Sunday, October 24, 2004
A Hat of a Different Color
A lot of the posts have been baseball-related recently - can you figure out why? Well, for a nice change of pace, this one will be fashion-related...baseball fashion, of course.
I'm going to discuss a topic that offends my core values. That topic is the growth of wrongly-colored baseball hats. "How can a hat coloring be wrong?" you naively ask. Well, because it ain't right!
Teams have particular colors - the Baltimore Orioles, for instance, are black, orange, and white. Their uniforms are always those colors, unless they're the visiting team, in which they're gray. In the past few years, we've actually witnessed a significant increase in the different uniforms a team will wear: To continue with the Orioles example, they have a normal home (white) outfit, a normal away (grey) outfit, as well as black shirts sometimes, and even orange once in a white. Then, on top of this, sometimes they'll have "turn back the clock night", and wear their outfits from the 1980s or the 1960s, or even the 1910s, when they were the St. Louis Browns and everyone seemed to be running around with a potato sack on them. It's obvious why they do this: Increased merchandising. And, frankly, as long as it doesn't veer into complete absurdity, that's fine with me. Even a cold-hearted person such as myself gets a bit nostalgic when I witness the friendly cartoon Oriole Bird on their 1980's uniforms. How I long for the days when they were a good ball team.
Regardless, there have got to be limits. And these officially licensed crimes against nature, they wrong-colored hats, have got to stop. I've seen lime green and neon yellow and sky blue Orioles hats. Oh, they have the right logo, but the color is just offensive. I was watching the World Series and saw a pink Red Sox hat. Frankly, it chills me to the bone. Let me make a comparison: How would you feel if you saw an American flag with 50 stars and 13 stripes, but it was green and black and gold? Would that be ok? Someone just decided they were sick of the ol' red, white, and blue, and maybe wanted to sell some more flags? What if they were officially licensed by the government, just to raise revenues? I think you'd probably not be too keen with that.
Teams have names and logos and colors for a reason. It's part of their history and who they are. What if the Red Sox started selling what looked like official hats, except the letter in the center wasn't a "B" - in fact, you could get whatever letter you wanted, just for your name. Would that be ok? What if the Orioles started selling hats with all different types of orange and black birds....well, let me take that back, as I can't think of any such birds. But you get my point.
I'm not much of a traditionalist. I'm not even religious, yet I do hold few things sacred, and I count the color of official baseball hats among them. Frankly, I can't even quite figure out the statement people are trying to make with the wrong-colored hats, besides "orange and black really clashed with my lime green dress I wanted to wear to the ball park." It's such a blatant money-grubbing move by Major League Baseball (well, that pretty much describes everything they do, come to think of it), and so irritating that I truly do find it offensive. If you really like a team, you'll buy their properly-colored hat, even if it means re-coloring your whole wardrobe. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy some orange jeans.
I'm going to discuss a topic that offends my core values. That topic is the growth of wrongly-colored baseball hats. "How can a hat coloring be wrong?" you naively ask. Well, because it ain't right!
Teams have particular colors - the Baltimore Orioles, for instance, are black, orange, and white. Their uniforms are always those colors, unless they're the visiting team, in which they're gray. In the past few years, we've actually witnessed a significant increase in the different uniforms a team will wear: To continue with the Orioles example, they have a normal home (white) outfit, a normal away (grey) outfit, as well as black shirts sometimes, and even orange once in a white. Then, on top of this, sometimes they'll have "turn back the clock night", and wear their outfits from the 1980s or the 1960s, or even the 1910s, when they were the St. Louis Browns and everyone seemed to be running around with a potato sack on them. It's obvious why they do this: Increased merchandising. And, frankly, as long as it doesn't veer into complete absurdity, that's fine with me. Even a cold-hearted person such as myself gets a bit nostalgic when I witness the friendly cartoon Oriole Bird on their 1980's uniforms. How I long for the days when they were a good ball team.
Regardless, there have got to be limits. And these officially licensed crimes against nature, they wrong-colored hats, have got to stop. I've seen lime green and neon yellow and sky blue Orioles hats. Oh, they have the right logo, but the color is just offensive. I was watching the World Series and saw a pink Red Sox hat. Frankly, it chills me to the bone. Let me make a comparison: How would you feel if you saw an American flag with 50 stars and 13 stripes, but it was green and black and gold? Would that be ok? Someone just decided they were sick of the ol' red, white, and blue, and maybe wanted to sell some more flags? What if they were officially licensed by the government, just to raise revenues? I think you'd probably not be too keen with that.
Teams have names and logos and colors for a reason. It's part of their history and who they are. What if the Red Sox started selling what looked like official hats, except the letter in the center wasn't a "B" - in fact, you could get whatever letter you wanted, just for your name. Would that be ok? What if the Orioles started selling hats with all different types of orange and black birds....well, let me take that back, as I can't think of any such birds. But you get my point.
I'm not much of a traditionalist. I'm not even religious, yet I do hold few things sacred, and I count the color of official baseball hats among them. Frankly, I can't even quite figure out the statement people are trying to make with the wrong-colored hats, besides "orange and black really clashed with my lime green dress I wanted to wear to the ball park." It's such a blatant money-grubbing move by Major League Baseball (well, that pretty much describes everything they do, come to think of it), and so irritating that I truly do find it offensive. If you really like a team, you'll buy their properly-colored hat, even if it means re-coloring your whole wardrobe. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy some orange jeans.
Comments:
Dave -- who do think you're kidding! You're color blind! :)
J
Post a Comment
J
# posted by 
: October 27, 2004 at 2:19 AM
: October 27, 2004 at 2:19 AM
