Baseball Cap

Sections, Peak and Button: How the Cap Is Built

The baseball cap's construction is a small lesson in practical design. The crown is normally sewn in sections, panels that curve together to fit the head, and may be topped with a matching fabric-covered button on the crown where the sections meet. At the front, the long, stiffened and curved peak does the cap's original work, shading the eyes, which is why the peak may be functional for blocking view from the sun at a low elevation, when glare is hardest to avoid. Fit is handled at the back, where the cap often has a plastic, Velcro or elastic adjustor so it can be quickly adjusted to fit any wearer, although fitted caps also exist for those who want an exact size. The back opening created by the adjustor has its own use: those with long hair sometimes wear their hair in a ponytail which they pull through the gap in the cap above the adjustor. Materials completed the modern form in the 1940s, when latex rubber became the stiffening material inside the hat and the modern baseball cap was born, giving the peak and crown a reliable, lasting shape.

On the field, every detail earns its place. Major league baseball players wear classic-style caps made of wool with their team's simple logo and colours, the logo usually embroidered into the wool, so the cap is uniform, identification and sunshade in one. Caps used by players commonly have sunglasses attached to the peak that can be flipped down when the player must look into the sky, but kept flipped up at other times, a fitting that shows the peak working as an equipment platform as well as a shade. Traditionally the peak is worn over the eyes, and the backwards turn has a practical origin of its own: it is commonly attributed to catchers, when they began using facemasks, as they had to turn the cap around to fit the mask on. From that dugout necessity, wearing the cap backwards, or at other angles, spread into general fashion, quite separate from the game that produced it.

The Cap Beyond Baseball

No other hat has travelled as far from its sport. Athletes in other sports wear caps with their team's logo and colours as sideline caps, and both player and sideline types are also sold as authentic team merchandise in retail stores and are quite popular. Beyond sport entirely, other caps may simply have a company's logo, such as Nike or Carhartt, and these hats are often made of brushed cotton, turning the cap into everyday branded dress. Names and makers mark the market's peaks: the baseball cap of the New York Yankees may be the most popular sports team cap, in many colours including the classic navy blue, and major athletic cap manufacturers include Nike and New Era. Close relatives fill neighbouring niches. Golfers tend to prefer the visor form of cap, which does not cover the head but keeps the sun out of the eyes, and the plastic mesh cap with a foam front, printed with a supply company logo, serves farmers and migrant workers as the style sometimes called a trucker cap.

That breadth is why the baseball cap can fairly be called a symbol of the 20th century: it became popular as the culture of sports increased in popularity, starting, naturally, with baseball. Beginning in the 1980s, the cap also came to be associated with film directors, especially Spike Lee and Michael Moore, replacing the beret in the popular image, a striking changing of the guard between two soft caps a century apart in origin. A caution travels with the fashion, too: wearing a baseball cap with the peak at certain directions can have significance to gang members, so angle and direction are not always neutral choices everywhere. For the ordinary buyer, though, the decisions are simpler. Choose fitted or adjustable for the fit you prefer, wool and embroidery for the classic team form, brushed cotton for an everyday logo cap, mesh and foam for hot working days, and a visor when shade without coverage is the whole requirement, and the cap that began with the Brooklyn Excelsiors in 1860 will do the job it has done ever since: shade the eyes, name the team or the company, and fit almost any head that puts it on.