Cubs: Chicago teams reveal new spring training hats

With spring training around the corner, the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox revealed their new hats for the Cactus League and, well, they’re something.

The Super Bowl is over and baseball season is officially here again. The Chicago Cubs pitchers and catchers report to Mesa next week and their first spring training game will be at Sloan Park on Feb. 22 against the Oakland Athletics.

A new decade of baseball is upon us, and to celebrate, New Era revealed a set of brand new baseball caps with unique designs for each team to wear during the spring. The Cubs and the White Sox each unveiled the new caps, which combine their two current logos into a brand new emblem to usher in the era.

The Cubs’ logo on the hat is a combination of the typical “Cubs” logo the players usually wear and the “Cubbie Bear” logo inside the Cubs “C.” The White Sox, on the other hand, placed their usual “Sox” logo inside the “Swingman” logo commonly featured on their throwback uniforms. The results, however, aren’t as pleasing to the eye as you might imagine.

The issue with these new logos is partial that they’re just too busy to look at. The “Cubs” logo being fit inside the “Cubbie Bear” sounds less like a combination of the two and more like a jumble of Cubs colors shoved inside the white-outlined bear. Both the Chicago team’s logos look as if the color has worn off in parts, making these somewhat difficult logos to make sense of.

The hats also changed the location of the cactus league logo, opting instead to put it on the back and put each team’s primary logo on the side. Again, it feels a bit busy throwing some sort of logo on all sides of the cap, but not nearly as egregious as the combination logo.

New Era has been the exclusive provider of MLB caps since 1994, but this will mark its 100th year in existence. They also create products for the NBA and NFL, releasing hats and apparel for those sports as well. These new caps, however, feel like a royal swing and a miss.

Buying one of these new spring training hats will set you back a solid $42 and, personally, while there are some decent looking caps, I’d rather avoid these. If you’re a collector, you may want to pick one up to add to whatever Chicago Cubs merchandise you have already, but if you want a solid Cubs hat, buy a standard cap.