Saturday, April 04, 2009

Baseball Caps: Loyalty or Fashion?

Although I'm not nearly well known on this forum yet, I would like to tell fill you in about my last 3 1/2 months. I am studying abroad through Loyola in Rome, Italy. Through my adventures in Rome and traveling to random European and African countries, I have seen many historical, beautiful places and have been able to participate in many different cultural experiences. One thing that I particularly like to do while traveling abroad is people watching and particularly looking at what different people wear. Probably because I am American, I particularly like to see what different baseball caps or apparel Europeans men wear. Whenever I see a baseball hat, I make sure: whether its walking a little faster or dodging vespas in the street, to see what hat a guy is fashioning.

What I have noticed is that the top three hats that men wear are: NY Yankees, LA Dodgers, and yes the Chicago White Sux, I mean Sox. The reason? Italians are known for their love of the color black in their fashion. Although LA are known for their color blue, men sport an all black cap type of LA's hat. This black hat is known with NY and WS. NY and LA are obvious abbreviations for the 2 most populated cities in the USA, so that's probably why I see the MOST LA and NY hats. My reasoning for seeing a few, not many, WS hats is because it is an all black hat (yes, I may dare to say that I actually almost barfed when I saw a Sox hat all the way in Tunisia, Africa).

In conclusion, I believe men fashion these black caps for fashion rather than loyalty for a certain baseball team. I also think that this is similar to some men in the United States who wear soccer jerseys because it looks fashionable rather than knowing anything about/ watching the sport regularly.


L8R,
Sarajevo.