What does the league have against the Atlanta Braves home run hat?
A new fan-pleasing home run celebration by the Atlanta Braves featuring an oversized hat is no more, as MLB issues a cease and desist order to the team.
On opening day, the Atlanta Braves were given an oversized hat by a memorabilia collector. Since then, they have been wearing it as part of their crowd-pleasing home run celebration. Alas, no longer.
In a world that is run by the accountants, baseball is in the throes of being bent and broken and moulded into shape. It appears that New Era, the company with the exclusive contract to manufacture and sell MLB headwear, has filed a complaint with the league over the comical home run hat, and MLB has complied by banning it.
More than Sports, an Atlanta-area sports memorabilia collector, presented the hat to Ozzie Albies and A.J. Minter during opening weekend and it has been put to a lot of use, with Atlanta smashing more home runs than any other team in baseball apart from the Tampa Bay Rays.
Fans have adored the big hat celebration and the decision to simply deep-six it is typical of the heavy-handed way that Rob Manfred has run the MLB in recent years.
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Beyond simply allowing a celebration to take place without corporate product placement, New Era could have quietly manufactured their own Atlanta Braves oversized hat, replacing the original with no fuss and critically no press. But instead, they and Manfred chose to simply stamp out anything that might construed as fun in baseball.
After the way that things have been going, more fool us for expecting anything different.