MLB unveils 4th of July hats, fans immediately notice problem with 3 words on brim
Major League Baseball certainly likes celebrating holidays.
For seemingly every holiday — Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day — players wear some sort of special uniform. It’s a nice way to celebrate the day, and more importantly for MLB, it’s a chance to sell new merchandise.
So normally, there wouldn’t be anything particularly noteworthy about a recent news release announcing that “MLB teams will celebrate holidays in style in 2018 with these jerseys, socks and caps.”
Included among all this gear were the caps that players will wear on Independence Day weekend. The front of each cap includes an American flag version of each respective team’s logo.
On the brim, meanwhile, are three words every American knows: “We the People.”
There’s just one problem.
The Fourth of July celebrates the American colonies’ Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. But the words “We the People” don’t appear anywhere in the Declaration of Independence. Instead, the phrase is part of the preamble to the Constitution of the United States.
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America,” reads the preamble to the document that specified how the U.S. government would work.
The Constitution was not drafted until 1787, and it didn’t go into effect until 1789, as pointed out by USA Today. The Declaration, of course, was signed more than a decade prior in 1776.
In a somewhat ironic turn of events, the Toronto Blue Jays’ caps were the only ones that didn’t quote the wrong document. Their hats simply say “Canada.”
At least on Twitter, many fans didn’t seem to mind that the caps quoted the Declaration rather than the Constitution.
But according to Kyle Koster of The Big Lead, there could be a bigger issue at play.
“(T)here’s an argument to be made that this oversight is reflective of the larger trend MLB has embraced in recent years: symbolism for symbolism’s sake. Or, more cynically, symbolism for souvenir sales’ sake,” Koster wrote.
“It’s as if the league thinks every special day on the calendar must be celebrated in the most obvious and over-the-top way possible,” he added. “And if you point this out — or question the deeper meaning behind some of the holiday flourishes — then you’re the person either knocking patriotism or seemingly hating on mothers and fathers.”
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