Baseball & Softball Catcher Hats

Catchers have always had a nickname for their own gear: the tools of ignorance. It has been in print since at least 1936 and was probably coined by Merv Shea, and the irony is that it takes smarts to run the game and foolishness to play a position that needs that much armor. It is also a punishing job. A SABR study measured foul tips hitting MLB catchers at between 76.7 and 100.3 mph, with 74 percent at 90 or faster, and ESPN has called catcher the most punishing position in sports. Johnny Bench said the catcher is in the middle of everything and sees it best, and a Hawaii Tribune-Herald profile quotes a grandfather telling Reese McGuire that you have to enjoy the bruises. These catcher hats are for baseball and fastpitch softball catchers and the families in the bleachers behind them. CATCHER and BACKSTOP are the plain badges. The rest are the catcher's own jokes: calling the game from a crouch, hand signals that are legally binding, the only player facing the right way, and a commandment for baserunners. TOOLS OF IGNORANCE and THOU SHALT NOT STEAL each get a second colorway, since the first is the position's own in-joke and the second already sells on catcher tees. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat.