Brooklyn Caps and Mad Hatters

The modern baseball cap was first worn by the Brooklyn Excelsiors baseball team about 1860, and by the end of the century it was called "the Brooklyn Cap." As you can see in this 1872 advertising card, the cap was very similar to what is worn today.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame site notes that in 1849, the New York Knickerbockers, the first team to adopt uniforms, wore straw hats. By the 1860s they were sporting merino wool caps that looked more like newsboy caps; there is a photo of a Knickerbocker wearing one of these on the National Baseball Hall of Fame site.

In the 1880s there were many styles of baseball cap to choose from, including pillbox hats with visors (one of which was called the "Chicago" style). The Philadelphia style of the early 1900s looked like the Brooklyn, but the crown was stitched in several pieces. The NBHF site is very detailed and has great pictures if you want to delve into this further.

The Peck and Snyder cap as shown at left was also made of wool and would have cost between $1.25 and $2.00, a reasonable amount of money at that time.

I was amused by the cartoon style of the Peck and Snyder card, reminiscent of Sir John Tenniel's drawing of Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter from Alice In Wonderland.

Advertising card from New York Public Library Digital Gallery. Sir John Tenniel's drawing of the Mad Hatter from John Tenniel site, link here.