The great American baseball cap. Buy one for $1.00 in the reduced bin at Walmart or $265 retail at Gucci. A favorite of President Bill Clinton and Rapper Lil’ Wayne and millions of other people who don’t play any sports or work outside in the sun. Of course, baseball wasn’t technically born in the U.S.A and most of the caps sold here are manufactured in China, but try wearing one to the Roma Centro train station and the myriad of piercing glares from the Italians will kindly confirm that you are the worst dressed person in the place. And isn’t that what it means to be an American abroad?

O flimsy piece of paperboard trapped inside a poly/cotton shell! It doesn’t matter that by sheltering our eyes from the sun’s brilliant rays, you block our line of vision, rendering us unable to see the meteor that might be falling on our heads. We do not care that you cannot fully protect us from rain showers or sunburn or the scrutiny of bored people who ban the backwards version of you from their malls. Illogical or sloppy or whatever the detractors may call it, we will still proudly shuck out 2 billion a year for your sweat imprisoning head cradle until the end of time…or at least until you go out of fashion.

And sleep soundly dear headware of my heart, for you are just another link in the chain of silly American hats. Think George Washington crossing the Delaware. There, powerful and leader-like our first president stands tall in his boat, stoically braving the assaulting gales and torrential downpours with a cape on his back and a black, pirate-looking tricorne hat atop his white wigged head. No, this iconic image would not and could not be any goofier if it were you instead on his commanding dome. The hat does not make the man. The man makes the man.

John F. Kennedy is often blamed for briefly murdering the cap in American culture, despite the fact that he frequently donned visored headwear during his more leisurely pursuits. He was the first president to appear hatless at his inauguration, and this decision was perceived as a calling for us to cast away the work hats that define us. The conductor should not be defined by his conductor’s hat. The chef should not be confined to his chef’s hat. We have the right to wear many hats, to wear whatever hats we please. And while this sentiment resulted in several decades of hatless-ness, today the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum sells baseball caps embroidered with the letters “35,” honoring the late hat-hating leader’s term as 35th president of the United States. In retrospect, perhaps Kennedy, by shunning the formal top hat at his inauguration, and fedora in daily use, was trying to prepare the country for a major baseball cap initiative during his second term. We will never know.

The baseball cap is like zooming to Dunkin’ Donuts at 5:00AM to beat the crowds, only to find fifteen cars already in the drive-through lane. It is about being a part of something larger than yourself. In the 1980s, the New Era Cap Company of Buffalo, New York signed an exclusive merchandising agreement with Major League Baseball, and gave us common folk a way to show support for our favorite sports teams. But more importantly, to know whose side to take if a bar brawl were to break out between a Red Sox and a Yankees fan. Today, the company is the exclusive manufacturer for MLB, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, and the National Rugby League, and provides caps for over 200 colleges and universities in the United States, generating annual revenue of around 343.7 million and employing 1,700 worldwide. Even President Obama, the leader of our nation, is not afraid to wear his official White Sox cap with pride. Although he now represents the entire country, he was once just a senator from Illinois, and Chicago area sports teams are a part of who he is. Instead of the fancy top hats preferred by former presidents, he wears the hat he wants to wear. A hat that, in the commonness of form, links him to the regular people, but at the same time flies the flag of the team he believes in, and by extension, the city he calls home.

Instead of wearing our hearts on our sleeves, we wear them on our heads. Today, we can buy baseball caps with a propellered top embroidered with the expression “I don’t wanna grow up!” and fans of the Green Bay Packers can add a “Cheesehead” lid to their ensemble for only $12.99, flaunting their love of both the national game and the great state of Wisconsin. To profess our patriotism we don caps bejeweled in the color and form of the American Flag, and Bigfoot enthusiasts can just as easily rep their passion, as they won’t have to look far to find the suitable “Gone Squatchin” hat online. They come in tie dye and denim and velvet and straw, with an endless collection of phrases such as “#1 Fisherman,” “I’m Here for the Beer,” “Openly Gray,” “Proud Daddy,” and probably even “Proud Sugar Daddy”. They may be embroidered with a quote on humanity and goodness from Aristotle, or made to look like a stegosaurus is ripping through the fabric. They are worn by football players and tennis players just as often as NASCAR drivers, who, locked in a vehicle already equipped with a shade visor, don’t even need to protect themselves from the sun. You can even buy something known as a “sap cap,” which looks like a normal baseball hat but contains pockets of material with the density of lead, allowing it to double as an impact weapon. Is there anything more American than that?

And don’t assume this cap too plebian for the artsy fartsy crowd. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston sells a denim baseball cap for $19.95 to commemorate a rare Bugatti exhibition, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City sells a “rotunda cap” for $28 on their website, embroidered with that iconic image of the “sloping spiral ramp that curves around the building interior.” While the more discerning Louvre does not offer this headware option to tourists, several random manufacturers have depicted that monumental structure on their caps and trucker hats.

The baseball cap of the 21st century is no longer a strictly “practical” object. Rather, it is the celebration of the things we care about, and, by extension, a celebration of the individual—their hopes, interests, dreams, loves, fears. Through the baseball cap, we can express what is dearest to our heart, what lies at the very depths of our soul.

President Abraham Lincoln, with officers in 1862. Image Source: Alexander Gardner/Library of Congress

I like to imagine this was all because of Honest Abe. At six feet four inches, the sixteenth president of the United States, the great emancipator and preserver of a nation, towered over most everyone he met. Yet he was exceedingly fond of the “stovepipe” top hat, which raised his silhouette up almost another 7 inches. Of course, this decision was influenced by the fashion and formality of the time, but, as noted by Kenneth E. Behring of the National Museum of American History, Lincoln wore the hat because it made him stand out even more from the crowd. It differentiated him from the other politicians and prairie lawyers, and communicated his larger-than-life status while also functioning as a convenient place to conceal letters. Instead of playing down his giant-like stature, the commander-in-chief fully embraced and drew attention to his physical abnormality, metaphorically screaming, “I’m here, I’m tall, get used to it!” from the mountaintops.

This is the mission of the backwards baseball hat. To take a conventional and widely popular cultural object and wear it in an unusual, quirky manner, a manner which is unapologetically pro-self, strange and proud of it, and is a celebration of being different, of the weirdness and oddities which lie within us all. The wearer does not lie in shadow beneath that protruding curved brim, but rotates that baby around to the back, basking in the light and letting the world look upon him, more than often with a grin. After all, the look was started by catchers on the baseball field, turning their hats to the rear to make room for their clumsy face masks, as well as to ensure they had an unobstructed view of the pitcher. Catchers were always the nonconformists of the baseball field.

But by many, wearing a hat in reverse is perceived as a hostile action. Ken Griffey Jr., one of the best baseball players of all time, was famous for preferring this flipped back look, and should be credited with its rise. But at the time, people like Buck Showalter, coach of the 1994 Yankees, thought his preference demonstrated a “lack of respect for the game,” as he was quoted saying in New York Times. And in August 2012, that same paper reported that Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at Boston’s Logan Airport had admitted racially profiling passengers as part of a “behavior detection program” to root out terrorists. Among those disproportionately stopped, searched, and questioned for “suspicious behavior” were “Hispanics traveling to Miami…[and] blacks wearing backwards baseball hats.” Literally, if you are a black person, a 180º rotation in hat direction is the difference between being labeled a regular human being or a terrorist.

There is an actual saying in the world that leaders wear baseball caps facing towards the future. I swear I didn’t make that up. And thus, the opposite kind are askew by default. To Colin Cowherd of ESPN’s The Herd, a backwards hat guy is the “goofy kid in the neighborhood who’s got talent and no discipline,” as he stated on the November 21, 2011 broadcast of his show, and he doesn’t think that quarterbacks in the NFL should wear them on the sidelines. Obviously, leadership or worthiness or lack of maturity or something is determined by hat direction rather than character or individual merits. To further prove this point Colin states, “by the way, when [Ben Roethlisberger, Quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers] was driving that motorcycle and crashed…hat on backwards.”

Biden water fight. Image Source: Politico

But for those of us who have experienced the sweet joys of wearing a cap that looks behind us, this depiction and commentary seems gigantically trivial. To whom is it we sing in our national anthem? The land of the free and the home of the brave! A backwards hat is belting out that stupid, catchy pop song you scorn in public while in the privacy of your own car, wailing with a gusto more appropriate for an American Idol audition. It is Vice President Joe Biden spontaneously declaring a Super Soaker war on the children of top political journalists at a media picnic held at the US Naval Observatory. Or as Manohla Dargis once wrote it in the New York Times, “Independence is a boom market. It’s a lifestyle choice, a state of mind, a backward baseball cap.” A hat is a hat is a hat. A backwards baseball cap is just a hat that’s weird and knows it, and nothing more.

At the same time, trivial and ridiculous analysis and debates are part of who are as a country. We ponder “Who wore it best?” and ruminate on the tie colors and the size of the American Flag pins on our presidential candidates. We get into screaming matches about which quarterback is the “greatest of all time”. We wonder if cap direction reflects leadership qualities. That being said, it is erroneous to wonder which of the two is more absurd—the hats or the commentary—because both the object and the conversation are so very us. And we are the United States! So by Lincolnian wisdom and the warm imprint of blended fabric on my heart, stay silly America, that’s what makes you beautiful.