An old and a young rank every hat from the World Baseball Classic

The 2023 World Baseball Classic is underway, and we got our first chance to see the international hats adorning the talented domes of the best baseball players in the world. Normally we’d just show you the hats, riff on them for a little, and let you get on with your day. Instead we thought we’d change it up a little.

Hi, I’m James Dator. I’m the resident “old” for this ranking. I’m 38-years-old and appreciate good clothes — but never really buy them. To give you an idea of where I’m at in life: Currently my only goal is to become “cool dad” when I’m dropping off and picking up my 5-year-old at kindergarten. Apparently I’ve achieved this, because my daughter told me a classmate said I dress “cool.” This entails jeans, my black DC skate shoes, and a pink Adidas hoodie I bought because it was on a really good sale at Kohl’s and it’s really comfy. I do not think I’m cool at all, but I just shake up the endless monotony of pickup dads who wear khakis and golf shirts. It makes me an enigma.

I’m JP Acosta and I’m the resident “young” for this ranking. I think I dress pretty well for a 22-year-old, but I do love a good hat. I have a lot of hats, some that are sports related, some that aren’t and a Goofy hat I bought at Disney World. I think I’m pretty cool, so I’m excited to share thoughts on these WBC hats!

I’m really happy that JP also picked Mexico at No. 1 and New Zealand at No. 2, because it makes me feel like maybe I’m not so out of touch. Mexico’s hat is perfect. It’s colorful, it evokes the country, the design is simultaneously bold, but also understated. This is the kind of hat you can really throw with anything and it adds a pop of color when you need it.

On the other end of the spectrum we have New Zealand, who went for a classic black and white approach — but I love that they used a Maori-style script to write the “NZ,” as well as using vertical space instead of weaving the letters together.

As an Australian, it pains me to put the Aussie hat last — but my god, can we please get some new designs for Australian national stuff? Every single time there’s any international competition it’s the save green and gold, ALWAYS with the southern cross like it has to be incorportated into everything. I’m so tired of it.

I gave more props to countries that didn’t just put their initial on the cap, outside of Mexico who just rocked their hat. Everything James said about it is 100% true. The best thing about baseball hats is finding ways to wear them and incorporate them outside of wearing them at baseball games. One of the hats that I really liked in this collection were Korea’s. Sure it looks like the K, but the design kind of looking like paper crossing to make the letter is really cool.

I wish that more countries would get more creative with their designs, but there are some that just rocked the original with their flag colors and it looked really cool. Puerto Rico’s looks very cool, and the way the Czech Republic was able to turn theirs into a cooler looking design is really cool.

I don’t think Italy tried, to be quite honest.