Baseball: hats off

i figure that everyone already knew that this month was the 50th birthday for the baseball hat....but in case you forgot...

HATS OFF TO THE BASEBALL CAP Apr 29 2004




By Nick Webster


WALK down any street in the world and the chances are you'll spot a baseball cap.

The fashion essential, which started as a sporting accessory to keep the sun off players' heads, celebrates its 50th birthday this month.

Before April 1954, baseball players wore a variety of headgear, until the New Era Cap Company unveiled its 59Fifty.

And it's the same hat that's worn today by everyone from pop stars to princes.

Here we celebrate the 50th birthday of the world's favourite head gear.US President George Bush's Thanksgiving Day visit to Iraq has been described as the most secretive presidential trip in American history.

The cunning disguises chosen by Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, were ... baseball caps.

The President said: "I slipped on a baseball cap, pulled 'er down - as did Condi. We looked like a normal couple."

FARMER Bucky Legried of Frost, Minnesota, claims to have the biggest collection of baseball caps in the world. He reckons he'd need a wall a quarter of a mile long and 10ft high to display all 68,000 caps.

ROBERT Callahan, 47, was shot in the head during a bizarre game he used to play with a pal in Florida whenever one of them bought a new baseball cap. Randell Baker, 45, shot Callahan with a .22 calibre rifle while attempting to shoot the button off the top of the cap on his friend's head.

ACCORDING to author Sandy Beckwith: "A man's IQ drops 50 points as soon as he puts on a baseball cap. And the way men like to wear them backwards must be worth at least another 25 minus points."

POP princess Britney Spears didn't bother with a veil when she tied the knot for her 24-hour marriage to childhood friend Jason Alexander in Las Vegas earlier this year. Instead she wore jeans - and a baseball cap - when she was escorted down the aisle by a hotel bellman.

WOMEN in Columbus, Ohio lived in fear of the "baseball cap flasher." The mystery man would jump out on women wearing nothing but a baseball cap and a smile, and snap photographs of their shocked expressions.

FORMER Tory leader William Hague became an even bigger laughing stock for wearing baseball caps when visiting events such as the Notting Hill Carnival to try and prove to voters he was cool. Eventually he got the message, the caps were ditched, and one was auctioned off at a Conservative Party function at London's Lansdowne Club, raising £500.

THE first baseball team, the Knickerbocker Baseball Club of New York, wore straw hats. From the 1840s to the 1870s, players wore all sorts of hats - from straw boaters to jockey caps.

CATCHERS - the player behind the batter - were traditionally the only ones to wear their caps backwards so the peak did not interfere with their protective face masks. It was star outfielder Ken Griffey Jr of the Seattle Mariners who started the trend, now popular among youngsters all over the world, of wearing the cap backwards.

THE game itself may still be a mystery to us Brits, but the baseball cap is now an accepted part of British life - and that's official. In 2001 baseball caps became one of the 650 goods and services used to calculate inflation in the monthly retail price survey.

LAST month 17-year-old Marlon Morgan was arrested on campus at Saguaro High School in Arizona, for wearing his baseball cap sideways instead of to the front . It is against school policy to wear hats sideways because it can be a sign of disrespect for authority.

DURING the 1972 Olympic US athlete Dave Wottle was in last place in the 800 metres final until he pulled his lucky baseball cap out of the pocket of his shorts, put it on - and went past all his competitors to win gold. Then he forgot to remove the cap when the national anthem played.

THE day after the Columbia shuttle disaster, the gift shop at the Kennedy Space Centre, outside Orlando, Florida, completely sold out of Columbia baseball caps.

THE Guinness Book of Records does not currently have a category for biggest baseball hat. But the American Heart Association claims it had the biggest cap ever made for a charity fund-raising event.

The bright red giant cap was three feet two inches tall, six feet wide and more than eight and a half feet from the back to the tip of the visor.

POLITICIAN and former actress Glenda Jackson once said: "There's this notion that America has no culture. But the fact that everyone in the world wears a baseball cap has to be reckoned with."

LAST November an American farmer was crushed to death after diving under a slow-moving truck to retrieve his baseball cap which had been blown off his head

FORMER financial trader Nick Leeson was the world's most wanted man when he tried to hide beneath a baseball cap at Frankfurt Airport, after bringing Barings Bank to its knees by running up debts of almost £1billion.

AMONG the more bizarre baseball caps on the market are those made of cane toad leather on sale in Australia, which sell for £60 each.

AMONG the most expensive baseball caps ever sold was one belonging to New York Yankees legend Lou Gehrig which sold for over £100,000 in 1999.

IN THE days after September 11, New York acting star Mark Wahlberg was one of many celebrities seen wearing a FDNY baseball cap in support of the brave city firefighters who had lost their lives.

Lotsa stuff I never knew. But didn't Babe Ruth wree a baseball cap back when he played?

Happy birthday baseball cap. i couldn't figure out what to get you for your birthday so i just had a couple beer for ya.