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In 2007, New Era Cap announced that it was modifying its official on the field 5950 baseball hat. Spike Lee even directed a commercial where superstar players were waiting in line to get one. The new caps marked several changes. Most prominent perhaps, the new caps featured a black, glare reducing underbill, something the company had experimented with as far back as the late 1990s with their Spring Training hats. Older hats featured a gray underbill.
Aside from a few small visual changes (the MLB logo in the back is now much more prominent) the caps also had a few changes that would impact how sports fans would break in their new hat. The new caps are shrink resistant, which, while sounding like a good thing at first, also means that the hats are harder to shrink down to the form of your head. The goal is to look more like this.
Breaking in the New Era 5950 has been a topic of discussion for baseball fans for some time. Guys like me had worked it down to a science and the changes in the caps forced me to rethink my approach.
If it sounds like I'm taking this seriously its because I am. Breaking in a hat properly can be the difference between looking like a fan that knows what they are doing and looking like a total dork.
Back in the day (that is, before 2007), official caps were made mostly of wool. The key to breaking in a wool cap was warm water. Some people swore by wearing them in the shower, others boiled water and poured it onto the dome of the cap before letting it cool and placing it on their head. Others preferred to just sweat in the cap, letting it form naturally to their head. The key was to avoid getting water on the bill of the cap or anywhere near the logo, making the colors bleed.
If the bill of the hat is, in fact, grey underneath you can shrink the dome of the cap by bringing water to a boil - letting it cool down a bit - then slowly pouring the water around the area of the hat you'd like to have shrink, avoiding the logo on the front. Then wait a minute or two for the hat to cool and put it on your head, holding your hands over the dome. The hat will shrink to your head, but you'll smell like a wet sheep.
Experts also went so far as to perform cap surgery on the old caps. By cutting out the mesh at the front of the cap, the hat would lay closer to your dome, thus avoiding the Lou Pinella look. But this approach came with a danger, if you pierced the material of the cap (which is an easy thing to do) it resulted in complete disaster. Ok, maybe not complete disaster, but it was annoying to have holes in your new cap. Once the mesh was taken out, you could yank out the plastic needles that held the shape of the cap thus encouraging it to rest closer to your head. The end result is that the cap had the cool 'official' look but it laid down on your head more like the Twins Enterprises Franchise hats.
Since 2007, the caps are polyester, instead of wool, and are thus harder to shrink or form to your head. Polyester won't shrink with the warm water treatment like cotton or wool. The upshot of this minor frustration is the fact that the new caps are much more breathable and they still can be worked into the shape of your head.
So you now have several options. You can either choose to look like Dontrelle Willis, cut out the mesh of the cap (again, I don't recommend this), or sweat in the cap naturally and slightly curve the bill of the cap. This doesn't shrink the polyester, but forms the plastic inside the mesh of the cap on the opposite side of the logo. Obviously, a lot of people recently have gone with the flat bill look, but I think doing this makes me look like one of the Mario Brothers. It might work for LaBron James - but odds are you're not as cool as LaBron.
The best way to break in the new caps are heat and human sweat. Take the hat to the beach, wear it while jogging, or wear it to the game. Choosing a good pair of sunglasses to match the hat can help you look like less of a geek while working on breaking in the cap naturally. When you start to sweat and the cap gets warm, press down on the dome to shape it to your head. This approach takes time, but it gives you the most natural looking broken in feel.
Sweating in a cap will naturally loosen it enough to let it sit on your dome properly. Hence why pro baseball players look better in these caps than most bleacher bums. The new caps are more stain resistant than the old caps, but you can wash off the salty sweat stains with warm water if they start to appear.
Final take: If you're a hardcore baseball fan, there is no better way to show your loyalty to a particular team than the New Era 5950. Pick one up and sweat in it to break it in. Think about picking up a Perfect Curve from Lids to shape the bill of the cap to your liking. At first, I was unsure about the changes to the 5950, but now I've decided the extra work breaking in the cap is worth the cooler feel on top of my head on a hot summer day.
Alternatively, you can look for a 5950 "low crown" edition. Admittedly, I find that these are getting harder and harder to find as New Era only makes them for a few select teams.
If you're more of a casual fan, go with the already broken in "crushed" hats discussed in depth here.
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