Padres Changing Spring Training Caps After Swastika Comparisons

A Crossing Broad reader named Alex mentioned this story today.

Apparently the San Diego Padres are going to stay from using some new Spring Training hats that were unveiled last week, because part of the graphic on the front resembles a swastika.

MLB and New Era designed this series of hats, which feature a meld of team and letter logos. In San Diego’s case, they put the ‘SD’ over top of a cartoon character that came out looking like this:

I can see what people are saying here. The character’s head cuts off part of the ‘S,’ do you do see the Swastika-looking leftovers on the graphic.

From the San Diego Union Tribune:

On Tuesday, the day before pitchers and catchers officially report to the Peoria Sports Complex, most players already working out on site wore the new brown cap with the interlocking “S” and “D” that the team will wear during the regular season.

This was instead of the Swinging Friar with the somewhat matrix-and digital-looking “SD” over his torso that may or may not have resembled a swastika and may or may not have looked cheesy.

“Following our offseason uniform rebrand and the overwhelmingly positive response from Padres fans, we’ve decided to wear our regular season brown caps with the gold ‘SD’ for the majority of spring training,” Wayne Partello, Padres chief marketing officer, said Tuesday.

The Padres will wear the caps at least once on the field during spring training, likely for a day or two in the coming week. The lids were, after all, introduced and sold to fans as the official on-field caps of spring training and regular season batting practice.

This hat still exists on the New Era site, so it wasn’t pulled.

Here’s what the Phillies hat looks like:

Not bad. They want $41.99 though.