Idiots Write About Sports

This Christmas, for the first time ever, I became the owner of an official Major League Baseball fitted cap. I’ve been a baseball fan for a long time, but I had never actually purchased a cap before because I’m basically a cheap bastard. The free promotional caps they give out at games – the kind with the name of a sponsoring local Indian casino displayed much more prominently than the team logo – have always suited me just fine. They also carry the added benefit of making me look more like a fan of high stakes bingo than of the San Diego Padres, which comes in quite handy at times when the team is sucking wind in a particularly embarrassing fashion; in other words, anytime between April and October.

Last holiday season, however, when it came time to put together a Christmas list, I went ahead and wrote down “Padres fitted cap with the new team logo.” I decided that I could justify the expense in this case because somebody else was paying it. Also, I couldn’t think of anything else that I actually wanted. I always seem to draw a blank at Christmas list time, which stems largely from the fact that nobody loves me enough to drop three grand to buy me a plasma screen. My sainted mother, however, loves me just about enough to drop a couple of fins on a fitted cap, so she snapped up the opportunity.

I wasn’t bothered a bit by the fact that, when I unwrapped said cap on Christmas morn, the new Padres logo was nowhere to be found. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without the festive holiday pathos of some dearly loved relative buying a patently incorrect gift that I don’t have the heart to return. Frankly, I was just happy that she actually managed to purchase a Padres cap, and not, say, an orange knitted beret with a Spongebob patch sewn on it.

Besides, I rationalized, if you’re going to have a fitted cap, you want it to look old and threadbare, as though it’s been clamped to your head for years on end, through sleet, and rain, and snow, and hail, whilst you faithfully root-root-rooted for the home team. A proper fitted cap should look like it’s been cemented firmly to your pate by decades-old head cheese, such that your barber has for years only been able to trim the hair beneath the band, and if you ever chiseled the crusty old thing away from your scalp a mighty afro would spring forth and stretch to the heavens.

Naturally, this means that you’re supposed to beat the bejeezus out of a new cap before you’re ever seen wearing it in public. You want it to look like it dates from biblical times, and that furthermore it was frequently worn ceremonially by stoning victims. If your hat sports the new-for-2004 logo, that tends to detract somewhat from the authenticity.

As it turns out, though, in my case it wouldn’t have made a damned bit of difference. I have a bigger problem on my hands: it seems that my head is a non-standard size. Or, possibly, my head is standard, but the cap is metric.

The original 7½ size fit me like a yarmulke that I accidentally tumble-dried on too high a setting, so I returned it for the next size up, 7 5/8. That one makes me look like a mongoloid who received a cap from charity, but the kind folks at the Salvation Army grossly over-estimated just how much larger than normal my head really is, and I’m too simple-minded to notice the difference. The back half of the cap comes down to the halfway point on my ears, while the front looms menacingly over my face, a sheer escarpment of team spirit extending up from my forehead like a navy blue Half Dome.

Point is, I’ve had a perfectly serviceable Padres fitted baseball cap for almost five months now, and I’ve never worn it outside the house. Furthermore, unless somebody has some wise ideas about how I can go about shrinking the damned thing, it probably will remain useless for any purpose other than trapping medium-sized wildlife. As much as it pains me I may have to turn to eBay. At least then, my neglected headwear can fulfill its true purpose: to stand proudly astride the metric skull of some far more fortunate and typically proportioned baseball fan than I.

Where did you get the cap? The quality control at some companies is beyond lame. I generally have no problem with New Era (7 3/8 seems consistent), but whoever made my Cal cap has some measurement problems.

The best way to get a fitted cap is to go to a store, grab a stack of caps, and start putting them on. And DON'T listen to the "help." Most don't have a clue. The hat won't stretch (if anything, the wool caps shrink) so if you get the fit right in the store, it should be fine for years, barring a barber boycott.

It's partly a matter of luck. I have two New Era caps that both say 7-5/8. My Seattle Mariners cap sometimes feels like I could eject it from my head if I just frowned (and with frowning being a situation far more common among Mariners fans these days, it's a concern). But when I wear my Tacoma Rainiers cap, I have to choose between tucking my ears in under the cap, or letting the cap force those ears out at 90-degree angles from my head.

Adding to the difficulty factor is the fact that my already large head seems to swell up to a good 7-3/4 when it gets warm. Like, say, when I'm sitting in the sun for nine innings. This has the added effect of the sweat causing the cap to shrink. Except, of course, for the one that's too big already, because it doesn't absorb as much sweat.

So my point is that you can't win. When in doubt, though, go with the one that seems to be too small. You can still look marginally cool with a tiny cap screwed to your head, but no one over the age of five can pull off the giant hood-hat look.

The cap is a New Era, and before I returned the first one, I wandered into a store and tried on a small stack of other New Era caps. The not-very-helpful guy behind the counter did point out that I should shoot high, as the cap would shrink when exposed to the elements. However, I have no way of verifying this. I refuse to wear the cap out into the elements because it makes me look like a deranged trucker.

I have recently discovered that if I tuck about half an inch of the band inside the back of the cap, it actually fits pretty well. But it looks ridiculous, and gives the impression that I'm trying to hide the label so that nobody will know I'm actually wearing a cheap Japanese knockoff made by "Manor Reague Bakeball."

Oh, well. I guess it's back to rooting for Sycuan Indian Casino and Outlet Shops.

Dude, you've got to get hip to the magic that is the "Flex-Fit" cap. It's a fitted cap (usually only in 2 or 3 sizes, though - S,M,L or S/M,L/XL), but it has a stretchy inner band, so it adjusts to your melon. Even the largest is occasionally too small for my 7 5/8, but sounds like you'd be all set. I did a quick google for yaou, but the only Flex-Fit I could find for the Pods had the swinging monk on it, but check out the shops in your area.