My crowns

A mere fraction of my hat stash

For those of you not as obsessed with baseball caps as me, it may have passed you by that it was 59FIFTY Day last week, a celebration of the iconic hat as made by New Era.

Iconic is a big claim, but rare is the piece of sporting equipment that has transcended field — or ballpark in this case — and made it on to streets, catwalks, wardrobes.

I’ve not quite fully worked out why *I* have fallen for them in such a hard way, but they are quite the thing to get obsessed about. Maybe it is as simple as the fact that there as so many aspects of a cap to geek about and by: fitted or snapback, the curve on the brim, the height of the crown, the colour of the undervisor, let alone what’s on the front of it.

Or maybe it is the fact that it is, for me at least, one of the most simple, straightforward, and direct way to show my allegiances to my various teams, most of which you can see in the shot above. On that evidence I probably love the Phillies as much as my cats. Which is saying something.

So: a poem to try and express my love for this staple of my style. That the poem happens to riff on the other major hat-wearing ceremony of earlier this month is a happy accident.

My crowns

My crowns are not gold and ermine,
no confessors’ stones or fleur-de-lis.
Eight rows of stitching in my versions:
Wool, buckram, and a certain espirit
Combine into a 59Fifty.
Put one on and become swiftly
An icon, of street and home plate,
Celebrating all those we fete.|
Ballers, players, thinkers, shakers,
Everyone who makes it to The Show:
May your brims curve, profiles stay low
O fitted in the field tastemakers.
To my hatless kings: don’t be lax.
In this New Era I tip my caps.

And if all of that has got you intrigued, may I direct you to Major League Baseball’s excellent history of the baseball cap? As it says, it is “the people’s crown” indeed.

UPDATE: The very kind folk at New Era Europe, in response to the poem have sent me a few new fits. I faint!

I have done an unboxing video too, you know.

Despite being a Phillies man, I’ve had my eye on that Los Dodgers one for a while, so result.

I am very happy that poems and caps have come together like so.