Mailbox: Small or Large, Poly or Wool 5950s?

Hi there, my name is Thad and I am a fan of your blog, in particular your post about breaking in a New Era 5950. I recently purchased one that is Polyester, unlike my previous Wool one. My old wool one was a little snugger, and took a long time to fit in, but is just right now. My new one is a little looser, hoping that would be ok/more comfortable. I guess my overall question for you is: is it better for the new polyester New Era's to fit a little tighter or looser? Thanks a lot.

Hey Thad! I'll answer this e-mail rather briefly because I've recently just purchased a great hat while thinking about these issues. I should add that wearing a hat that is too small gives me a headache.

I tend to favor hats that are a little loose at first and polyester. The material breathes better and lasts longer and will not become too tight over time. Also, you can use some of our poly specific techniques for shaping the dome. The hats will naturally fit to your head a bit over time, not as much as their wool cousins, but just enough to conform to your head if you wear the hat enough.

Best of luck and thanks for reading!

Top Five Minor League Hats

One of our favorite pastimes is perusing Minor League apparel.  With so many teams to choose from (240 teams are affiliated with the MLB) it is hard not to find team logos that suit your fancy.  Minor league hats offer a way to switch it up from your favorite MLB team logo, or give you a way to just do something a bit different.  Some Minor League hats are a little trickier to find than others - but we've brought together five logos that we love for this post.  I think the rule for making a great minor league logo is to take something that isn't normally that menacing and turn it into something you become a little bit scared of.  We've gone beyond the Cougars, Lions, Tigers and Bears in this post and found some more amusing logos.  

If you're a Milwaukee Brewers fan, you have to check out this Helena Brewers hat.  From my knowledge of watching old western films as a kid, I was surprised to learn they had beer in Montana.  Turns out, they have a lot of beer in Montana. 

The Ceder Rapids Kernal's hat is at once the ugliest and most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.  Unlike the aforementioned Brewers, I knew they had corn in Iowa.     

I'm straight up in love with this baby blue Myrtle Beach Pelicans hat.  Something about an angry looking, awkward, Pelican just does it for me.  

The Portland Sea Dogs, a AA affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, have long had popular minor league hats.  If you're a fan of the city of Portland or of the Red Sox, wearing this lid would be a great way to switch it up a bit.  

And our favorite minor league hat?  Its hard not to like a team with a cowboy raccoon stealing a baseball as its logo.  We will go with the Quad Cities River Bandits.  

Care to dispute our choices?  E-mail us at welldressedsportsfan@gmail.com

Dear Joba Chamberlain

Dear Joba, 

  We understand.  You want to look cool.  We want to look cool too.  You saw cool young guys coming up in the minors wearing flat billed ballcaps and and cocking them slightly to the side.  The look caught on in the minors and across colleges and high schools across the country.  

Hanley Ramirez, pictured above, wears a slight curve in his cap - but keeps it flat enough so that you can comfortably fit a pair of sunglasses underneath. Look at how cool and effortless this guy looks.  Why wouldn't you want to emulate that style?  Plus, you're a young phenom - if there is a time to do crazy stuff with your uniform - isn't this it?!

So Joba, you kept that bill flat - the straight off the shelf look. But there was a problem.  When you wear your bill totally flat, something happened.  It turned out that you look like one of the Mario Brothers. 

Exhibit A.) Joba                              Exhibit B.) Mario

And then, Joba, you took it all one step further.  You committed a crime against sports.  You took a pre-curved spring training hat and decided, "Hey, you know what!  This would look better if I tried to straighten it out like I do with the on the field caps."  What ends up happening is that you look like a little leaguer who threw their cap in the washer and dryer for too long.  

For the love of all things, holy, Joba.  Just let the spring training hat be.  If a hat is pre-curved, it is designed to look that way. Trying to straighten it out makes you look absurd.  Look, I don't love the spring training cap design either, but as a pitcher - you don't even have to worry about the sunglasses issue.  

We've come around a little to the straight bill look, but we still think and absolutely straight bill makes you look a bit cartoonish. Throw a subtle curve in there and wear it with your favorite sunglasses instead. 

What's that button on top of your hat called?

Ever wonder what that button on top of your cap is called.  Well, it is called a "squatcho" and it is there to cover up what used to be a messy meeting spot of fabric and materials.  According to at least one blog, you can remove your squatcho with no trouble.  

Breaking in a new 5950 Hat Part III

We could basically start a blog just on this topic.  This topic is one of our most popular and we ask people who find this page just based on these posts to stick around a little bit to read the rest of our blog.  Also, please visit our linked sponsors to feed us.  

We've written about breaking in New Era 5950 hats twice before.  First, we suggested heat and sweat to break in the lid.  We then suggested a technique involving a blow dryer.  This post will suggest our boldest strategy yet - putting the hat in an oven like a batch of cookies.  A word of caution - this is our most dangerous strategy for breaking in your hat, we are not responsible for your hurting yourself.  Call the fire department or your mother to supervise if need be.  

Alright, a brief recap.  The new 5950 - with the black underbill - is made of shrink resistant polyester.  The key with the old version of the 5950 was to shrink the wool on the outside of the hat, lowering the dome to make you look less like a goofball or a 75 year old manager.  The key with the new hats is to shrink the plastic mesh on the inside of the hat without ruining it (or burning your house down).  

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees with a cookie sheet placed inside.  Once the oven hits 200, place the cap in the oven for five minutes.  The metal piece on the top of the cap will become very hot if you put the cap in the oven for much longer, or at a much higher temperature than this.  Once you've had the lid in the oven for 5 minutes, take it out and slowly place it on your head - making sure you don't hurt yourself - and hold the top of the front of the dome down to the shape of your head.  Wait until it cools.  Repeat as needed.  

Have a tip for us? - email us at welldressedsportsfan@gmail.com 

Quick Tips: Wear Glasses? Go for the Crushed Hat

Do you wear glasses and look like a bit of a dork in a 5950 hat?  Opt for a crushed hat instead. The looser dome will allow a bit of room for your eyeglasses.  

If you insist on wearing the MLB on the field cap, do the same thing that you would to fit your sunglasses under the bill of the cap - don't bend it quite as much as you normally might.  We recommend the Francisco Liriano look, rather than the Joba Chamberlain look.  Joba looks like one of the Mario Brothers with the perfectly straight bill.

Oakland Athletics: What to Wear

The Oakland Athletics have a unique color scheme of yellow and green.  To be honest, we don't exactly love the colors for casual sports fans.  When attending an A's game in Oakland, however, enough people are wearing the team colors so that they don't stand out as being so unfortunate.  

If you're a fan that would like to show your pride for the A's without wearing the bright colors the team does at home check out some of the toned down options.  The A's have a nice looking, blue and white Franchise crushed hat, here.

If you're into the on-the-field 5950 hats, check out the A's alternate cap.  The A's also have one of the least offensive spring training or bp cap, found here.

Typically, I recommend sporting most MLB teams road grey jersey - which nearly always feature the city or the state of the team across the chest.  Oakland's road jersey is the exception to this rule.  I think it is just a bit plain and dull.  Instead, we like the A's green alternate home threads.  

For a more casual look representing the city of Oakland - check out this shirt.

Finally, the A's have a history filled with interesting personalities and players.  If you've got the cash, a Rollie Fingers throwback jersey is a great choice.

A's fans sitting in the bleachers tend to be more hardcore - and if you're one of those fans, anything goes when attending a game, especially during the playoffs.  On the other hand, if you're a more casual fan, take a look at some of the toned down options given the teams color schemes.  

Team by Team: Washington Nationals

In 2005, the Washington Nationals became the first MLB team to relocate and change their logo, team name, and color scheme.  While I'm a history nerd and in particular a fan of worlds fairs, the Montreal Expos logo and uniforms were kind of a mess.  Naming a team name after a long completed World's Fair was probably doomed to fail from the start and with Washington's long history of baseball, the change made perfect sense.  

Washington's colors are (appropriately enough) red, white and blue.  As a sports fan, I think their caps and jerseys are rather attractive.  My personal favorites are the road blue cap and the throwback 1952-1960 cap, which feature a similar color scheme.  

A friend of mine has critiqued the primary, "curly W" logo of the Washington Nationals as looking exactly like the Walgreens logo.  After challenging him, I took another look at theWalgreens logo and was forced to concede . . . but I still think the blue caps are solid.  Well Dressed Sports Girl thinks the solid W in the throwback logos looks a bit too much like a George W. Bush ad campaign.  

Around the city of Washington D.C. - the solid red home hat is popular. If I lived in Washington, I'd consider picking one of these up to wear to games, but I don't think the home hat is something I'd wear anywhere else.  The Nats have also featured a solid green hat as part of an effort to advertise a new cable channel, which makes me want to puke a little.  

The solid red "DC" alternate caps are also popular around the city, as are the blacked out versions of these caps.  I'd rate these as their third best hats as I find the gold to be a bit excessive, but these hats are certainly an improvement over the green fiascos.  

The MLB Washington Nationals online store also features some incredible Senators jerseys, which can set you back a few bucks.  On the other hand, they also make you look like a hardcore fan. 

Finally, I'd submit that this sweatshirt is a nice option for night games.  D.C. is a shirt and tie sort of city and a sweet hoodie can tone down your outfit after a few beers on a September evening.  It is pretty damn hot in DC during the summer, so my guess is that you would only need a hoodie like this early and late in the season to wear to the ballpark, or in the offseason when you visit your parents in Wyoming.  

If you're a fan of the President's races (and how can you not be?) check out the fantastic Let Teddy Win! shirts. 

Final take: The Nationals are basking in the joy of a new stadium.  The bars in the outfield have become a great place to meet other young baseball fans from the Washington D.C. area. Grab an 5950 road cap, break it in for a week or two, find the right sunglasses, then head to the game and make some new friends.  

Breaking in a New 5950 Hat

*This is our most popular post.  We welcome the visitors interested in getting their New Era caps to fit perfectly!  For more tips on what to wear as a sports fan, click here.* 

We've recently added a second part to this post here. Once you're done with this post we will direct you to that page for more suggestions.  

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.  

For more tips on how to break in a 5950, check out part two of this post here. 

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Rule Number 1: "Crushed" Hats and the Well Dressed Sports Fan

A few days ago, the Well Dressed Girlfriend and I were sitting at an evening baseball game.  We sat watching the local squad under the lights, sipping on a couple of brews and chatting.  We noticed that a large number of the fans in our section looked like total geeks.  Oversized t-shirts, jerseys for teams that weren't even playing or for players long since traded to other squads, and various shades of hideous pink logos.

On the other hand, we also saw a fair number of sports fans who looked pretty good.  A nice looking jersey, cool hat, and matching jeans made single guys look attractive.  If a cute girl wears the right hat, she can look extremely sexy.  Certain ballparks have become the "hot" place in town to meet people.  Some parks even feature "Singles Nights".

Don't get me wrong, we aren't fashion or design professionals.  I'm just a huge sports fan that often  says, "Hey, how does this look?" before walking out the door for the day.   The Well Dressed Girlfriend seems to appreciate this and since it encourages her to keep dating me, which is always a plus.

Plan on meeting a girl or guy at the stadium?  Only go to ballgames once a year and always wonder what the heck you should wear?  Are you a hardcore spots fan that wants to show off your loyalty to your team?  This is a good blog to bookmark. 

Let's get started by talking about hats, aka "caps".

One of the first things I notice about sports fans are their hats.  I collect hats like crazy, so I can be a little particular about how they look on people.  A poorly fitting hat can make you look like a 70 year old skipper.  This works when you have Hall of Fame credentials, but not when you're trying to pick up chicks at the stadium.   A poorly fitting hat on a hot girl just looks like a missed opportunity. 

Let's say you are a casual sports fan.  You go to a couple of games a year and want to avoid looking like a total geek when you're at the ballpark.  Invest in a Twins Enterprises "The Franchise" hat.  A few years ago, people would have called these hats, "crushed" or "broken in". These hats are good for new sports fans for a couple of reasons.  First, they come in only a few sizes.  Small, medium, large, xl, etc.  The caps that baseball players wear on the field come on sizes based on the exact size of your head and are harder to break in (which is the subject for another post).  A "fitted" Twins enterprise hat ("fitted" meaning they don't have an adjustable strap on the back) already looks broken in and fits closer to the dome of your head than the official caps.  In this shot, the guy on the left gets the fit right and the guy on the right rocks the hat with a nice casual sweater.

Rock this cap with a solid color polo shirt and some jeans or khakis and you will look like a well dressed, but casual fan.  If you're going for the more hardcore look, match the hat with a jersey (we will get into matching hats to jerseys later on).  

If you're buying this as a gift for someone, go ahead and grab an adjustable version of the cap.  You can't tell the difference from the front and both look just fine.  Girls tend to like to versatility of adjustable hats, since they can wear ponytails through the opening in the back.

Well Dressed Girlfriend's take: All crushed hats remind me of that Boston Red Sox fan who is comfortable with spending a little time on Saturday night picking out the right Oxford, but likes to watch ESPN and drink a beer on Sundays.  Wearing the crushed hat, of course.  Note: this hat is versatile and not overbearing, but you lose all style points if it's not impeccably clean.  You're not 12 anymore, even if you still love that hat as much as you did then.

Keep in mind these hats fade in the sun.  This can look really great if you keep it clean and clear of sweat stains.  Hand washing the hat with warm water now and again should keep it smelling clean and free of stains.  Avoid throwing hats in either the dish or clothes washer.   

Think about picking up a crushed hat before heading to the ballpark, but be sure to try on their sizes in a store to make sure it fits properly on your dome.  Match it with a solid t-shirt, polo, or oxford, to achieve the preppy look, but don't over do it.  A long sleeve tee, crew sweatshirt or oxford will look more like Nich Lachey than a 70 year old manager.  While we encourage you keep it simple (and to keep your hat clean!) the crushed hat can help you ease in the world of the sports fan.

Click here for a few more tips regarding crushed hats.