A unique, new line of MLB hats for fans displays a team’s uniform logo with the same team’s hat logo superimposed on top of it in the center.
Sounds kind of fun, right?
Maybe not so much for three American League West teams — the Angels, Texas Rangers and Houston Astros — whose New Era Overlap 59FIFTY caps garnered so much shock and ridicule that MLB had stopped sales for all three of those team’s hats in that line by late Tuesday morning.
Let’s start with the Rangers. For $44.99, their fans could have purchased a cap that displayed the word “TEXAS,” but with the organization’s big “T” logo covering the “X.”
The mishmash of letters created a different word altogether — one that just so happens to be a vulgar term for “breasts” in Spanish.
Needless to say, those hats were met with incredulity and amusement over the weekend before being pulled from MLB’s online stores Monday.
Then there’s the Angels. Their Overlap hats featured the team name with the franchise’s large “A” logo with the halo placed on top of the “G.” That created a word that looks and sounds close enough to another word with obscene connotations that one X user commented Monday: “Angels hat flying close to the sun.”
By Tuesday morning, the only place that cap was available for purchase was Ebay — and for $200.
And finally, the Astros. Their Overlap caps also had the team name up front, with the letters “T” and “R” covered with Houston’s large “H” logo to accidentally make a word that, when spoken, sounds a lot like a NSFW term Dodgers fans might have used for the Astros after the 2017 cheating scandal.
The Angels and Astros caps were removed from sale Tuesday morning. MLB and New Era declined to comment for this story.
Another AL West team, the Athletics, probably likes these hats a lot better than theirs from New Era’s Shadow series last year, which appeared to spell the word “A—.” The Overlap ones merely spell the nonsensical word “AthAStics.”
The other entries in the collection appear to mainly display gibberish as well, such as “DoLAers” (the Dodgers), “BOBON” (Boston Red Sox) and PhiPies (Philadelphia Phillies). One exception, however, is “ARIANA” (Arizona Diamondbacks), which may prove to be popular with fans of both the team and a certain pop singer/actress.
Some baseball fans might find the concept fun. Others might simply want to tell the league, “Thank U, Next.”