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On Monday I wrote about how this year’s Father’s Day caps for three MLB teams — the Dodgers, Yankees, and Atlanta — had leaked on the retail site Hatland.com.
Now MLB has officially released the caps. Like the first three we initially saw, the caps are all in their respective teams’ standard headwear colors, but with light-blue accenting on the team logos and a patch on the right side. Here are the designs for all 30 teams:
I don’t know about you, but I’m seriously weirded out by the “whites” of the Oriole Bird’s eyes being light blue!
These caps will be worn on Father’s Day, which falls on June 18 this year.
ITEM! Uni Watch Power Rankings Tackles Brown Uniforms
The recent death of Jim Brown — who played for the Browns, who wear brown — got me thinking about brown uniforms, so I sat down and made a little list of brown-clad teams. I knew it wasn’t a particularly popular uniform color, but I was really surprised by how infrequently it’s been used. That led me to create a full-blown rundown/rankings article on the few, the proud, the brown.
You can read the beginning of the article here. In order to read the entire thing, you’ll need to become a paying subscriber to my Substack (which will also give you access to my full Substack/Bulletin archives). My thanks, as always, for your consideration!
Can of the Day
Man, Esso really had it going on from a design standpoint — all their old stuff is so good!
I wonder if that will be the only time that Nats wear a red cap this season. They insist on wearing the white panel cap, possibly for reasons that Paul wrote about in The Times…
They actually wore red hats against the Padres last night.
I didn’t know that – I was working and listening to Charlie & Dave instead of watching. Thanks.
I can’t wait for tomorrow’s Substack post. Brown might be the most underrated color in the Uni-verse.
It’s *today’s* Substack post, and it’s available right now! link
So, if I buy a Substack subscription, will all these God-forsaken pop-up ads go away? Some, like the Mojo ads, are at times completely inappropriate. The Dairy Queen ads will cover at least 25% of the screen, which makes some of the content unreadable. And some ads appear in the lower right portion of the screen and, while having an “x” to close them, don’t actually close when push the “x”.
A Substack subscription will get you the Substack articles (which have always been ad-free).
To eliminate the ads on *this* site, you need to sign up for Uni Watch Plus: link
I agree that the ads are annoying. That’s why we set up a way for you to bypass them.
If somebody told me that brown and orange would be one of my favorite uni color combinations, I’d think they were crazy. And yet, I LOVE the Browns colors. They just work together. Orange and brown, together or separately, are hugely underappreciated uni colors.
I think the Browns’ white trim helps a lot, too.
The Fathers Day MLB caps went live at midnight for one online retailer.
I am utterly surprised at how much I don’t hate some of those caps. The Brewers look isn’t bad at all.
The Phillies one as well. That needs to be permanent.
No.
Everyone’s taste is different.
As a Brewers fan, I agree. I’m surprised by how much I don’t hate some of these, and a few are actively good. Brewers and Phillies are both really good. Nats, Angels, and a few others are distinctly not bad. Even the misses here are mostly not terrible for an isolated event like this. Orioles, Jays, and Dodgers are the only ones I strongly dislike. Usually, I strongly hate every one of these event/holiday caps, as I did with this year’s Mothers Day and Armed Forces Day caps.
If I were a fan and *had* to buy one of these, it’d be the Twins cap…the blue T totally works there.
As a Rays fan, I kinda like theirs as well, the yellow adds a nice pop.
Besides the blatant consumerism of things like the Father’s Day hats, the thing that drives me batty from a design (and Uni Watch) standpoint is that there is no consistency in how they decide to color/recolor/outline the logos.
By my count:
-11 (SF, LAA, PIT, LAD, NYM, CLE, ATL, DET, BOS, SD, ChC) have a blue outline
-7 (MIL, HOU, NYY, CWS, PHI, WSH, TOR) have a blue logo, and
-1 (BAL) has a weird hybrid where the outline is blue and, as Paul noted, part of the logo is blue (TOR could be here but it is hard to tell since their blue is so close to the blue used for Father’s Day)
I will be interested to see what New Era does with the other 11 teams, but they really need to pick one terrible design element and stick to it.
That’s the part that irritates me as well. Why does Atlanta have a red logo?? They’re normal logo is white and every other cap that has a normally white logo has it in blue, but for some reason they chose red for Atlanta. I don’t get the inconsistencies of these designs.
I found the inconsistencies annoying. I get why the white logos (like PHI and NYY) are blue and non-white (like NYM, OAK) have an outline, but why do some teams get a differently colored logo than normal (like LAD, ATL), especially when it minimizes the whole Father’s Day coloring?
And the Marlins might as well just wear their regular caps.
Graham – I am not certain, but I do not think there were any consistent design elements at play here… I think they lazily just replaced white areas with light blue? Which is why some have the main logo color change and some just the outline changed. It depends on whether the white was the logo or an accent color on the “original template”.
I could be mistaken, honestly I am not 100% on top of all details of each teams’ current hat (due to the secondary variations or alternate designs many teams have). This simple swap out seems to be what occurred for a majority of the teams.
Most of the hats just have blue replace the white areas. But some hats that just have a white logo are replaced with blue (NYY, CHW) while both the Dodgers and Braves also have white logos but now for some reason have a blue or red logo with a light blue outline.
Any consistent pattern/template here would just ensure equality of ugliness. By letting teams make individual choices, some decent and a few good designs slipped through.
Someday, I would love to ask someone in the know if there’s any real difference in sales numbers between these hats that are worn briefly on the field and the fashion hats that are sold alongside them in team stores but are never worn on field.
Incidentally, I got an email the other day from Ebbets Field Flannels, which said, in part: ”Unlike other caps, we promise you will never find branding on the outside on one of our caps. Instead, you will find them to be exactly as the players wore them.”
And while I have questioned some of the designs they’ve come out with in the six months since they’ve partnered with Lids, I do respect and admire this commitment.
Lids is owned by Fanatics, as far as I know, as is Ebbets Field since recently. I cling to the 3 old Ebbets Field hats I have (including the UW 8 panel) as I fear they will switch to polyester full time and mass production outside of the USA. Fanatics owns Mitchell & Ness and Majestic as well and look what they did to these brands. Not happy about that.
I’m definitely skeptical of what they’re going to do long term (and I’m buying hats from them at a faster rate than I should at the moment), but I do think it’s notable that they’re taking jabs at New Era in their emails. Time will tell, but it wouldn’t totally surprise me if they maintain their approach and Lids treats them as a higher end brand.
The White Sox hat looks almost exactly what the Utica Blue Sox wore in the early 1990s.
My of those caps look ridiculous, but I confess that I really like the Brewers and the Astros.
*Most of, not “my of.” Gah.
As a Fanatics affiliate, we got word that the Father’s Day caps would be launched today. So the official announcement should come today too.
Yup, they’ve now launched. I’ve updated the post.
The Rangers’ Father’s Day cap would be an excellent replacement for the one currently used with their powder blues.
As someone who’s studied the history of Standard Oil and its descendants, it’s somewhat amusing to me that, 50 years after Standard Oil of New Jersey (Jersey Standard, branded most commonly as Esso) changed its corporate name and US branding to Exxon, it still maintains the Esso branding worldwide outside the US. Of course, references to Standard Oil outside the US did not fall under the territorial restrictions within the US that prompted Jersey Standard to change their name after their merger with Humble Oil.
(Addendum, a self-correction – the Humble merger actually predated the Exxon name change a bit, but the name change was prompted by continued expansion into the territories of other Standard successors.)
The Oriole Bird eyes look like he’s had the Spice Melange
“FATHER! THE SLEEPER HAS AWAKENED!”
On a side note, it annoys me that the Orioles have gone with “O’s” on that side patch, when most of the teams have used their team-name scripts or wordmarks as they appear on at least one of their uniforms (the White Sox are a notable exception, since they haven’t had a “White Sox” uniform mark since 1990).
I’m surprised at how I actually like a couple of the MLB caps. The light blue accent makes some of the hats “pop”. Works particularly well on the Guardians. Takes a drab combination used by 1/4 of the league and gives it a different twist.
The Substack article being about brown on the same day as the Father’s Day MLB caps is ironic to me as light/baby blue is the only color I think looks good with brown. Every other combination reminds me of Caldor in the 80’s and quite frankly the 80’s were a terrible time on many levels that nobody should wax nostalgic about.
On some of the blue hats, the lighter blue looks like colors bled in the washing machine. That blue jays hat in particular.
This Marlins cap is such an improvement over their everyday headwear ; )
While I don’t hate most of this year’s Father’s Day caps themselves, MLB’s endless uniform tinkering annoys the hell out of me.
Same here! There are too many special caps/uniforms these days. I don’t really mind a team doing something a bit creative with an official alternate, but I don’t like these league wide holiday promotions.
For once, MLB and Manfred got the special caps right. This format should CONTINUE to be used for Mother’s Day and July 4 so that the special cap still matches the team’s standard uni
For those new to the site, I had a philosophy of the San Diego Padres wearing fall colors because that’s when I expect to see them playing.
Why didn’t they make the M in the Marlins logo blue? That has to be the worst one of them all for sheer stupidity.
Speaking as someone who in general would strongly prefer teams to stick to just one hat and not have their team colors messed with: these hats are…okay! If you must do holiday-variant hats, a bit of trim around the logo, or a mild color-shift where applicable, is a palatable way to do it.
Surprisingly some of these aren’t terrible. The Cardinals would match nicely with the powder blues. The Jays hat, though, just look like the colors ran after the wearer got stuck in a bad rain storm.
I don’t see how the Marlins and the Diamondbacks caps are any different from their regular and alternate caps respectively. Except for the Father’s Day patch.
I wonder if that will be the only time that Nats wear a red cap this season. They insist on wearing the white panel cap, possibly for reasons that Paul wrote about in The Times…
They actually wore red hats against the Padres last night.
I didn’t know that – I was working and listening to Charlie & Dave instead of watching. Thanks.
I can’t wait for tomorrow’s Substack post. Brown might be the most underrated color in the Uni-verse.
It’s *today’s* Substack post, and it’s available right now! link
So, if I buy a Substack subscription, will all these God-forsaken pop-up ads go away? Some, like the Mojo ads, are at times completely inappropriate. The Dairy Queen ads will cover at least 25% of the screen, which makes some of the content unreadable. And some ads appear in the lower right portion of the screen and, while having an “x” to close them, don’t actually close when push the “x”.
A Substack subscription will get you the Substack articles (which have always been ad-free).
To eliminate the ads on *this* site, you need to sign up for Uni Watch Plus: link
I agree that the ads are annoying. That’s why we set up a way for you to bypass them.
If somebody told me that brown and orange would be one of my favorite uni color combinations, I’d think they were crazy. And yet, I LOVE the Browns colors. They just work together. Orange and brown, together or separately, are hugely underappreciated uni colors.
I think the Browns’ white trim helps a lot, too.
The Fathers Day MLB caps went live at midnight for one online retailer.
I am utterly surprised at how much I don’t hate some of those caps. The Brewers look isn’t bad at all.
The Phillies one as well. That needs to be permanent.
No.
Everyone’s taste is different.
As a Brewers fan, I agree. I’m surprised by how much I don’t hate some of these, and a few are actively good. Brewers and Phillies are both really good. Nats, Angels, and a few others are distinctly not bad. Even the misses here are mostly not terrible for an isolated event like this. Orioles, Jays, and Dodgers are the only ones I strongly dislike. Usually, I strongly hate every one of these event/holiday caps, as I did with this year’s Mothers Day and Armed Forces Day caps.
If I were a fan and *had* to buy one of these, it’d be the Twins cap…the blue T totally works there.
As a Rays fan, I kinda like theirs as well, the yellow adds a nice pop.
Besides the blatant consumerism of things like the Father’s Day hats, the thing that drives me batty from a design (and Uni Watch) standpoint is that there is no consistency in how they decide to color/recolor/outline the logos.
By my count:
-11 (SF, LAA, PIT, LAD, NYM, CLE, ATL, DET, BOS, SD, ChC) have a blue outline
-7 (MIL, HOU, NYY, CWS, PHI, WSH, TOR) have a blue logo, and
-1 (BAL) has a weird hybrid where the outline is blue and, as Paul noted, part of the logo is blue (TOR could be here but it is hard to tell since their blue is so close to the blue used for Father’s Day)
I will be interested to see what New Era does with the other 11 teams, but they really need to pick one terrible design element and stick to it.
That’s the part that irritates me as well. Why does Atlanta have a red logo?? They’re normal logo is white and every other cap that has a normally white logo has it in blue, but for some reason they chose red for Atlanta. I don’t get the inconsistencies of these designs.
I found the inconsistencies annoying. I get why the white logos (like PHI and NYY) are blue and non-white (like NYM, OAK) have an outline, but why do some teams get a differently colored logo than normal (like LAD, ATL), especially when it minimizes the whole Father’s Day coloring?
And the Marlins might as well just wear their regular caps.
Graham – I am not certain, but I do not think there were any consistent design elements at play here… I think they lazily just replaced white areas with light blue? Which is why some have the main logo color change and some just the outline changed. It depends on whether the white was the logo or an accent color on the “original template”.
I could be mistaken, honestly I am not 100% on top of all details of each teams’ current hat (due to the secondary variations or alternate designs many teams have). This simple swap out seems to be what occurred for a majority of the teams.
Most of the hats just have blue replace the white areas. But some hats that just have a white logo are replaced with blue (NYY, CHW) while both the Dodgers and Braves also have white logos but now for some reason have a blue or red logo with a light blue outline.
Any consistent pattern/template here would just ensure equality of ugliness. By letting teams make individual choices, some decent and a few good designs slipped through.
Someday, I would love to ask someone in the know if there’s any real difference in sales numbers between these hats that are worn briefly on the field and the fashion hats that are sold alongside them in team stores but are never worn on field.
Incidentally, I got an email the other day from Ebbets Field Flannels, which said, in part: ”Unlike other caps, we promise you will never find branding on the outside on one of our caps. Instead, you will find them to be exactly as the players wore them.”
And while I have questioned some of the designs they’ve come out with in the six months since they’ve partnered with Lids, I do respect and admire this commitment.
Lids is owned by Fanatics, as far as I know, as is Ebbets Field since recently. I cling to the 3 old Ebbets Field hats I have (including the UW 8 panel) as I fear they will switch to polyester full time and mass production outside of the USA. Fanatics owns Mitchell & Ness and Majestic as well and look what they did to these brands. Not happy about that.
I’m definitely skeptical of what they’re going to do long term (and I’m buying hats from them at a faster rate than I should at the moment), but I do think it’s notable that they’re taking jabs at New Era in their emails. Time will tell, but it wouldn’t totally surprise me if they maintain their approach and Lids treats them as a higher end brand.
The White Sox hat looks almost exactly what the Utica Blue Sox wore in the early 1990s.
My of those caps look ridiculous, but I confess that I really like the Brewers and the Astros.
*Most of, not “my of.” Gah.
As a Fanatics affiliate, we got word that the Father’s Day caps would be launched today. So the official announcement should come today too.
Yup, they’ve now launched. I’ve updated the post.
The Rangers’ Father’s Day cap would be an excellent replacement for the one currently used with their powder blues.
As someone who’s studied the history of Standard Oil and its descendants, it’s somewhat amusing to me that, 50 years after Standard Oil of New Jersey (Jersey Standard, branded most commonly as Esso) changed its corporate name and US branding to Exxon, it still maintains the Esso branding worldwide outside the US. Of course, references to Standard Oil outside the US did not fall under the territorial restrictions within the US that prompted Jersey Standard to change their name after their merger with Humble Oil.
(Addendum, a self-correction – the Humble merger actually predated the Exxon name change a bit, but the name change was prompted by continued expansion into the territories of other Standard successors.)
The Oriole Bird eyes look like he’s had the Spice Melange
“FATHER! THE SLEEPER HAS AWAKENED!”
On a side note, it annoys me that the Orioles have gone with “O’s” on that side patch, when most of the teams have used their team-name scripts or wordmarks as they appear on at least one of their uniforms (the White Sox are a notable exception, since they haven’t had a “White Sox” uniform mark since 1990).
I’m surprised at how I actually like a couple of the MLB caps. The light blue accent makes some of the hats “pop”. Works particularly well on the Guardians. Takes a drab combination used by 1/4 of the league and gives it a different twist.
The Substack article being about brown on the same day as the Father’s Day MLB caps is ironic to me as light/baby blue is the only color I think looks good with brown. Every other combination reminds me of Caldor in the 80’s and quite frankly the 80’s were a terrible time on many levels that nobody should wax nostalgic about.
On some of the blue hats, the lighter blue looks like colors bled in the washing machine. That blue jays hat in particular.
This Marlins cap is such an improvement over their everyday headwear ; )
While I don’t hate most of this year’s Father’s Day caps themselves, MLB’s endless uniform tinkering annoys the hell out of me.
Same here! There are too many special caps/uniforms these days. I don’t really mind a team doing something a bit creative with an official alternate, but I don’t like these league wide holiday promotions.
For once, MLB and Manfred got the special caps right. This format should CONTINUE to be used for Mother’s Day and July 4 so that the special cap still matches the team’s standard uni
For those new to the site, I had a philosophy of the San Diego Padres wearing fall colors because that’s when I expect to see them playing.
Why didn’t they make the M in the Marlins logo blue? That has to be the worst one of them all for sheer stupidity.
Speaking as someone who in general would strongly prefer teams to stick to just one hat and not have their team colors messed with: these hats are…okay! If you must do holiday-variant hats, a bit of trim around the logo, or a mild color-shift where applicable, is a palatable way to do it.
Surprisingly some of these aren’t terrible. The Cardinals would match nicely with the powder blues. The Jays hat, though, just look like the colors ran after the wearer got stuck in a bad rain storm.
I don’t see how the Marlins and the Diamondbacks caps are any different from their regular and alternate caps respectively. Except for the Father’s Day patch.