Day 302: Jim Thome Perfect Swing Tan Hat

Earlier in this blog, and I can’t seem to find when right now, I blogged a winter hat with a swinging batter logo on it.  Well, I bought three hats with that logo on it, including today’s.  They were from the “Jim Thome Perfect Swing” line, and of course I had to have them, as Jim Thome was (and is) my favorite major league baseball player.

This hat is tan cotton with a cloth adjustable strap, and it is made by New Era.  The front has the “perfect swing” silhouette logo of Jim Thome’s swing, superimposed over a red and white oval with black and silver outlines.

I don’t remember ever wearing this hat too much, but I must have, as I see it has some serious sweat marks on it.  I did like this hat, and I still do consider Thome my favorite player, now 3 teams removed from the Indians.  I think he always will be my favorite.

Day 301: Buffalo Bisons Script Hat

In truth, I remember this hat actually being my brother’s.  But somehow it has made its way in to my collection, and so therefore it is now my hat!  This is an old Bisons hat with the script logo used in the early Pilot Field days.

This hat is blue cotton with a plastic adjustable strap.  The front has the old Bisons script logo in red with white outline.

As basic and nondescript as this hat is, really, I definitely remember it kicking around the house when we were kids.  I think I probably wanted to steal it from Craig.  Looks like I finally did!

Day 300: Lia’s Daddy

Today’s hat is one I have been saving for a special occasion.  I think Day 300 of this blog qualifies as a special blog post.  And this hat is not just special, it’s the most special hat in my whole collection.  It was my Christmas present when Lia was still an “inside baby.”  I love this hat.  As you can see here, I put it on almost as soon as Lia drew her first breath.  I was, and am, very proud to be her daddy, and I wanted to make sure everyone knew it.

The hat is red acrylic/wool blend and stretch fit sized L-XL.  It has the words “Lia’s Daddy” embroidered on the front in white.  The back has two baby footprints, one in white and the other in blue, above the words “Christmas 2007″ in black script.

“Christmas 2007?” you might be asking yourself.  ”I thought Lia was born January 1, 2008.”  It’s true, she was.  But we EXPECTED her to be there by Christmas.  In fact, we had a TON of Christmas presents for her.  But she decided to wait a while.  And she was definitely worth the wait.  So this hat, which shows off one of the best parts of my life, is my favorite hat of all.  For now.  Don’t worry, new baby!

Day 299: House of Blues, Chicago

Occasionally it does happen that I come across a hat where I’m unsure of its origins.  This is one of those hats.  Oh, I’m sure it got its way in to the world through the House of Blues in Chicago, I’m just not 100% on how it got to me.  I am FAIRLY sure that it was a gift from my friend Alex, from his trip to Chicago while we were roommates, but I’m not 100% on that one.

The hat is black cotton with a leather adjustable strap.  The front has the House of Blues wordmark logo, and the back has “Chicago” arched over the adjustable opening.  Not pictured, because I couldn’t get the camera to focus on it properly, is that the words “In Blues We Trust” is embossed on the leather strap.

There’s really not much to dislike about this hat.  It’s from Chicago, and I love Chicago.  It’s from the House of Blues, and not only do I love blues, and the Blues Brothers, I love original Blues Brother and Canadian Dan Aykroid, the original owner of the joint.

Day 298: Boston College Hat

Today’s hat is another souvenier of my boy scouting days.  As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, we would take trips to different cities once a year with the troop, and I think I was there long enough to do the Boston trip twice.  This was a souvenier of one of my Boston trips, bought from a street vendor like all good souveniers of different cities are.

This hat is white with a maroon bill and button, and a plastic adjustable strap.  The front has the words “Boston College” in maroon block letters.  Above that is the interlocking BC logo with a soaring eagle overlayed on it.

This was another of the colleges I applied to.  Unlike Notre Dame, they didn’t outright reject me.  They accepted me, but offered me so little financial assistance that it was impossible to actually afford to go there.  Oh well, can you imagine if I HAD gone there?  I might be a Red Sox fan today.  ugh.

Day 297: Gear For Sports Promotional Hat

Today’s hat is another one of those free hats that were a product sample put out by a company trying to get the company I used to work for to order corporate logo hats.  I’m sure there was a better way to explain that, but I’m not sure I know what it is today.  In any case, this is some company’s hat.

The hat is black and stretch fit, which is odd for a free promotional hat.  The front has a “Gear for Sports” logo on it, and the back has just the word “Gear.”  The bit of a backfire here is that though it is stretch-fit… it doesn’t fit.  It’s too small for my head.  That wouldn’t really convince ME to order from you.

Owing to the fact that this hat has some mold on it, smells bad and doesn’t fit… and the fact that it is a company hat for a company I know nothing about… this hat is currently in the “throw out” pile.  I should have thrown out the throw out pile by now, but I can’t seem to get myself to part with ANY hats, no matter how bad off they are.

Day 296: Celtic FC Hat

A while back I blogged a hat from an Umbro outlet store that I got on a trip to Myrtle Beach when I was in college.  This was the second hat I got at that outlet on that trip.  I really didn’t, and still don’t, have much idea who The Celtic Football Club is, other than that they’re somewhere on the other side of the atlantic.  Really, I was just obsessed with everything Irish looking and Celtic looking with green and shamrocks and four leaf clovers and such.  So that’s why I picked this hat.

The hat is green with a white button (or  “squatchee,” as discussed a few days ago.)  The front has the Celtic FC crest, and the back has the word “Celtic” arched above the adjustable opening, and the Umbro logo and wordmark on the velcro strap.  It’s an interesting velcro strap in that it’s not two pieces of velcro that flap together, but rather one long strap with the loopy end of the velcro on it, and the hooky end of the velcro is attached right to the hat.  The downside of this was that people used to come up behind me and detach it.  Har har.

So who is Celtic FC?  They must be Irish, right?  No.  Scottish, actually.  From the Parkhead area of Glasgow, it seems.  The name, it seems, comes from the fact that it was an Irish Catholic brother who founded the club as a means of fund raising, or so the story goes.  But the team is Scottish, and part of the Scottish Premier League.

Day 295: Labatt Blue Hockey Helmet Winter Hat

Oh yeah, it’s silly.  But that’s what’s so great about it.  Why make a hat that looks like a hockey helmet?  WHY NOT?!  And if you’re going to wear it, chances are pretty good that you’ve been drinking, so what better logos than beer?

This hat is navy blue fleece… shaped sort of like a hockey helmet.  The front has a logo that says “Labatt Blue Real Hockey Since 1847,” and the back has the regular Labatt Blue logo.  Of course it even has a chinstrap and earholes!

Now where would someone get a hat like this?  From a bar?  Nope.  A hockey game?  Nope.  In a case of beer?  Not me.  I got it… from my mom.  Between this and the hat with the horns, I think my mom likes silly hats!  Eh, that’s ok, so do I.  But I’ll have you know, this one does NOT look good backwards.

Day 294: Buffalo Bisons Fourth of July Hat

I couldn’t tell you what year this hat was from, but I could tell you what day the Bisons wore it that year.  This was a special 4th of July edition Bisons hat.  It was a few years back, still early in the trend of teams wearing special hats on the 4th.  As they go, this one isn’t too bad.

The hat is red fitted 100% wool.  There is, strangely, no logo on the back, though the regular, every day hats did have a logo on the back at that time.  The front has the “throwback” logo that the Bisons used to use as their Sunday alternate logo, which has been “flagified.”  The logo, as seen in this blog before, is a bison superimposed over a baseball.  here the bison has been done in blue, and the ball in red and white stripes with blue stars in place of the baseball stitches.

True to form, I didn’t actually get this hat ON the 4th of July.  I got it at a discount a few weeks later when I did go to a game.  I always intended to break this hat in and actually wear it sometimes, but I never got around to it.  So it’s part of my unbroken-in wool caps portion of the collection that I have been saving for towards the end of the year, here.

Day 293: Ohio State Buckeyes Reverse Color Relaxed Fit Cap

 

If you’ve read this blog from the beginning, first of all, you’re very patient.  Second of all, you’ve probably seen me talk ad nauseum about how much I like “Franchise” hats by Twins Enterprise.  Well, this hat, I would say, is a “pre-Franchise.”  It has the features of a Franchise hat, and it’s made by Twins, but it was before they decided to give this line of easy-fitted cotton hats a name.  At the time, they were only available in college teams, so I got OSU because I liked the style of hat so much, and they’re the college I “kind of” root for.

The hat is a cream colored cotton, sized extra large.  The front has the Ohio State “O” logo in reverse color white felt with a thin scarlet outline.  The back has the word “Buckeyes” in scarlet above “Ohio State” which is white outlined in scarlet.

I actually had a bit of a hard time breaking this hat in.  It is a very “fuzzy” brushed cotton that was resistant to the water I was trying to use to shrink it.  Eventually, however, I won by wearing it in the rain for hours while standing outside a polling place on election day handing out campaign materials.  That was 2001, and I’d had this hat a few years before that.  This is an old one, I guess you could say.