Spike Lee and George Steinbrenner conspired to cause a fashion revolution: Report
As perhaps the most visible fan on the New York sports scene — the Yankees, Knicks and Liberty have seen him plenty of late — filmmaker Spike Lee has been an obvious catalyst for changes in consumer sports apparel.
Compare any photo of the crowd at a sporting event in the 1970s or earlier to one in the 1980s or later. Fans wear what the players wear, but it wasn't always that way.
Lee didn't invent that fashion trend, but he sure moved the needle on one.
Perhaps there is an alternate timeline in which Lee's hairline does not recede, and he would not dream of covering his head with a baseball cap. As it is, he managed to turn a red Yankees hat from a novelty to a trend practically overnight.
The year was 1996. The Yankees were playing the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. Lee wanted a red Yankee hat to wear to his field-level seat. When you're a famous filmmaker, you don't call your crafty friend to make sewing magic. You call Major League Baseball and George Steinbrenner, the Yankees' owner at the time.
According to the Chicago Tribune, that's exactly how Lee's red Yankees hat was born.
"They both said, ‘yeah, go ahead. One cap. No big deal.’ We made it for him, shipped it to him overnight and he wore it to the game," New Era brand historian Jim Wannemacher told the Tribune's Shakeia Taylor. "He was sitting behind home plate and somebody took a picture of him wearing it and the next day, basically all hell broke loose because now there’s a product out there that nobody was ever able to make before that is now being made. And that just basically changed our business overnight.”
Fans under 30 have never known a world in which baseball hats of practically any color were available in mass quantities. Thanks to Taylor's reporting, the Tribune has identified the precise moment that changed.
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