Sunday, August 10, 2008

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:

nbrandhorst77 August 12, 2008 at 10:12 AM  

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.

Anonymous,  August 12, 2008 at 10:17 AM  

It doesn't hurt to read the last paragraph, sir.

Anonymous,  August 12, 2008 at 10:34 AM  

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.

Anonymous,  August 12, 2008 at 10:56 AM  

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.

Anonymous,  August 12, 2008 at 11:40 AM  

Also, the "K" in Ken looks different in this photo than the others, so like he says "You be the judge: ...

Unknown August 12, 2008 at 10:49 PM  

It's a REC league hat. A kid who got the autograph at a game/whatever and is selling now for the autograph.

About the Undrafted Free Agent

Ron Crimson was the only player on the high school roster to not get in a game. He couldn't argue with the decision, because he sucked. Needless to say, yet stated anyway, when he entered the NBA draft following his sophomore season in college, he went undrafted. Now, Ron Crimson is the Undrafted Free Agent.

Contact the Undrafted Free Agent

Interested in informing the Undrafted Free Agent of his mistakes, advertisement opportunities, or a scoop on the latest sports scandal? (You can guess which is more likely.) Well, email him at undraftedfreeagent [at] gmail.com.

Look at This!

There's nothing here; I just needed to fill some space. Space eater! Space eater! Space eater! Space eater! Space eater! Space eater! Space eater! Space eater! Space eater! I also needed to balance it out a bit.

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