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pic via New Era

Fashion editor Dan Fuller wrote this post in response to the leaked MLB Stars and Stripes caps for the 4th of July. The Phillies cap hasn’t been revealed yet, but we can get a pretty good idea of what it’s going to look like. 

 

Since 2008, the MLB has augmented, adjusted, and tweaked their teams’ hats for flag-waving reasons (and as of last year, jerseys, too), but this year they’ve added a team agnostic, league-wide feature to the hats to celebrate the Fourth of July (and, ahem,  sell merchandise). Previous years’ designs moved the league into red, white, and/or blue or camouflage, and changed the fill of a logo, or re-framed the entire hat on a field of camouflage. But this year, they’re adding a design appendage to every single logo throughout the league– the italicized star.

Wait. An italicized star, you say? What is this, a widely forgotten, mid-90s Astros uniform? You’re saying you want  an article about the best forgotten mid-90s baseball uniforms? Hey, new guy Jim, get on that. Enjoy the comments on that one.

Whenever the league moves the “America: Love it or Leave It” hats in the red/blue/white direction, the Phillies have the benefit of already being a “red” team with blue as an accent color (though the “flag blue” is closer to navy)  so everything generally works. It’s not like we’re in the situation of the A’s, pretending that green and yellow are enhanced by the hues of Old Glory. We’re beyond the point of good/bad/ugly for these hats, but let me mention that the result of the poll I posted for the Memorial Day design for this year came to the (unscientific) conclusion that people preferred the solid Navy hats from 2008 by more than 2:1 to the second place design, the similarly straight-forward solid red cap from ’09.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

Verdict? The new caps are better than either this or last year’s camouflage hats, but that star-spangled… star looks ridiculous. Adding a design feature to every team’s logo is very low rent and similar to non-big deal college football and basketball teams wearing the generic Nike template.

Today, the 4th of July jerseys leaked, but MLB confirmed that they will not be worn on-field. Thankfully.

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Don’t buy this.

via (@JWerthsBeard), (@PhilHecken)

UPDATE: Here’s the Phillies on-field cap, h/t reader Dave:

on field cap