by Robert Verdibello for the Autumn 2025 issue
LATE SUMMER 2025
For those of you who care about such things, a baseball cap is an intimate thing. That is obvious given that it literally sits on top of one’s head. There is also the irrational bond between the wearer and the logo on the front panels of the hat. A signifier of tribal allegiance and shared experience.
Allow me to provide you, loyal reader, with a recent example of tortured, irrational logic that manifests itself when it comes to the topic, and dare I say, etiquette, of baseball cap wearing. The set-up: two long time friends who have decided to go for a walk. It had rained the night before. For much of the morning it had continued to rain. In between waves of drizzly rain, the friends decided to go for a walk outside. But as soon as they ventured outside, it began to drizzle again. Not very hard but enough to make one uncomfortably wet.
“Do you have a hat I can borrow?” The question posed to me was innocent enough. But it set off a cascade of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Of course I had a hat that could be borrowed. My friend had stayed the night at my home as a stop over on the way to the airport, and I was certain that all of my hats neatly stacked in boxes had been observed when he had gone to take a shower. So a terse “no” would be immediately called out as disingenuous. Therefore, the answer had to be “yes.” Once that was established, the next problem to be solved was which hat to loan out? This was the equivalent of loaning out a bathing suit or underwear. A hat is in direct contact with the wearer. Follicles and glands, oils and perspiration are absorbed into the fabric through the mere act of being placed in position. The problem being that unlike a bathing suit or underwear, it is difficult to wash a baseball cap without destroying it. Oh sure, you could use dish soap on the sweatband, and febreeze the panels. But the hat so afflicted becomes desecrated; it never looks or feels the same again. So it would have to be a hat that was not part of the regular rotation of hats that I liked to wear because once the hat was lent out, even if it was returned in good condition, it would need to get shelved for some time.
Racing back into the house, my mind set about running through the inventory of hats scattered throughout. The ones in the boxes were really the ones I cared about, so any of those would be off the list unless I could not find one in either the first floor closet or the bedroom. Peering into the bedroom closet I spotted a rarely used “Dog Dad”. That was a candidate despite the fact that my guest did not have a dog. He lived out of town, who would know? Not ideal, but workable. And then out of the corner of my eye I spotted it. A hat I never really wore, and it was perfect for him.
Returning to the car in triumph, I handed it over and said, “You can wear this one. It’s perfect for you and I will never wear it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it is a Yankees hat.”
“Oh, come on. Look at it. The design is so clean and classic.”
“I suppose. That one I can live with because it is one of the more original versions of the interlocking letters. This one is from the 30’s and 40’s. DiMaggio and Gherig. Not the Steinbrenner version.”
“Whatever. Thanks for the loaner.”
“No problem.”
* * * *
A well worn hat is a time traveler. Radiating time, place, and events gone by. Sometimes accidentally providing the clues to a later story.
One of the hats that is definitely “box-worthy” is what can only be described as a 1942 New York Baseball Giants All-Star cap. Essentially it is a dark royal blue cap with the original interlocking “NY” of the by-gone NY Giants in orange highlighted by a lighter robbins egg blue. Of course for the uninitiated, a blue cap with interlocking orange “NY” sounds suspiciously like the Mets. And for those in the know, the interlocking “NY” of the Giants did migrate over to the Mets in 1962 – another story for another time, come back next issue. But my ownership of the hat prompted me to explore the 1942 All-Star Game.
By the time of the 1942 MLB All-Star Game, the United States had been participating in World War II for seven months. Not quite “Arsenal America”, but before the post war economic debates concerning Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes, gold-backed money had to be raised to make the armaments that would ultimately wind up in the hands of the Allies and win the war. One tried and true method of war financing before the Cold War was the sale of War Bonds.
Major League Baseball was going to do its part to support the growing war effort by participating in a War Bonds sale drive to coincide with the annual All Star game to be played in July. The Dodgers had relatively new ownership and management. For the first time since the beginning of the 20th Century and the construction of Ebbets Field in 1913, the Dodgers were going to be taken seriously. It took a couple of years, but new ownership was able to convince the grand poo-bahs of both the American and National Leagues to allow the Dodgers and Ebbets Field to host the All-Star Game. It also made sense to host the game in Brooklyn, New York given the former city’s well known Navy Yards.
The fans did their part. Purchasing entrance tickets and bonds in record numbers. So many in fact that intimate Ebbets Field could not handle the demand. As a result, the game had to be moved to a larger National League venue, which just so happened to be the Polo Grounds, home of the rival New York Baseball Giants. This of course did not go unnoticed by one Walter O’Malley, part-owner of the Dodgers at that stage, and soon to be the sole owner. Prior to the emergence of George M. Steinbrenner, III on the New York scene in the early 1970’s, and the next iteration of ole’ Colonial Ruppert, as a publicly known owner of a New York-based franchise that put winning above all else – was Walter O’Malley. When O’Malley took over the Dodgers in 1939, the franchise was a perennial joke to such an extent that the long-time manager of the rival Giants, Bill Terry, once questioned whether the Dodgers were still a professional team playing in the National League. That would all change under Water O’Malley.
The first thing O’Malley did was standardize the name. Believe it or not, through 1938, the Brooklyn National League baseball team did not consistently go by the nick-name, “Dodgers”. For a number of years they were referred to as the “Robins” because their manager’s name was Wilbert Robinson; in the very beginning they were known as the “Bridegrooms”. In the thirties the name coalesced around the name “Trolley Dodgers”, but that was too long. Starting in 1938, no more bull-shit, they were the “Dodgers.” Next-up were the uniforms. Again, for those of us that care about such things, the Dodgers uniforms, pre-1938, were an absolute fashion nightmare. At one point their uniforms were a plaid checkerboard. Their best uniforms up to that date were again under the Robinson years where they had the distinct “B” in robbins-egg blue. And then out of nowhere in 1937, long before Charlie O’Finley, the Dodgers wore green and white uniforms. Enough. From now on it would be royal blue and white – sure that was the color scheme of the rival Giants – but the Dodgers would have their name in script, and not the same font as the Giants. The Giants would ultimately change their uniforms first to having red trim – a color scheme ultimately copied by the New York Football Giants – and then would settle on black and orange for the rest of time.
Now armed with a newly minted nick-name and uniforms, the Dodgers were ready to be taken seriously. The last piece to upgrade, the stadium in which they played their home games, would prove to be the biggest of challenges and ultimately the reason for their trip cross-country to Los Angeles. Fun fact: before relocating to LA, the Dodgers experimented with whether fans would travel with the team, and to begin the process of dissociation from Brooklyn, by playing a number of “home” games at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1957. Fun fact #2, Roosevelt Stadium inadvertently became the model for Candlestick Park in San Francisco when the Giants moved west with the Dodgers in 1958. Before all of that, in 1942 it became clear to Walter O’Malley that the team needed a larger home in which to play. If only they had a stadium like the Polo Grounds.
Teams from Brooklyn had been competing against teams from New York (Manhattan) since the end of the Civil War and before the formation of the National League. The fierce competition on the ball field mirrored the competition between the then two separate cities. The civic competition changed for all time in 1898 with the consolidation of Greater New York. Brooklyn and Manhattan were now part of the same city. By the middle of the 20th Century, the consolidation was complete. While there was still competition and civic pride among and between the boroughs, they were all part of one municipality. The second idea to emerge from the 1942 All-Star Game was the notion that National League baseball in the City of New York should be combined under one team. In 1942, there were more important battles to be fought, but once the war ended, with the Allies – and especially the United States – emerging victorious, this idea would be re-visited. In retrospect, a clue was apparent in 1948 when the Dodgers removed the name “Brooklyn” from their road grey jerseys. Although everyone at the time knew the Dodgers were from Brooklyn, they were singularly known as the Dodgers. It would take the entire decade of the 1950’s, but by the dawn of modern baseball in the 1960’s, the Dodgers and Giants would have entire cities and regions to themselves and the City of New York would have one consolidated National League team playing in a municipal-owned stadium in the Borough of Queens with a hat of dark royal blue and an inter-locking orange “NY”.
And yet, when I take my 1942 All-Star Game out to walk the dog, most people think that it’s a Mets or Knicks hat. 🏁
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