Hats off!(on)

 12/22 ready for Christmas My friends know by now that I do not approve of and will not wear so-called “fashion caps” that put team logos in random colors. I make a general practice with baseball teaks of only wearing hats that are worn in actual games. WIth one notable exception…every year I get out my Christmas Yankee hat in red and green. Just this one time a year and no other. The Christmas exception. Somewhere along the line, “Ugly Christmas sweaters” became a thing. The kitchy middle brow convention meant to add a touch of spirit to the season became a hip ironic affectation until it has once agar achieved give aways (SGAs). In 2015, the local Brooklyn Cyclones, New York Pennsylvania League farm team of the New York Mets, had a Christmas in July with an ugly Christmas sweater jersey sag. It certainly meets the requirements for ugly sweater.   So I have paired my Christmas Yankee cap with my Cyclones jersey.   It’s two days until Christmas.

12/20 advent Purple:   Because Advent Throughout the first three Wednesdays of Advent, for my Hats Off (On) adventures with my group, I featured purple….the traditional liturgical color for Advent. Noting that in my Presbyterian tradition, Advent with its “papist” overtones was a late arriver…only when I was in high school, mid-1960’s did we begin to explore its possibilities. My hat and shirt for the first week were both from the Uni Watch annual Purple Amnesty collection which took a lot of explaining. First, Uni Watch itself and how I got into a blog dedicated to the obsessive study of athletic aesthetics.   I explained how as a kid, I drew and colored every uniform I ever saw in a game I saw. How I continued to do this through high school. There was of course a corollary interest in logos and fonts. I suspect this played a role in my passion for liturgical vestments and their seasonal colors. Almost enough to get me to convert to the Episcopal church. Ultimately, the Angl...

  11/24 Brown is back Because Thanksgiving: Brown and Orange This week’s “Hat’s off” is to Thanksgiving.   I’v got no Thanksgiving hats or jerseys…except for a few old Turkey Trot shirts from my road race days.   So I’m going for color…the brown and orange we associate with Thanksgiving.   Brown for turkeys and orange for pumpkins   I guess.   Although this year there is added meaning to orange as it has become the color for memorializing the senseless hidden deaths of First Nation peoples in Canada. (To learn more see  https://www.techlifetoday.ca/articles/2020/why-we-wear-orange-on-orange-shirt-day-nait.) As for brown and orange in sports, pretty rare. In the US, no hockey (except for the AHL Hershey Bears.) None in basketball I can think of. As for football, there is of course the Cleveland Browns. And in baseball, only one since the St. Louis   Browns left in 1954 to become the Baltimore Orioles.   That would be the SanDiego Padres, who s...

 11/18 Boola, boola...bow wow wow This week’s “hats off” goes to the 137th edition of THE GAME, between Yale and Harvard. The game will be played this coming Saturday at the iconic Yale Bowl.   Built in 1914 to house a team then at the top of collegiate football, the Bowl became the template for the Rose Bowl and all thus  the inspiration for all the “bowl” games that would follow.   In addition to Yale games, the site was home to what was called the “Suburban Super Bowl,”   an annual preseason game between the Giants and Jets in the years just prior to AFL- NFL merger. For two very strange seasons 1973-75, the NFL Giants played their home games at the Yale Bowl while Yankee Stadium was being renovated and the Meadowlands under construction. I actually caught some of those games including a December including a miserable 31-7 loss to the Vikings in freezing rain in late December.   And the next year, a gimpy Joe Namath scrambling into the end zone. During m...

 11/11 PACKOS and MASH Today’s hats off is to our veterans.   I’m not usually one for military style wear and especially the wearing of camo by shorts teams. But I’m making exception in a unique way. We’ve got a military style hat and olive green sweat shirt from Tony Packo’s, the famous hot dog emporium in Toledo, Ohio.  Packo’s was made famous by Toledo native Jamie Farr in his role of Klinger in the long-running Korean War era series M*A*S*H.   While Klinger usually dressed as a woman in an effort to get out of the service, his parents regularly sent him care packages from Packo’s and Klinger would occasionally opt for a Toledo Mud Hens jersey and hat thus creating an ongoing connection between MASH, Mud Hens and Packos.  Klinger and Hawkeye in MASH Though set in the Korean War era, MASH was clearly reflecting on the then active Vietnam conflict. The Korean War was the first of what would become an ongoing pattern of US involvement in post colonial struggles ...

11/3 el Trueno de Trenton   Yesterday was All Souls Day , or El Dia De Los Muertos (the Day of the Dead ) as it’s known in Mexico. So what better way to commemorate the day than with this “sugar skull” logo from “ El Trueno de Trenton ” or Trenton Thunder . Sugar skulls are both used as treats for roaming bands of children and decorations for one’s own ofrenda , or altar.   This particular logo was developed as part of Trenton’s contribution to La Copa de Diversion, or Fun Cup, a program developed by minor league baseball to attempt to build closer ties with the Hispanic community. This year, El Trueno de Trenton was the Friday edition of the team playing as the Trenton Thunder which in fact was the Buffalo Bisons displaced when the Toronto Blue Jays left Dunedin. Trenton being available when the Yankees abandoned the city for Somerset, New Jersey. When the Bisons returned to Buffalo, the Trenton Thunder finished the year as a “Draft League” team so the team that began ...