There is a specific baseball cap that is worn by people who have never held a bat.

Flat brim, still with the sticker on it in many cases, in colors that match no team's uniform.

It is the same cap professional players wear, made by a company in Buffalo, New York that has been producing headwear since 1920.

For most of that history it was a manufacturing business. Make a functional item for a specific professional use, sell it to teams, repeat.

Then something happened that the company did not plan and could not have predicted.

People outside of baseball started wearing them, for reasons that had nothing to do with baseball, and the business became something else entirely.

Subscribe to keep reading

This content is free, but you must be subscribed to Penny Brief to continue reading.

Already a subscriber?Sign in.Not now