
Independence Day is still a few weeks away, but we’ve got our first official looks at this year’s July 4th caps.
They’re relatively simple this year, and are in two templates: both have “khaki” crowns, and depending on the team, either a “black” or red brim and squatchee (MLB says the colors are “Khaki/Black” — though on my monitor they look more gray/dark blue). American League teams have the AL logo on the right side…

…while National League teams have the NL logo.

As usual, each team’s logo has been modified with a “stars and stripes” motif. This of course works better on some caps than on others.
All 30 teams have caps, but as the only team located outside of the United States, the Toronto Blue Jays cap is their “Canada Day” cap (and which is celebrated on July 1). For obvious reasons, the logo is in red and white, rather than the USA flag coloring of the other 29 teams.

Here’s a look at the front, rear and underbrim views:



And here’s a view of all 30 caps:
As you’re all probably aware, I am not a fan of special holiday/event caps, but that horse left the barn long ago. That being said, I appreciate that MLB has taken the less-is-more approach here. Of course, the navy (“black”) or red brim and squatchee will look a bit off for a few teams whose color schemes clash with either color. The “khaki” crown is fine. And while I am also not big on logos on the sides of caps, the NL and AL logos are nice enough.
At least they’ve given up on trying to be too clever with the underbrims, like the time MLB put the opening three words of the U.S. Constitution on a cap celebrating the date of the Declaration of Independence. Too clever by half that was.
July 4 falls on a Thursday this year, normally a travel of off-day for some teams, but that’s not the case this time. All 30 teams are scheduled to play on Independence Day, and more than 2/3 of those are day games! As God intended. At least MLB got that right.
Your thoughts on the Independence Day caps?
Usually merch dumps suck but honestly, these are pretty clean and nice
I think they suck this year lol. Look at the 2021 and 2022 ones, those were nice.
Well, agree to disagree. When in Rome.
Clean??
Can you make out that logo from more than two feet away??
Stars&Stripes logos suffer from the same problem as Pride numbers on a US Soccer jersey…they look muddled and absolutely terrible from a distance.
And yet every June and July we get the same muddled crap designs.
There are better ways to make your point without making the numbers and/or letters illegible.
I assumed the colors of the brims were red or navy blue but MLB Shop lists the color as black.
Here’s the Yankees cap: link
BFBS for Independence Day caps?
Huh. Maybe it’s my monitor, but those look dark blue (maybe not navy, but midnight blue) to me.
Post now updated to add in “khaki” and “black” as the listed colors for caps.
I had wondered if it was just an error on whoever set up the listing on MLB shop or Fanatics or even New Era. If it is truly black, it really doesn’t look like it is in my phone screen.
I’ve compared the caps with a proper black cap – a White Sox 59Fifty – and the holiday caps are definitely on the blue side.
I should’ve said, I compared them by copying the pics on the shop into Paint.
Someone on Fanatics’ MLB Shop team doesn’t seem to know the difference between navy and black, I suppose.
This is a huge issue. Look at the Yankee caps. The navy looks black all the time now. They need to lighten that up. But these are New Era not Fanatics.
I actually feel the opposite. I remember when New Era switched to the polyester material from wool, the Yankees midnight navy caps to me began to look ever so slightly lighter. (But maybe it’s just the difference seeing it on High Definition TVs now versus the past) It’s still a very dark shade of blue but in comparison with a wool Yankees 5950, the wool looks closer to black
New Era makes the caps, yes, but the listings are on MLB Shop, which is run by Fanatics, hence why I mentioned specifically “someone on Fanatics’ MLB Shop team”.
They just need to add a corporate advertisement to the other side of the cap, and they would be perfect.
Honestly I’m stunned MLB hasn’t done this already. A rare display of restraint in this regard, which I fear will inevitably come to an end before too long.
These wouldn’t be so bad if they had them in more neutral colors with just the Stars and Stripes team logos. The red brims on teams like the A’s is just too jarring.
Your favorite affiliated team will have this design as well. With corresponding International League, Southern League, Texas League, etc. logo on the side
They have a year to think of a new design and these are the best they can come up with ?
I see what they’ve been trying to do, but at least make the caps look different against competing teams. Watching the highlights last month during the atrocious military ones, it’s kind of annoying that they all have the same exact cap. Pretty lazy all around
I agree this year is a lazy job!
Wonder why the Orioles went with the alt “O’s” logo?
These are super disappointing. They look like the white ones from years ago which I already have. The Mets and Yankees never get a red brim, every single year is navy blue. The 2022 Independence hats were awesome, I was hoping they would build on that a little more.
I bought this years fathers day hats which I liked the cool blue look but even that was a little underwhelming lol.
In the past, all AL teams were red, which made every Tigers extra horrendous. Now at least it looks like all blue teams get blue, red teams get red, and other color teams get one or the other.
day game = no post game fireworks. Boo.
maybe I’m too conditioned to the local minor league team which does fireworks every friday and Saturday…
I used to go to Pirates day games, then go somewhere else in the evening for fireworks.
It’s not that big of a deal if you can’t get everything in one stop.
My biggest irritation with these is that there’s no apparent rhyme or reason for the color trim assignments, and it’s been that way for a while. It would make some sense if, say, all the AL teams had red-trimmed caps and the NL teams had blue, or if all home teams for that day had red and the visitors had blue. Instead, we have 17 teams in navy and 13 in red, with four navy-on-navy games, two red-on-red games, 4 games with red at home, and 5 with navy at home.
Excellent point! The Pirates have red brims, despite the fact that black is a team color but black is not, and that they’re playing a team that wears red uniforms and will also have red brims. Absurd!
*but red is not…
Up to this season, it was that the AL caps were red and the NL caps were blue. If you go to Sportslogos.net right now, their entry on these caps shows the entire history. For this season, the caps are very much inline with the teams respective main color – such as blue for Tigers, Yankees, Braves, etc. And red for Angels, Cardinals, Reds, etc. Other teams that don’t wear blue or red are all over the place though.
Agreed, can’t stand this!
I can’t complain too much as I’ll never buy one of these…and I don’t watch enough to care how they look on the field.
My birthday falls within the MLB season, how long until they make a special holiday hat for me?
Don’t give them ideas!
“ For obvious reasons, the logo is in red and white, rather than the USA flag coloring of the other 29 teams.”
Unlike last years hat debacle! lol
I like these a lot. They remind me of back when they first did these in the late 2000’s. I think it was the third year they did the special 4th of July caps, they were white with blue or red brims depending on the team’s color scheme. They’ve been too busy or complicated over the last several years, so it’s nice to see them get back to this clean look.
Obvious merch dump. Just occurred to me that these will be work with white or gray uniforms!
“these will be work with white or gray uniforms”
or neither ;)
And I hope there are an absolute minimum number of colored tops worn that day.
The design with the stars and stripes inside the logo is a failure for pretty much all the teams. The exception being Miami, where (mostly) having the stars on the marlin and stripes on the M actually works very well.
100% agree that it is great all teams are playing on Independence Day. While yes, most people are doing BBQs (cookouts, or whatever the term is your area), this holiday lends itself perfectly to baseball, to make it “their” holiday like NFL has planted their flag in Thanksgiving. And of course for people who are going to games the teams can surely boost attendance with fireworks displays.
The Tigers increased the size of the Old English D on their caps for a couple of seasons. It since then has been returned to the previous size. But I really believe it was done for the fact that the logo always looks bad on these type of caps (cramming in stars and stripes, other colors, etc).
When the Tigers increased their hat logo size, it was because the the D logo was the smallest in all of baseball along with the Cubs. They increased its size to bring it in line with other logos like the Atlanta Braves “A” and the Boston Red Sox “B” logos. Then they dropped it back down to its smaller size after just one year when fans complained about the tradition. I just wish they had left the D on their home jerseys alone…they were the only team to have “mismatched” logos between their hats and jerseys. Stop messing with tradition, especially jersey ads.
I agree about the jersey D, it was better with the old logo. I didn’t like the bigger D on the cap, it really made it look like a gas station knock off.
I don’t mind these, other than the fact that I dislike all MLB’s special hats/jerseys which end up with every team looking the same on the field. It’s also very clear that MLB is just cycling through ideas with the Independence Day caps at this point. (Then again, there are only so many ways to execute this particular merch dump.)
I think that goes for all of their holiday on-field merch. Agree, only so many ways to execute, and it becomes derivative and diminishing returns. Their need to put out new versions every year just means the good early concepts aren’t allowed to stay.
My preference is just throw a patch on the jersey / side of the caps for each holiday and call it a day, pink ribbon, poppy, blue ribbon, American flag, and various union logos for Labor Day. Done.
“various union logos for Labor Day”
HAHAHAHAH! That’ll be the day.
MLB will drop the playing of the SSB for Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land before they ever acknowledge Labor Day.
Wait, they don’t do anything special uniform gimmicks for Labor Day? Could have sworn they have some sort of faux patriotic nonsense. I guess to me it all blends together at this point.
And you’re right they would never do that, just saying that is the appropriate way to acknowledge the different holidays on the uniforms. Of course, if the players union actually wanted to show solidarity with various other unions they could fight for that. Instead they just go with the pro-foreign sweatshop swoosh as their main jersey patch.
So all the AL teams will have blue brims, except for the Blue Jays? This seems silly. Why not have all the AL teams wear red brims so all teams match? Do they switch brim colors every year?
“all the AL teams will have blue brims, except for the Blue Jays?”
No. AL teams with red brims are Angels, A’s, Twins, and White Sox. And Blue Jays.
More contrived garbage. Still, at least it’s not purely about selling more caps, right? Oh.
I will buy all 30 of them right away and add them to my bulging collection of totally ugly hats.
Overall, meh, but I like that the simplified NL/AL logos are there.
I read the blog on specific days, so this is late in being added to the comments, but in terms of detail, why can’t they take the moment in design to actually have 13 stripes on all the logos? Some have 11, 10, 12, 14, 15, it’s all over the place.