March 4, 2010

Those striking young gentlemen in their purple Astros finery are me and my older brother, Jim...and, in a nifty coincidence, you can see my sisters, Christine and Dianne, in the framed photo on the wall behind us. This was taken in 1971, during my first season of organized sports. That's also, if I’m not mistaken, my very first baseball cap.

I’ve always been a stickler for wearing the proper cap in the proper manner - my wife can’t believe the amount of effort I take to add just the right curve to the bill when I get a new one - so it bugs me to this day that the tag is sticking out of my cap in the picture. It's hard to see it when the photo’s this size, but it’s there, right by my ear. I can’t even describe the shame.

We probably lost that day, by the way. The Astros were pretty lousy. I’d have to wait until ’73, when I was a first baseman for the Giants, before I’d taste the sweet nectar of a championship. You callin’ me a liar?

There’s the trophy. Who’s a liar now, wise ass? Not me, that’s who.

                                                ***

So I’ve worn baseball caps, off and on - that’s a joke - for a long time now. Well, I call them baseball caps, anyway. In fact, what I’ve worn is a style of cap indigenous to America’s baseball fields, but mine are often decorated with the logos of non-baseball playing entities, like Shell Oil or the Beatles or the Cleveland Cavaliers. My Cavaliers cap, though, is a new and very recent development, and I’m hot-damn happy about it. It may well be the finest lid to have ever adorned my imperious noggin.

For several long seasons, the Cavaliers had perhaps the worst logo in all of sports.

Look at that shit. It’s like something a high school drafting student would cook up for extra credit. Remember also that the team’s predominant uniform color at the time was powder blue, aka “sissy blue.” I’d show you this noxious creation right now, but I’d rather keep it from touching my other Wall of Paul articles, the same way I keep beets from touching neighboring vegetables if somebody happens to plop some on my plate. You had to have a special bond with ineptitude, of both the sports and fashion varieties, to wear any Cavs paraphernalia during what I like to call their Blue Period.

But that suddenly changed. The Cavaliers received a complete sartorial makeover upon the arrival of one LeBron James, and I can live with their current logo and threads. Still, I’ve been regularly scanning the Internet for a genuine old-school Cavaliers cap that would signify my long-standing allegiance, lest anyone think I hopped on the bandwagon once they started winning, a horse-shit form of “fandom” that drives me crazy. Back in the 70s, the Cavs only occasionally had a respectable team, but they always had rockin’-cool wine and gold uniforms that featured a first-rate logo.

This graceful design effortlessly conveyed all that was heroic and swashbuckling about living in a city where the river caught fire and masses of people died every year from over-ingesting sausage and stuffed cabbage. I just couldn’t find a nice, slouch-style cap that featured it. Until just a few weeks ago, that is, when I basically stumbled across one while surfing the Internet.

You’re lookin’ at it, baby! This thing is surface of Neptune cool, and I will have it affixed to my cranium should the Cavaliers actually pull it off this year and win the whole thing…which, even with Jesus at power forward, they almost certainly won’t do. The only thing that could possibly match the grooviness of this particular cap would be if I could finally find a similarly styled Browns cap featuring the old-school Brownie logo that the team toyed with in the early 1960s, although it never appeared on their still logo-free helmet.

Whatta ya know! Got that one, too! Just two weeks ago.

In Paul World, then, an old-school head is a happy head. I also have a buzz cut, and you should have one, too. Hippie.

Paul Tatara