In recent years, MLB’s official hat supplier, New Era, has been known to design special-edition hats to be worn on select games throughout the season. Some of those hats are fine. The “Local Market” hat does not represent one of those times.
Just ask the Kansas City Royals.
The hats, which were supposed to pay homage to home city (or market, I guess) of each MLB club in a busy Bennigan’s kind of way, prominently featured area codes on the side of the cap for every team except the Pittsburgh Pirates for some reason.
All of the hats looked pretty terrible, but if you’re going to put area codes on hats, it’s a good idea to at least include the correct area codes. A lot is going on here …
My god pic.twitter.com/mjZw4xsaFw
— Craig Brown (@CraigBrown_BP) May 25, 2021
The Royals’ cap included the area codes: 316, 620, 785 and 913. All of those area codes are from Kansas despite the fact that the Royals play in Missouri. It had Wichita’s 316 area code, which is like 200 miles away from Kansas City. You had Lawrence’s 785 area code, which is demonstrably not Kansas City. Someone knew that the Royals played in Missouri because the state outline was on the hat.
But worst of all: It didn’t include KCMO’s primary area code of 816. You know, just the area code of Kauffman Stadium’s listed phone number.
Noticing that the 816 omission was making rounds among the fanbase, the Royals had to poke fun at New Era for the blunder. They updated their Twitter bio to point out all the weird stuff the hats featured and added the hat’s area codes in the location field.
New bio, who dis? pic.twitter.com/60jhNHRDnZ
— Kansas City Royals (@Royals) May 25, 2021
The message must have gotten through to New Era because the Royals’ hats were eventually pulled from New Era’s site.
New Era might want to double check those area codes on its ugly hats next time. Just a thought.
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