ball cap culture spread so rapidly around the world?” for instance. “What’s with the sideways ball cap?” And, of course, “What are the advantages of drying a wet baseball cap on your head?”
All of the above questions will be addressed in these pages. Our experienced reporting team traveled around the country in search of answers, speaking with cap historians, manufacturers, retailers, sociologists, collectors, and an out-of-work vending machine repairman. We visited a few famous cap-wearers, several almost-famous cap-wearers, and a couple of clearly-never-will-be-famous cap-wearers. We even asked former President George W. Bush what he thinks our cap-fixation says about American society, particularly during the eight years of his administration. You can just imagine his answers (you’ll have to, because he declined to respond to our queries).
As our country has grown increasingly diverse and complicated, we have sought—and, occasionally, found—things that unite us. The ball cap feeds an idea that we, Americans, seem to cherish: As different as we all are—despite the fact that some of us stand on the pitcher’s mound while others loiter in the “far outfield,” kicking at the dirt—when we wear a ball cap, we’re all part of the same team.
1
BORN IN THE USA
The invention of a national pastime; how the ball cap was born and raised on America’s baseball fields; a visit to the “birthplace” of baseball; and an interview with a baseball uniform historian.
OVER the past thirty years, the baseball cap has emerged as America’s national hat, evolving from a sports accessory to a universally accepted part of our casual wardrobe. No one knows exactly why this happened.
The ball cap is by far the most popular headwear apparel in the United States today, accounting for more than 80 percent of hat sales, according to some estimates. Moreover, it has been adopted by virtually every social stratum in the country, from disaffected teens to celebrities to software moguls to middle-aged, middle-class moms and dads to retirees. Nearly everybody in the United States owns at least one ball cap.
If the cap has become a part of our collective national uniform, though, there is nothing uniform about why or how it is worn. We wear ball caps to make a statement; to show an allegiance; to shade our eyes from the sun; to look and feel sporty or hip; to be a part of something larger than ourselves. We wear them backwards, forwards, and sideways, tilted at various angles. They are a simple but ingenious product—inexpensive, utilitarian, and aesthetically appealing.
An American invention, the baseball cap is now worn and sold in most countries around the world. Along with blue jeans and Coca-Cola, it has become one of our most ubiquitous cultural symbols. Internationally, ball caps are a two- or three-billion dollar industry, which has roughly doubled in size every few years since the early 1980s.
How ball caps ascended to such prominence is a question with no simple, single answer. Nor can we say with certainty where the cap-wearing trend will lead or how long it will last. But we do know where the ball cap came from: It was born on the fields of America’s “national pastime.”
Like baseball itself, early ball caps were derived from existing models—among them cricket, jockey, and military caps. But in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, as the country began to distinguish itself on the world stage, baseball took on a uniquely American personality, complete with its own unifying rules, its own traditions, its own venues, and its own uniform. The baseball cap as we know it today—with the six-panel crown, visor, and top button—has its roots in this era.
The idea that baseball is America’s “national sport” first began to circulate in the decade before the Civil War (on the heels of such ideas as American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny). Baseball was one of a number of factors that stitched together our disparate, still-fledgling country, helping to assimilate droves of immigrants and to strengthen the identities of America’s cities. In some ways, the story of how the cap evolved parallels the story of how the country evolved.
To learn the origins of the baseball cap, we went first in search of the origins of baseball—journeying into a rich and rolling land of lore, where the scenery is often awe-inspiring but seldom to be trusted. We begin with a visit to baseball’s