I have recently noticed several people wearing Pirates hats around my local university campus here in Kansas, which seems like an odd fashion statement, considering Pittsburgh is so far away and the Pirates don’t exactly have a nation-wide following of fans. Over the past four years, I have seen the ratio of Red Sox to Royals hats increased dramatically to the point that it’s probably at about 4:1 now. This influx of Red Sox hats on our local cultural landscapes is a nation-wide geographic phenomenon. Although the observed Pirates hat phenomenon is nowhere close to the scale of the Red Sox hat phenomenon, what is the reasoning for this?
Although I know relatively nothing about rap or hip-hop music, I can’t help but think there must be some popular artist who is from the ‘Burgh or wears a Pirates hat in a video or two. This reasoning comes from the fact that all of the individuals that I have seen wearing Bucco hats here have been dressed in the hip-hop style: baggy pants, cap bill flat as a board, etc.
This is another thing that bothers the poop out of me – the flat-billed hat. It’s taking over. I had an experience last week at a local hat store where a clerk informed me that the “flat-bills” were on sale, referring to the authentic 59/50 hats. I decided to try one on and made a special effort to bend the bill considerably.
On to my next theory about the Pirates hat phenomenon. Stemming from my flat-bill tangent. There was a sale! Maybe the Pirates hats were dramatically marked down.
Maybe these guys were just trying to be different. I read about a guy in Kevin Kaduk’s book, Wrigleyville, who would buy the hat of the previous year’s worst team before the start of each new season. That season his hat of choice was the Detroit Tigers – look how that turned out. Maybe these guys are just trying to jump on the Bucco bandwagon before it starts.
Update - 1/31/08 - 8:15am (CT)
There has been quite a bit of good discussion of this at Bucs Dugout.
1 comments:
Dunno if there's a connection or not, but...last semester a student approched me and inquired if I visit Pittsburgh often. He continued the line of questioning for quite a while, obviously a great deal interested about the place. He then remarked he wanted to move to "tha burg" someday, even though he'd never been there and has no real connections to the city. Pittsburgh's nice n'at, but what's the attraction way out here?
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