After last year’s extensive discussions of revealing MLB pants, the league has wound up in another apparel controversy over vulgarity. This one came from New Era’s “Overlap 5950” collection of caps, which saw club cap logos superimposed over jersey logos. For the Texas Rangers, that looked like “Tetas,” Spanish slang for a woman’s breasts. And that led to a whole ton of social media commentary:
As Evan Grant of The Dallas Morning News noted, these were actually on sale through the Rangers’ Fanatics online team store. However, “Rangers officials were apparently not made aware of the design before it was released, according to a pair of people with knowledge of the situation.” The design was then pulled from the website Monday.
Strangely enough, this is not the only controversy to come from MLB caps. Last year, an A’s “Team Shadow” one that seemed to spell “ASS” got yanked. (Some were indeed made, and wound up on eBay; it remains to be seen if that will happen here.) And while they didn’t repeat that exactly this year, people did notice weird things for other teams, including the Houston “Ashos,” Los Angeles “Anaels,” and Arizona “Arianas.” (By the way, MLB holds equity in New Era, so this is not a deal with a highly-removed partner.)
The Texas one seems to be the only cap that’s been pulled so far, though. Thus, if anyone did obtain a “Tetas” hat, that may wind up being quite rare. But this adds to the ranks of MLB uniform controversies, and in an unusual and seemingly-avoidable way. It also adds to the list of unintentional MLB vulgarities. And it’s the latest case of a sports marketing/apparel move abandoned due to reaction.
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.