Trying to buy that NSFW hat for the Angels, Rangers and Astros? You may be out of luck
- Share via
A unique, new line of MLB hats for fans displays a team’s uniform logo with its hat logo superimposed on top of it in the center.
Sounds kind of fun, right?
Maybe not so much for three American League West teams — the Angels, Texas Rangers and Houston Astros — whose New Era Overlap 59FIFTY caps garnered so much shock and ridicule that MLB stopped sales by late Tuesday morning.
Let’s start with the Rangers. For $44.99, their fans could have purchased a cap that displayed “TEXAS” with the organization’s big “T” logo covering the “X.”
The mishmash of letters created a different word altogether — one that happens to be a vulgar term for “breasts” in Spanish.
The Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, a Dodgers minor league team, chose “Chaquetas” as an alternate name, then learned of the word’s slang meaning.
Needless to say, those hats were met with incredulity and amusement over the weekend before being pulled from MLB’s online stores Monday.
Then there’s the Angels. Their Overlap hats featured the team name with the franchise’s large “A” logo with the halo placed on top of the “G.” That created a word that looks and sounds close enough to another word with obscene connotations.
By Tuesday morning, the only place that cap was available for purchase was Ebay — and for $200.
And finally, the Astros. Their Overlap caps also had the team name up front, with the letters “T” and “R” covered with Houston’s large “H” logo to accidentally make a word that when spoken sounds a lot like a NSFW term Dodgers fans might have used for the Astros after the 2017 cheating scandal.
The Angels and Astros caps were removed Tuesday morning. MLB and New Era declined to comment for this story.
The Dodgers set a record for merchandise sales in the hour after beating the Yankees to win the World Series, according to Fanatics. Shohei Ohtani is the top-selling player.
Another AL West team, the Athletics, probably likes these hats a lot better than theirs from New Era’s Shadow series last year, which appeared to spell the word “A—.” The Overlap ones merely spell “AthAStics.”
The other entries in the collection appear to mainly display gibberish as well, such as “DoLAers” (the Dodgers), “BOBON” (Boston Red Sox) and PhiPies (Philadelphia Phillies). One exception, however, is “ARIANA” (Arizona Diamondbacks), which may prove to be popular with fans of both the team and a certain pop singer/actress.
Some baseball fans might find the concept fun. Others might simply want to tell the league, “Thank U, Next.”
Go beyond the scoreboard
Get the latest on L.A.'s teams in the daily Sports Report newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
