The ubiquitous baseball cap: Identity, style, and comfort in late modern times

The baseball cap completes the T-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers as the common kit of late modern life, the recent decades when consumption, as acquisition, display, and deployment, has become preeminent in asserting self-identity and negotiating social placement. This essay traces the codification and commercialization of the baseball cap within that sport and its adoption by other sports and spectators. It argues that for fans the cap within the stadium is more than passive allegiance but rather a material performative. The essay then follows the cap into everyday life, where it has become the dominant headwear because its material qualities can enable affiliation, fashion, and comfort. Although the baseball cap is ubiquitous at the present moment, its frequency is variable, as evidenced by timed counts in public spaces in the three baseball nations of United States, Japan, and Cuba. The article concludes by suggesting some factors that may explain the cap’s transgressive motility across sport, work and everyday life, across fashion codes, and across gender and class divides