In case any of my six readers have forgotten the back story, I was displeased with the bacon cap I enthusiastically ordered, because the fit was odd, and the shape of the hat was kind of bulbous.
As much as I tried to really love the cap, I just couldn’t get around the fact that it made my head look like The Head, and the rim of the cap would dig into my ears. Upon some research about NewEra caps, I discovered that the reasoning behind such a shoddy product was the fact that the bacon cap, like the vast majority of minor league baseball caps, were manufactured in China, where the results have been notorious for being inconsistent and misshapen.
Long story short, I discovered that the bacon cap was offered from MLB.com directly, where they clearly state that it is made in the USA, so I ended up ordering it again, with hopes that the claims would be true, and I would get a bacon cap that fit and looked right. Otherwise, I was ready to wage war with MLB.com if they dared send me another shoddy Chinese-made bacon cap.
Back to present time, my new bacon cap finally arrived. I tore into the box with gusto, and felt immense excitement when removing the cap from the box. As I peeled the cap out of the plastic bag it was encased in, and flipped it over to reveal the manufacturer’s tag, I held my breath with anticipation at what was going to be printed on it.
MADE IN THE USA
Not to exaggerate too much about how this made me feel, but I felt like a character in a movie where they think they have a disease, and when their test results come in, and they decide to wait until they’re alone to reveal them, and when the results show they’re clean, there’s nobody to really hear them scream in excitement so they don’t bother, and just exhale with relief and do a stern fist pump of satisfaction.
These are the two bacon caps, side-by-side*. Sure, they look pretty much identical, but they’re very much not. The cap on the left is the cap made in the USA, and the cap on the right is the cap made in China. Instantly notice how proud and upright the USA-made cap stands, compared to the slightly squat and slouchy-appearance of the Chinese-made one.
It’s difficult to tell through the photo, especially since the color of the cap is kind of light, but you can still kind of see the integrity of the stitch lines beyond the two front facing panels between the two caps. USA-made NewEra caps are straighter and don’t slouch, while the Chinese-made cap sinks down a little bit; and in many other cases, they simply use an excess fabric which leads to a bulbous crown shape at the top of the cap, that apparently many people on baseball cap forums have deemed “Elmer Fudd-ing.”
*the stickers are only still on the caps, because of the risk of needing to return them if I had to go to war with MLB.com. Otherwise, I am firmly in the camp of cap wearers who take, nay, rip the stickers off of a cap when it’s time to lay permanent claim to them. Then burn them AKA throw them away. And believes that those who keep stickers on their caps to be on an intellectual level beneath the mentally challenged.
Here’s a picture of the stitch lines in better detail, that I’ve put emphasis on. USA-made: straight, tall and sturdy. Chinese-made: curved, slouchy, and sinking.
This picture kind of shows better how due to the slouching, the cap bulges outward at the top, which leads to that Elmer Fudd-like appearance. I have a large head to begin with, although I’m often surprised to see how in-demand a 7.5 cap size is, to where I am probably not alone in this boat. Regardless, a person with a large head, does not need to wear a shoddily made cap that not only accentuates this fact, but further expands on it, to make their head appear even larger.
Made in the USA? Thumbs up.
Anyway, that slightly exaggerated description of relief mentioned earlier? That’s kind of how I felt. And that was just from finding out that it was made in the United States; I still hadn’t tried the new cap on. That was ultimately the bigger thing, because imagine how much it would have sucked to have gone through all this effort and bought a cap twice, only for the supposed superior one to be crap as well?
But I had faith. As I drew the cap over my head, and prepared to press the brim down over my forehead I had faith that everything was going to be fine. When the day is over, I knew the cap made in the USA wasn’t going to let me down.
It fit like Cinderella’s glass slipper.
But how did it look?? I walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.
It looked awesome.
This bacon cap was made perfectly for me.
