Syracuse Chiefs and The Ideal Cap Company

It's safe to say that I could be described  as an outlier.

  If you are reading this, you are keenly aware that I appreciate baseball caps and logos on a different level than most.

For some reason, which I haven't been able to figure out yet, I'm fixated on how the baseball cap has weaved it's way into the American fabric in such an authentic way. 

While  most cap  companies are producing caps to embody fashion and entertainment, I'm simply not  interested.

                                          

To me, a baseb
all cap is  an artifact that gives a sense of pride.

Try this on for size:  "a baseball cap is a circular chunk of hot

smoking conscience."

 Most people wear a baseball cap  without a utilitarian purpose.  Do MLB baseball players even need them? Most games are played at night.

Let's get to the point.

The Ideal Cap Company recently released the Syracuse Chiefs from 1982.

I purchased it the first time I saw it on the webpage.

If  a reproduction cap fulfills the task of being accurate and marks a moment in time while still being distinctive...I want it.

Ideal's Chief's cap checks all the boxes.

My New Era 1980 (game used) is on the left, Ideal Cap Company on the right.

And we didn't get to the details and the quality of the cap.

All wool, leather band with green underbrim.

Here is the description  from Ideal's catalog:

"There isn't a more common graphic in all of sport than the Native American, either as chief, brave, Indian, redskin, warrior or Blackhawk. There's even a Swedish hockey team called the Frölunda Indians. This month's cap is the finely stitched, alternate front color cap of the 1982 Syracuse Chiefs.

It is one of the many sports logos using war bonnet designs, headdresses of great spiritual and political importance to be worn only by those who have earned the right and honor to do so. Not sure the Chiefs earned that honor ‘82.

They were established in 1934, when the Jersey City Skeeters moved to Syracuse, have played in the International League ever since, with only a 5 year hiatus in the late 1950’s and won eight championships.

Our cap is from their glory years at MacArthur Stadium as Toronto's farm team. All wool white and navy cap, Embroidered Logo, Leather Sweat Band."

Why does Ideal Cap Company get it when the other companies don't?

I did a little digging and learned about the owner and founder, Will Arlt.  I figured he would have an interesting background.  The internet tells me he was a philosophy student, music engineer, and vintage clothing impresario before he became obsessed with antique baseball caps.

"Will’s gateway hat was Walter “Big Train” Johnson’s blue and gray Washington Senators cap that he saw at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. “I’d been in vintage clothing in New York for quite some time and I began to collect old woolen caps…take them apart by hand…redo the logos and put little visors on them,” he says.
“Everybody bought ‘em and I bought sewing machines and made them by hand and…one thing led to another.” It was the early 1980’s, and that one thing that led to another led to the creation of the Cooperstown Ballcap Co., and the rest is history. Literally." (Heddels 2015).

Outlier: a person or thing situated away or detached from the main body or system.

Check out Ideal Cap Company