What About that Mariners Hat?
Last Thursday, a reader named Bud wrote Hot Clicks to ask about a specific Seattle Mariners hat, pictured below. To his knowledge, a hat with this compass logo/color combination was never worn by the team. However, Bud needed some help from fellow readers to confirm his suspicion.
I tried my hand at helping him out. Needless to say, three hours and (well) over 200 Google Image Search pages later, I have decided to give up. Though the Mariners wore similar hats (shown here and here), I found no real pictures to lead me to believe such a hat "exists." I did find this picture of Alex Rodriguez, but that doesn't really prove anything either way.
Was my search a complete waste? In short, no. I stumbled across the autograph website that is selling this particular hat. For $100, you can buy the hat, complete with its (claimed) Ken Griffey, Jr. autograph. Before you do, give that autograph another take. It reads "Ken Griffey 8." If you will recall, Junior wore 24 while Senior sported 30.
Maybe the forger, when examining Griffey's autograph, confused the "Jr." for an eight. Maybe I'm mistaken, and the "Jr." only looks like an eight. This is what I know for sure: this picture is creating more and more questions.
EDIT: A commenter mentioned Griffey's "Jr." looks like an eight in his autographs. Here are four pictures for reference: 1, 2, 3, and 4. The autograph above looks to be a fairly perfect eight, while other autographs have other markings. Maybe it's just a result of a thicker marker? You be the judge.
6 comments:
That is not an 8 at the end of his name that is how he signs JR. you jackass. I physically got an autograph from him on a jersey and it looks exactly like the one on this hat.
It doesn't hurt to read the last paragraph, sir.
Yea thats how he signs Jr, its definitely not an 8. I've seen quite a few of his autographs and thats not forged. As for the hat; I wrote to hot clicks as well, and told them that the hat DOES exist. The M's wore it sometime around 1998 and 1999, towards the end of Jr's tenure there. It was an alternate logo, they also wore a similar hat with a silver brim.
I figured it was an alternate hat, especially since the color combination and logo was in use on other hats. Though I'm not a Mariners fan, I loved the silver-brimmed hat.
Also, the "K" in Ken looks different in this photo than the others, so like he says "You be the judge: ...
It's a REC league hat. A kid who got the autograph at a game/whatever and is selling now for the autograph.
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