Monday, February 27, 2006

Teams

[So, I should have posted this like 8 months ago, but I didn't, so I am now.]

I had been going to a fair number of baseball games this past year. Orioles/Red Sox, and then Nationals/ everybody. And baseball games as Richard Greenberg and everyone else knows can be kind of mesmerizing and kind of really boring. And, during the boring bits, when you're not drinking beer or eating hot dogs or pretzels or ice cream or cotton candy. But not nachos. Never nachos. Anyway, when you're not eating and the game is a wee bit boring, you start looking around the stadium, and if you're me, you notice something weird.

Chicks are wearing pink baseball caps.

And, at first, I'm really annoyed. Now, I'm actually pretty annoyed already by the fact that you can get multiple versions of the same team's cap -- red on blue, blue on red, etc., but at least within a realm of possibility delineated by the team's official colors. Baseball caps are an expression of allegiance, they let people know from far away what team you're on -- they can provoke instant sympathy or else, they can provoke something like when our next door neighbors made Beloved Husband's friends move their car, b/c of one of them was wearing a Sox cap.

But pink?

Huh?

First, there's the total utterly unsexiness of the pink baseball cap. Unlike a real baseball cap, which, if you're a girl, has a kind of "I'm wearing my boyfriend's too-big t-shirt kind of thing," the pink cap attempts femininity. And then fails. Because it's not actually flattering at all. And, unlike real baseball caps, which get cuter the more worn and dingy they are, the pink caps only look gross when they're not brand new.

But even more importantly, they are undermining the entire point of a baseball cap. Unless you are right up close to someone, you can't tell whether she's Cubs or White Sox, Angel or Devil Ray, it's all a pink blur. This is important information, ladies, this is why you wear a baseball cap, and now you're not broadcasting anything.

Wtf?

After mulling it over, for a couple of games, though, and getting progressively angrier at the pink chicks, it finally dawned on me what was going on. The baseball caps were doing what they always did; I just wasn't getting it. The caps weren't there to show team allegiance, that was just a secondary benefit. They were there to show something far more important: membership in Team Girl. Instantly, gazing out on a stadium, I could identify the girls. There they were, a whole pink-capped sea of them. And, maybe when cap-wearing girl passes another cap-wearing girl, they exchange a small nod, an acknowlegment, that yes, before their team-fandom, comes their gender-fandom.

I could finally relax. I comfortably into my seat. I accepted the pink caps. I even smiled at the Spice-Girls-faux-feminism of it.

Until I saw the them.

A smaller subset of chicks was wearing lavender caps.

I give up.

1 comment:

8yearoldsdude said...

I reject your preamble that baseball games are boring at times.

Did pink rise to prominence on the coattails of preppy, or is it a separate phenomenon?

The quality of baseball caps on girls is best explained by the bill curve far more than team or color.