20-Year Look of Griffey, Jr. Fading Away

Ken Griffey, Jr. was the first pick in the 1987 amateur baseball draft. He broke into major league baseball with the Seattle Mariners in 1989 as a 19-year old star in the making. He, of course, has gone on to a laundry list of great accomplishments, among them: 13-time All-Star, 10-time Golden Glove winner, 7-time Silver Slugger Award winner, named to MLB All-Century team, and he is fifth all-time on the career home run list. But, perhaps the most unsung aspect of Griffey’s legend is influencing an entire generation to wear their baseball caps, and any other type of ball-cap for that matter, backwards. As Griffey was building his reputation, stats, and celebrity, the more he was seen hanging out prior to games along with doing thousands of interviews with his hat turned around, whether he knew it or not, he was becoming a model for the youth of America and around the world.

Griffey had his name and, more importantly, his smiling face on baseball video games, the Wheaties box, and he starred in Nike commercials promoting his signature line of shoes—all very much deserved for the performance and highlights he generated while wreaking havoc on the American League in the 1990’s. With Griffey as its poster boy, the turned-around hat flourished throughout the 90’s and first decade of the 2000's. But, as a keen observer of a lot of meaningless things, I really believe this trend and style is finally fading away.

Perhaps it's running a course parallel to Junior's career as he winds it down. As I carefully eye Little League kids, high school youth and young men on college campuses, the hat-on-backwards is losing its popularity. Personally, I never liked it on anyone except Griffey, but if kids were doing it to emulate him, I was OK with that. As for the middle-aged guy with a tank top, beer gut, and high-top sneakers--uh,not so much.

Baseball fashion ebbs and flows in changes through the years in terms of the length of the pants, how the brim of the hat is worn, baggy vs. snug-fitting, etc. But, when it comes to an athlete influencing the social fashion of a generation of people who were not even playing the game of baseball, no one had more effect than Ken Griffey, Jr.