MLB is weathering another apparel controversy surrounding a new league-licensed cap design recently unveiled by longtime official hat partner New Era.
The “Overlap” hat series, currently available on MLB’s online store, features each team’s customary cap insignia superimposed over the center of its full primary logo, obscuring some of the letters. For instance, the Phillies hat has a P in the center of the Phillies wordmark.
The structure of the design makes the hats appear to display several words formed when the letter in the team’s cap insignia is inserted into the middle of its full logo. This was quickly noticed by fans, especially in the case of the Texas Rangers edition of the cap.
The Rangers hat—featuring a T superimposed over the “TEXAS” wordmark—forms the exact spelling of a vulgar Spanish word. The hat was pulled from MLB’s online store Monday.
A league source told Front Office Sports that “Tetas” appearing on the Rangers hat was “unintentional” and was missed when the product was first being reviewed.
Several of the Rangers’ American League West rivals did not fare much better with their own hats, as both the Angels and Astros Overlap designs formed words coming close to but not quite spelling out vulgar English terms. Another new cap series, the “Team Shadow” design, inadvertently spelled out another vulgar English word by layering multiple A’s logos on top of but not flush with each other.
Overlap designs also created gibberish words for several other teams, including the Red Sox (“BOBON”), Diamondbacks (“ARIANA”), Marlins (“MMMI”), Phillies (“PHIPIES), Nationals (“NAWALS”) and Brewers (“BRRS”). The Cubs hat was singled out on social media for the opposite reason: it replaced the second “C” in the team’s “CHICAGO” logo with a different-looking “C.”
Aside from the Rangers cap, Overlap hats for all 29 teams remained available on MLB’s online store as of Monday evening.
The hat controversy comes nearly a year after MLB’s new on-field uniforms from Fanatics and Nike drew heavy criticism from players and fans, with even the MLB Players’ Association getting involved. The league promised changes to the uniforms in late April 2024 and several of those redesigns have now been fully implemented, including a resizing of names and numbers on the back of jerseys that look similar to how they were before they went to a smaller font in 2024.
Alex Schiffer contributed reporting to this story.
