New Era MLB Caps Sent to the Showers Amid Backlash

Some saw vulgar messages in the updated designs

In what’s surely one of the biggest sports merch fails of the year, New Era suffered a serious blow after designing new hats for MLB’s teams. 

The league’s exclusive cap supplier since 1993 took the hit on its Overlap 5950 line for perceived vulgarities and odd messages revealed in its fresh designs, which placed team logos in front of club names. News outlets had a field day, as it were, playing up the risqué factor.

Examples: the big “H” of the  Houston Astros, overshot the “T” in the team name, resulting in the word … “Ashos.” And the Anaheim Angels had a rather large “A” resulting in “Anaels.” You get the picture. 

While sports apparel store Fanatics removed the caps from its online store, they quickly became a collector’s dream, moving to sites like eBay and are now selling at a premium. 

“The pro-sports consumer products industry constantly finds creative ways to showcase branded team merchandise for its enthusiastic fanbase,” says Bill Frederick, principal and creative director at sports branding creative agency Fanbrandz. “This leads to a vast range of designs within a single team’s brand. New Era’s latest Overlap line, however, may have moved a little too quickly, overlooking the unintended consequence of partially obscuring team names.”

“Combined with a passionate fanbase ready to amplify any misstep on social media, the result was swift backlash. It’s likely New Era has learned from this experience, and once the new season begins and players take the field, this incident will be a distant memory.”