Ball Cap Nation. Jim Lilliefors

6

      Buying In: The Merchandise Boom

      In 1978, the New Era cap company placed an ad in Sporting News newspaper for authentic Major League Baseball caps. At the time, New Era and Sports Specialties were the two major licensed manufacturers of pro-ball caps. (Sports Specialties, also the first licensee of the National Football League, was founded in 1928 by David Warsaw who, among other things, invented the bobble-head doll. The company, a pioneer in the field of licensed sportswear, was sold to Nike in 1993.)

      This was New Era’s first attempt at mail order and as company historian Karl Koch recalls, “We had to shut it down, there were too many orders coming in. These weren’t people who went to games. They were out in the middle of Iowa and places like that. It was an early sign that people wanted this.”

      At the time, merchandising was still a relatively modest side business. Accessories and souvenirs were sold at games, but the sale of official products was otherwise very limited. In the 1980s, this would change.

      Large-scale merchandising was the logical next step in the American Sports Culture. It built the culture in two ways: first, it created a new revenue stream; second, the products creating that revenue stream advertised the culture. Getting people to buy a product that serves as an advertisement for itself is a pretty sweet deal if you can pull it off.

      In 1986, MLB and New Era teamed up to produce the Diamond Collection, which officially sanctioned the on-field product. “‘Wear the caps the pros wear’ became the idea,” Koch says.

      Professional sports was a shared national passion by then, which played out in millions of living rooms across the country. Wearing apparel sanctioned by the big leagues brought fans closer to the action and closer to one another; it was an investment in their teams. The ball cap market seemed a natural—and it was.

      FACTOR 7

      Patriot Caps

      In the mid-1980s, another trend attracted a very different sort of cap-wearer. After a decade clouded by war, political scandal, gas shortages, and runaway inflation, a new mood of optimism and patriotism settled over much of the country in the early 1980s. In a speech given on March 8, 1983, in Orlando, Florida, President Ronald Reagan first used the phrase “evil empire” in discussing the Soviet Union and what he called “the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.” The next year, Tom Clancy’s Cold War thriller The Hunt for Red October—a book Reagan strongly endorsed—became a No. 1 bestseller. The image of the American military, tarnished by the Vietnam War years, gained new luster during the Reagan presidency. People felt good about their country.

      Rob Reiner, as director Marty DiBergi, wore this variation of the USS Coral Sea CV-43 cap in the 1984 film This is Spinal Tap.

      The public supported substantial increases in defense spending during this time and became increasingly interested in books and films pertaining to the military, among them First Blood (1982), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), and Clancy’s string of best-selling “techno-thrillers.” The No. 1 box-office draw of 1986, Top Gun, showed off sophisticated U.S. military technology—and the bravery and skills of the Navy’s elite fighter pilots. Among its many influences, the film caused a run on U.S. Navy ball caps embroidered with the word TOPGUN, and other service-related caps.

      Mary Beth Cox, a northern Virginia store owner, says she sold about ten thousand caps in the year after Top Gun. “I guess ball caps are a barometer of patriotism,” she told the Washington Post in 1986. “I think that maybe during Vietnam, which was a bad time, they wouldn’t have been as popular.”

      Cox still sells Navy caps, in addition to caps from all American service branches. While the appeal of military caps has waned since “the Top Gun era,” she says there is still a steady market for them. “I probably sell about four thousand caps a year now, most of which are military. I carry ball caps from all of the services … Caps that appeal to our vets are popular: WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc.” Her store, Ship’s Hatch, also produces custom-made caps for every U.S. Navy ship that ever sailed.

      Military caps, which showed support for the United States and its armed forces during an optimistic decade, continue to be a symbol of patriotism and are often worn by veterans.

      FACTOR 8

      The Rebellion, Backwards and Sideways

      But something else was happening in the 1980s. As the ball cap went mainstream, endorsing such American institutions as Major League Baseball and the military, young people adopted the ball cap and endowed it with another meaning altogether: Wearing a cap became a symbol of personal expression and rebellion—particularly when worn backwards; or sideways.

      In the popular music world, two movements turned the ball cap this way: hip-hop and grunge.

      Hip-hop, or rap, music was born in New York City during the 1970s. As it became more widespread and eclectic in the eighties—particularly after the founding of Def Jam Recordings in 1984—a hip-hop culture took root, which began to influence music, film, television, and fashion.

      An offspring of hip-hop known as “gangsta rap” arrived in the late 1980s. Among the pioneers of this style was a Compton, California-based group called N.W.A. Although their music was often banned from radio play, N.W.A. (which stood for Niggaz With Attitude) sold almost ten million CDs in a five-year lifespan (1986–1991). Group members Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Easy-E all went on to become top-selling solo artists. N.W.A.’s music and attitude were outrageously violent and politically incorrect, and also very popular. Their outlaw look included black-and-silver Oakland Raiders ball caps. The ball cap became a hip-hop staple by the early nineties and remains so today.

      In the Pacific Northwest, meanwhile—about nine hundred and seventy-five miles north of Compton—another musical rebellion was taking shape. In the mid-1980s, an alternative rock music known as grunge was attracting a following in the Seattle area. Grunge incorporated elements of punk rock and heavy metal, but the music had its own unique sensibility, an odd blend of alienation, anger, and apathy. The best-known bands to come out of this underground rock movement, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, were among the top-selling music artists of the 1990s.

      The grunge attitude was reflected in what came to be called “grunge fashion.” Grunge fashion was really anti-fashion, a reaction against what some saw as the yuppiefication of America during the 1980s. Many bands, and fans, sported a working-class look that seemed inspired by Washington state’s lumber industry—checkered shirts, torn trousers, work boots, and baseball caps worn backwards.

      Wearing a ball cap has become a symbol of personal expression and even rebellion.

      Karl Koch, historian for the New Era cap company, says it all had something to do with irony. “The classic rock bands never wore caps. Then the MTV generation came along and there was this shift. It was okay to do things you’d never done before. It was okay to wear a logging uniform on stage and a baseball cap. Everyone was making fun of things. Everything was ironic all of a sudden.”