By now you’ve probably heard about the uni-centric events of last Friday’s Cardinals/Rockies game, when Cards pitcher Hancel Rincon, who was making his big league debut, was told by home plate umpire Doug Eddings to straighten his off-center cap.
Just about everyone seems to agree that Eddings was out of line, and maybe a liar to boot (he claimed after the game that he had ordered Rincon to reposition his cap because a Colorado player had complained that the off-center headgear was distracting, but the Rockies denied that). Eddings apologized to Rincon the next day, reportedly after being reprimanded by the league office for overstepping his authority. Players on both teams wore off-center caps on Saturday as a gesture of support for Rincon. The Cardinals’ Double-A affiliate has even turned the incident into a promotion by announcing a crooked cap giveaway for this Thursday.
Moreover, as Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol pointed out after Friday’s game, Rincon is hardly the first MLBer to wear his cap off-center. Marmol cited Dontrelle Willis, Pedro Strop, and CC Sabathia as previous exemplars, and I’d toss in Pokey Reese, Ian Snell, Alex Colome, and my favorite, Abe Alvarez, who was was legally blind in his left eye and rotated his cap to that side to help cut down on flickering light and shadows.
In short, the consensus among just about everyone except Doug Eddings is that players should be able to wear their caps however they like. But that leads us to a question I’ve been pondering for a while now: