Back in the day, all baseball caps had flat bills. That’s the way they came, and you curved them to your liking. One theory is that this provided greater shade to the eyes in the peripheral vision. Personally, I think the main reason was simply to mold the cap to the contour of the skull. A random search of images of post-war Major Leaguers—Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Carl Yastrzemski, Willie Mays—shows very little curvature. Some could even be perceived as rocking the flat bill avant la lettre.
With the rise of hip-hop culture, rappers and the people who follow them started keeping the bills on their newly purchased hats flat. (It also became a thing to leave the tags on.) It wasn’t until the flat bill was adopted by some Major Leaguers that the issue became a topic of national debate. Some views on the subject would be downright hilarious if they weren’t so obviously racist.
Personally, I’ve never had a problem with those sporting the flat brim in the Major Leagues. It’s basically just fashion. If it doesn’t affect the way the game is played, who cares. The other seismic shift in the baseball uniform in recent years has been the move to wear the britches all the way down to the cleats, straight-leg style. I’m sure many purists hate this, too, but, you know, hater’s gon’ hate.
So much of fashion, and so much of culture in general, is just a rebellion against the previous generation, the way people stopped saying “man” and started saying “dude,” or stopped saying “cool” and started saying “sick.” They mean the same thing, it’s just a way of distinguishing your generation from your uncle’s. My students all say “based off” where my generation said “based on,” and I’ll admit that this one bugs me a little bit, but I don’t correct them because it’s just fashion. It doesn’t affect the meaning of their work.
Of course, there is a social aspect to wearing the flat bill, too. As the style is obviously rooted in hip-hop culture, it is a way for younger Major Leaguers to pay homage to their subculture and perhaps attract new fans to the game.
Not being a member of this subculture, I naturally planned to curve the bill of my new hat. But then it came in the mail. It was shipped in a square cardboard box (as opposed to a plastic mailing bag) which seemed specifically intended to allow the hat to keep its shape. It occurred to me that, whereas in the old days the flat bill was the default format for all baseball caps, in an era where many caps are manufactured pre-curved, this cap was purposely manufactured with a flat bill. That was its design. I felt that to curve the bill would be to adulterate it in some way. After all, the same cap is available with a pre-curved bill. More importantly, I felt that to curve the bill would somehow amount to a racist act in itself, as if to say, “I like this cap, but I ain’t gonna wear it ghetto style.”
And when I put it on, I had to admit that it looked pretty cool. Or sick. Possibly even fly.
