Put This On

Coming soon: Put This On x Cooperstown Ballcap.

The good folks at Cooperstown Ballcap are putting the finishing touches on our first round of Put This On baseball caps. Here’s my sample after a hard-fought game.

We’ll have a very limited number available, most likely later this month. They will of course be announced and sold exclusively at Put This On. We’re proud to be working with Cooperstown Ballcap on this project - we consider them to be the finest capmakers in the world. Soft, 1950s-style all-wool flannel construction, with fitted leather sweatband. $49.

Regular Put This On readers know that I have a special place in my heart for the baseball cap. It’s rare that you’ll find me outdoors on weekends without one, and my favorite manufacturer, by far, is Cooperstown Ballcap Co.

Sadly, Cooperstown Ballcap lost its license to produce replica MLB caps, which was the core of their business. These days, they make 19th-century and international baseball hats, among other products, as Ideal Cap Co.

I’ve been corresponding with Cooperstown Ballcap’s owner, and we’re going to be making a very special product this spring: the PTO cap. My favorite ballclub is the San Francisco Giants, and their orange-and-black cap goes with almost nothing, so I’ve been looking for a high-quality, simple cap to wear for a decade or so. I finally decided to design one myself.

Our hats, which we’ll be offering in a very limited quantity this spring, feature a very simple design in a very wearable colorway. They have soft crowns, like the hats of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and their made of premium wool flannel with a leather sweatband. No snapback here. They’re the absolute best ballcap you can buy.

Look for our collaboration with Cooperstown Ballcap early in the baseball season… then wear it all summer.

I love pretty much everything Archival Clothing makes, and this is no exception. It’s just a waxed cotton baseball cap. Well-executed, high standards, simple, wearable, reasonably priced. Another home run.

Ebbets Field Flannels’ new round of caps includes this one, for the House of David, a legendary Jewish-themed barnstorming team from the first half of the 20th century. The club was famous for its long hair and full beards. The 1934 hat, reproduced here, is what’s called a “Cincinnati” style cap - with contrasting trim on the base of the cap and bill. Pretty neat, if you ask me. What’s more, it’s on sale.

It’s On Sale: Ebbets Field Flannels

Anyone who reads the eBay Roundups regularly has probably already surmised that I’m fond of Cooperstown Ballcap, a company (now defunct) that hand-made baseball caps in a broad variety of vintage styles. We’re left to trawl eBay for those gems, but at least we still have Ebbets Field Flannels.

Ebbets Field Flannels caps have a slightly more modern form - they have higher, stiffer crowns and fabric rather than leather headbands. Still, they’re quite beautiful, and have some wonderful details like green satin underbills. They’re also very reasonably priced, at $40 each.

Of course, when they’re on sale for 25% off, just in time for the All-Star Game, it’s downright unamerican not to buy one. They’re the perfect accessory for a summer afternoon in a t-shirt and jeans.

Use the code ALLSTAR.

(Above: the 1955 San Francisco Seals)

joegannon:

TSxEF

These were my favorite single item on the floor at the StyleForum 10 vendor showcase. If they’d been fitted rather than adjustable (albeit with a nice leather strap), I’d have bought one on the spot.

You might not have guessed it from reading this blog, but I love baseball caps. That said, I’m pretty picky about them. The hard-crown, made-in-China version that passes for pro wear today won’t cut it for me. I used to be a partisan of Cooperstown Ballcaps, but they recently shut down. I was pretty bummed about that, and you’ll still find Cooperstown caps in eBay roundups from time to time, but my wife has renewed my faith in what I’d consider the single most distinctively American garment.

She recently gave me a San Francisco Missions hat by Ebbets Field Flannels. It doesn’t have a few of the features I loved about Cooperstown Ballcaps - leather sweatbands and low crowns among them - but it’s really a very good-looking piece. It’s made in the USA, has a bill with a green satin underside, and has a nice soft crown.

I was quite the baseball nerd in my youth, and even went to a few Society for American Baseball Research conferences as a teenager, but I didn’t know the history of the Missions. They were also known as the Monks or the Mission Reds, and played as a second San Francisco team (after the Seals) from 1926-1937.

What genuinely blew my mind is that while starting in 1931 they shared Seals Stadium (which was in Potrero Hill, where the San Francisco Autocenter used to be, and where there’s now a Ross, a Lane Bryant and a Boston Market, among other shitty businesses) with the Seals, they also played in a stadium called Recreation Park. It occupied the site of what’s now the housing project Valencia Gardens, right in the heart of the Mission.

Not only did I grow up in the Mission, but I grew up half a block from where the ballpark once was. Of course, I knew the block as the site of various childhood traumas (an assault or two, a lot of crack-selling, gunshots at night). It’s kind of magical for me to imagine that place transformed into a ballpark for a team named after my home neighborhood. An added advantage is that I can wear it to rep my home town here in LA without getting beaten into a coma.

(via alexblagg)

The Kid - one of the best to ever do it.  I’m a Giants fan, but I know I’ll miss Junior Griffey.

Anyway, now that he’s retired, please do not wear your baseball cap backwards.

Trouble in Cooperstown

For many years, I’ve been a customer of The Cooperstown Ballcap Company.  There’s no more quintessential American accessory than the baseball cap, and nobody does it better than these guys.  Their hats are hand-made to your specifications (bill length, crown depth) with almost any logo in the history of organized baseball, not to mention beautiful wool felt and a leather sweatband.  I own four and would be happy to own more - they are a dramatic step up from the New Era stuff at the mall.

But I just got some bad news in my inbox — it appears things are changing in Cooperstown.  They’ll be producing their typical huge variety of custom caps until the end of the year.  Then they’ll be largely shutting down their custom business (making only 20 custom caps a week), and offering only a selection of pre-1960 logos.  They say this is due to a combination of the impending retirement of their head of production and legal issues.

So what can I say?  Make someone’s Christmas dreams come true right now, even if they’re your own.