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

Mailbag: Low Crown 5950?

Reader Richard asks, 

  

Guys, just read your oven tip for breaking in the 5950 hats. I'll give it a shot. I have a big head to begin with so these hats look particularly silly on me if they aren't broken in. But here's the million dollar question (literally). Why haven't they released a 5950 hat that is broken in already, or sloped in the front. I think they are missing a huge opportunity here. Millions would buy it (I think). It can still be fitted, and look like the real deal, but broken in with the plastic support already broken it. Am I wrong? They have dozens of hat designs, I'm shoked New Era hasn't thought of this. 

Great question, Richard. New Era used to make something quite similar to what you are talking called "low crown" hats.  You can find references to them when you Google the term, "low crown 5950" but I haven't seen one available in stores for years.  

Perhaps we should start an angry petition?!   

Edit: Believe it or not, we get a lot of e-mails about this post.  We've heard good feedback from people heading in this direction for MLB low crown 5950 hats.  Also, New Era claims to be releasing new low crown 5950s soon.  Any further tips would be appreciated! Finally, please visit our sponsors to keep this site alive! 

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

*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.