* Because you can put a baseball cap on your bookshelf

I got a blue one.

One of my hobbies is collecting baseball caps. But the caveat is that I have to either get them as a gift (hint, hint) or be in the town in which that team plays, I can’t just buy a Wasington Nationals cap in a Lids at the mall. It’s especially fun to get a minor league cap, since they’re relatively unknown. When I was at the recent SABR convention in DC, I eschewed that Washington chapeau for that of their class A farm the, the Potomac Nationals.

I bring this up because of this article in today’s New York Times which considers how the recession has impacted on the baseball cap business. No longer is it enough to merely reproduce an official version (remember when there used to be just one per team?), now they come in different colors (yech) and styles.