Put a Lid on it

Earlier in the year, back when the Defensive Specialist was scouring the interwebs looking for information regarding the Australian Baseball League you may remember your old pal (the Defensive Specialist) breaking the news that the official hat of the ABL would be supplied by New Era. Being a man of splendid sartorial tastes, this announcement was hailed as a great thing because quite frankly, New Era makes great quality hats.

As the Defensive Specialist has lamented recently, there simply has not been much to talk about regarding the ABL despite it being less than a month away from launching. Sure there has been speculation over roster make-ups etc but nothing really worth sinking one’s teeth into. Fortunately during one of the Defensive Specialist’s daily sweeps of the ABL website, he stumbled across a link actually confirming New Era as the official supplier of hats in the ABL. Being the curious (and frisky) type, the Defensive Specialist clicked on the link and low and behold, there we all 6 team hats and the capacity to actually purchase them! Now every kid can finally walk around with their New Era baseball hat – of course they’ll keep the damn stickers on them too!

The Defensive Specialist took a sizeable gulp when he saw the price - $49.95 which is fairly steep for a hat, especially when you consider you can purchase Major League Baseball New Era hats online for around $30 US (which is now approximately $22 in Australian currency). Anyway, price aside it was an exciting time for the Defensive Specialist because it meant he could step into his tuxedo and patent leather shoes and provide a comprehensive style breakdown of all 6 caps for the good readers.

Without further ado, lets take a swing around the league and glance and every team’s headwear, grading on creativity, style and whether or not the Defensive Specialist would shell out 50 bones:

Canberra Cavalry

Rumour has it that Major League baseball had their design team working laboriously to come up with the logo’s and designs for each team. If the Defensive Specialist was Bud Selig (Commissioner of Baseball), he would have the entire team on a performance improvement plan with a view towards termination for this uninspired effort!

Seriously, two C’s humping each other was the best they could come up with? The Defensive Specialist was a bit sceptical of the fierce looking horse logo at first but it has grown on him. Surely having the angry steed on the hat is a better option than the logo for popular corn chips? If you stare at the logo long enough you can definitely trick yourself into seeing the top C riding the bottom C. If you look even harder, the bottom C starts to resemble a horse!

Creativity: 1/10

Style: 6/10. Black and orange work well in baseball although the second C (the one getting humped) looks to be in the shade of apricot, which is decidedly unbaseball.

Total: 7/20

Would the Defensive Specialist pay $50: No

Perth Heat

The Defensive Specialist has long raged against the lame-o Perth Heat logo and was relieved that the crack MLB design team finally made some dramatic changes to it….. oh wait, no they didn’t.  The design has been tweaked by the head 8-year-old design manager, giving it a little bit more of a modern look, but all in all it is still an incredibly basic and boring logo.

Creativity: 0/10

Style: 2/10. Instead of taking the opportunity to reinvigorate the brand, the Heaters have kept their trusty old pair of grandpa slippers. At least black and red is a good uni combo (as long as they never ever roll out the solid black vests with black sleeves or worse yet red sleeves)

Total: 2/20

Would the Defensive Specialist pay $50: No, and he may resist payment to wear it.

Sydney Blue Sox

The Defensive Specialist showed Mrs The Defensive Specialist the hat and her first words were, “ geez, it’s hard to make a sock look tough”. She did then follow up and say that it was a cool hat, which the Defensive Specialist absolutely agrees with. While cartoon character logos can be a bit hit and miss, the Blue Sox logo is somewhat endearing and the colours are by far the best in the league – powder blue just works well when paired with navy. On top of all that, think about the marketing appeal of socks and 13-16 year old boys!

(The Defensive Specialist isn’t just raving because he is Sydney Blue Sox member number 383 either.)

Creativity: 9/10

Style: 9/10. The colour scheme is rock solid. The only thing holding this bad boy back from a perfect 10 is the missing powder blue coloured button on the top of the hat. That takes it to the next level of coolness.

Total: 18/20

Would the Defensive Specialist pay $50: Absolutely, except with membership you get 10% off.

Melbourne Aces

As the uniforms were getting the sign off from teams and MLB, the Defensive Specialist had heard that the Melbourne uniform and logos were an abomination. When the Defensive Specialist finally laid eyes on the Melbourne team hat, he has to admit that….he was pleasantly surprised. The navy blue and red combo works well, the M logo isn’t too bad and the plane flying across it is kind of cool. The Aces could have played it safe and totally average with an ace of spades or something to that effect but instead rolled the dice and came up with the fighter jet that just makes the design different and decidedly better.

Creativity: 9/10. Wasn’t what the Defensive Specialist expected at all, in a very good way.

Style: 8/10. As mentioned, the red and navy combo is excellent and the whole look has an aeronautical feel.

Total: 17/20

Would the Defensive Specialist pay $50: Definitely

Brisbane Bandits

The Defensive Specialist isn’t going you lie to you, anytime maroon is involved in a uniform, the Defensive Specialist has an immediate aversion. That may have something to do with the dreadful school uniform the Defensive Specialist had to wear in his formative years or simply because it isn’t really a sporty colour and is best saved for awful bridesmaid dresses. So the Bandits lose points for that. On the upside they seem to have gone away from pairing it with navy blue, which means they will no longer look like giant baseball playing bruises.

The black and maroon combination works much better and the logo is kind of badass which is a plus. A design flaw that the Defensive Specialist’s keenly trained eye spotted is the fact that the B on the logo actually looks like an R. This isn’t enough to torpedo the look.

Creativity: 8/10. Risky going simply with a logo but they came up with a solid one.

Style: 5/10. Maroon doesn’t work well on sporting uni’s.

Total: 13/10

Would the Defensive Specialist pay $50: tough call, unlikely.

Adelaide Bite

The Defensive Specialist is totally stuck on the fence on this one. On one hand, the colours (red, navy and a splash of yellow) work really well (as long as they well and truly do away with the red vests and blue sleeves look of years past). On the other hand, the weird teeth biting through a bat causes the uninitiated to stop and gain their bearings, which isn’t a good thing. The Shark logo the team has is pretty cool, unfortunately it wouldn’t translate well to a hat which is obviously why the bat chomping A was used. Many will ask why it doesn’t translate and the answer is extremely complicated – put simply though, cartoon stylised logos (Blue Sox, Bandits) work on hats while more serious logos do not. It’s the rules of fashion – just watch Project Runway.

The font of the A looks really good however so the hat isn’t a total loss. If something could be done with the shark teeth and bat the hat could be a real winner.

Creativity: 6/10. Points for trying something different. Lack of points for not really succeeding.

Style: 8/10. Great colour combos, solid font. Just missed on the logo look.

Total: 14/12

Would the Defensive Specialist pay $50: with a tweak yes, but in it’s current form – no.

Final Rankings

1.    Blue Sox

2.    Aces

3.    Bite

4.    Bandits

5.    Cavalry

6.    Heat

So there you have it, fashion ratings from the fashionista of baseball! The Defensive Specialist is eager to lay eyes on the uniforms in order to provide a similar breakdown. Be sure to hit the poll on the right to cast your vote for the best hat in the league.