Mark Bialczak


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I’m not buying this odd attraction to flat-brimmed hats on our green playing fields

May 16, 2013 7:52 am

The style that's spreading to fields and fairways.

The style that’s spreading to fields and fairways.


It’s crossed over into televised sports, this relatively new fashion called the flat-brimmed hat. How odd.

It’s not the name that’s peculiar in any way, mind you. You stick it on your noggin. The big brim has not a bit of a curve to it. Yep, it’s a flat-brimmed hat.

(My first urge is to call it a cap, but a kiosk I spotted selling them in Destiny USA had a sign that declared “It’s a hat, not a cap.” Further, urbandictionary.com tells me that “the flat-brimmed baseball hat is said to have originated in Oakland and California.”)

Anyway.

I totally accept the style on a rapper or skateboarder or guy walking down the street who wants to look like a rapper or skateboarder.

Change in street style is inevitable.

On the baseball field? On the golf course? Not so much.

I’m not against innovation in sports outfitting, mind you. Pretty please, scientists, give us a helmet that will better protect football, hockey and lacrosse players from concussion. If it looks different, so be it.

But not for mere cosmetics.

On the baseball field, give me the curved brim of a cap, on all the players. That’s why they call it a uniform, is it not? And it looks sharp.

On the golf course, I give even more leeway. A visor, to keep the sun out of the eyes but let the hair breathe, OK. A bucket hat to more completely ward off those dangerous rays, great. Engineer hat like Ricky Barnes, well, I’ll let it slide with one raised eyebrow. In fact, this year I started wearing a snazzy Sinatra-like model, a golfing fedora, if you will.

But don’t give me these flat-brimmed hats that seem to stretch so wide they extend beyond the athlete’s cheeks. They don’t look like they fit. They do look like they’re going to fall off. You know what I’m talking about, Rickie Fowler and Hunter Mahan.

Do you like it or not?

Posted by markbialczak

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3 Responses to “I’m not buying this odd attraction to flat-brimmed hats on our green playing fields”

  1. The great Brazilian race driver, Ayrton Senna, wore this style of hat decades ago–OK, sometimes it had a small bend in it. Check the movie,”Senna” for evidence or this photo (http://www.grandprix247.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/94rsm33.jpg) in which Michael Schumacher does him one up.

    Like

    By farfalle1 on February 15, 2014 at 2:25 pm

    1. They look just as dumb then as they do now, farfalle.

      Like

      By markbialczak on February 15, 2014 at 2:36 pm

  2. Um, no, don’t like it. The problem is there is no proportionality. You’ve got this big wide thing over your face but it doesn’t balance out like a fedora. Ugly.

    Like

    By Andy on May 16, 2013 at 8:09 am

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