September 14, 2005
Caps and t-Shirts

“To wear or not to wear, that is the question.”  It’s one thing to display your heart on your sleeve, but what about the sartorial challenges presented by team loyalty?  What, in good conscience, can one wear on ball caps, visors and T-shirts and what is verboten? 

Be you a Bronco fan (and I am) does one dare wear a Dallas Cowboy hat no matter how cool it looks? I wouldn’t, but friends have and then express aggravation over the continual question, “Since when did you start rooting for the Cowboys?” 

My eldest daughter ran the Boston Marathon a couple of years ago.  As a souvenir, and because I’ve been a runner for almost 4 decades, she gifted her Dad a T-shirt featuring the Boston Marathon logo.  I wore it.  Once.  After the first, “You ran Boston?” question from a fellow runner, I put the shirt in the dresser drawer never again to see the light of day.  Why?  To run Boston, one must qualify and my best marathon time didn’t come close to qualifying for the Patriots Day Beantown race.  Wearing the shirt gave one the feeling of being a fraud. 

On the other hand, when wearing an Avalanche ball cap no one suspects me of trying to pass for a member of the Denver hockey team.  The same is true when it comes to the Nuggets wear or a Rockies shirt. It’s assumed the apparel signifies rooting for the locals.  However that loyalty has its price and that is not being caught dead wearing a Red Wing, Yankee or Laker chapeau.  

Where does this all start and stop?  Is it good manners to wear a T-shirt extolling the virtues of Maui if one has never visited Hawaii?  Can I fish or hunt in a Cabella’s hat even though I shop at Gene Taylor’s?  Would a Bud drinking Dale Jr. fan wear a Rusty Wallace Lite ball cap just because it was given to him? I think not. 

Logo problems abound.  On the computer desk sits a golf ball collection from my bicycle and golfing journey across our country.  At every golfing stop, a ball was purchased with the imprint of the course played. 

Last year a friend golfed Pebble Beach in California and, as a gift, brought me a logo’d ball from the fabled course.  I’ve never experienced the golfing Mecca and what’s more, at approximately $500 a round, the citizens of Hades will be renting snowboards before I tee it up on the famous Monterey Peninsula course.  But here’s the conundrum, should this gift ball be added to the display on my desk when I’ve never actually hacked my way around Pebble Beach?  And, if it’s not on display, how can I take this gift to the course where it will most likely be airmailed into a lake or lost in the rough.  So the Pebble Beach ball rolls around the desk drawer as a constant reminder of one’s inability to make a decision.  

Last week, throwing caution to the winds, the ball escaped the desk drawer dungeon and was placed in the desk display.  Just two nights later a dinner guest, perusing the collection, queried, “When did you play Pebble Beach?”   Guilt washed across my body while confessing the ball a gift and once the guest looked away, it was quickly returned to the purgatory of the desk drawer.  Getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar nowhere near matches the embarrassment of being discovered displaying a ball from a course never played. 

Not all logo decisions are that difficult.  Would one wear a Qwest golf shirt while being a Verizon customer?  Of course.