Whence
Baseball cap
Fashion

Where does Baseball cap come from?

The baseball cap comes from Brooklyn, New York. In 1860 the Brooklyn Excelsiors, a leading amateur club, wore a rounded cap with a long peak and a button on top, the forerunner of the cap now seen on ball fields, in the streets and at work.

From straw hats to Brooklyn style

Early ball clubs tried all sorts of hats. When the New York Knickerbockers adopted the first official baseball uniform in 1849, their caps were straw hats; a few years later they switched to a merino wool cap with a crown and a bill. Until the 1870s players also wore boating caps, jockey caps and even bicycling hats. The Excelsiors' cap had a tight crown and a long peak, and this 'Brooklyn style' caught on around 1900.

Stars, stripes and pillboxes

In the late 1860s a popular merino cap made by the New York firm Peck & Snyder had a star pattern on its crown; the Excelsiors wore it, as did other top amateur clubs. Later in the century many big-league teams preferred a flat-topped 'pillbox' cap with a short visor, often striped like a layer cake. By 1905 the pillbox was rarely seen in the major leagues.

The modern cap takes shape

The modern cap arrived in the 1940s, when latex rubber replaced buckram, a stiff coarse cotton, inside the visor, so peaks could be longer. The cap also became a team's badge: in 1901 the Detroit Tigers were the first big-league club to put a picture of their nickname on it, a running tiger. Caps with an adjustable strap have been sold since the early 1970s, and since the 1980s caps have been everyday wear far beyond the ballpark.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · web.archive.org ↗ · csmonitor.com ↗

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