June 1, 2004
On The Other Hand, I Could Probably Use It To Smuggle In A Six Pack
This Christmas, for the first time ever, I became the owner of an official Major League Baseball fitted cap. Ive 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 couldnt 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 wasnt 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 wouldnt be Christmas without the festive holiday pathos of some dearly loved relative buying a patently incorrect gift that I dont 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 youre going to have a fitted cap, you want it to look old and threadbare, as though its 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 its 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 youre supposed to beat the bejeezus out of a new cap before youre 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 wouldnt 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 Im 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, Ive had a perfectly serviceable Padres fitted baseball cap for almost five months now, and Ive 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.
