Baseball Hats

Baseball hats were becoming as famous as the teams around them in the mid-1900s. The Chicago White sox in 1953 finished a strong third in the American League, thanks primarily to the pitching of left-hander Billy Pierce and righty Virgil Trucks, who was acquired from the Browns early in the season. Trucks was 15-6 with the Sox and had a combined record of 20-10. Two-time batting champion Ferris Fain, obtained from the Athletics, disappointed with a .256 batting average, but outfielder Minnie Minoso, one of the most popular players ever to perform for the White Sox, batted .313 and drove in 104 runs.

Baseball Hat

After 15 months in the Marine Corps, much of it spent in the war skies of Korea, Ted Williams returned to the Red Sox in August of 1953. It was a spectacular return for the premier slugger, getting into 37 games. Ted hit 13 home runs, drove in 34 runs, and batted .407. Williams belated return was one of the few bright spots for the fourth-place Red Sox. Along with Mickey Vernon’s league-leading average, the fifth-place Senators also featured the league’s most prolific winner in right-hander Bob Porterfield and his baseball hats. The previous year’s star Bobby Shantz, suffered an arm injury early in the season and was mired in a 5-9 season. Detroit, a perennial breeding ground of .300 hitters, came up with another one in shortstop Harvey Kuenn. The American League’s Rookie of the Year broke in with a .308 batting average and a league-high 209 hits. It was the beginning of a fine career for the line-drive-hitting Kuenn.

Fitted Baseball Hats

Also breaking in with the Tigers that year, albeit in just 30 games, was an 18-year-old outfielder fresh out of high school named Al Kaline. One of the most curious stories of the 1953 baseball hats season involved 29-year-old rookie right hander Bobo Hollomon of the Browns. Hollomon pitched the pitcher’s dream game, a no-hitter, against the Athletics. What made this particular gem unique was that it was Hollomon’s debut as a major-league starter, marking the first and thus far only time a pitcher has coughed up a no-hitter in his first start. And what made the whole thing almost freakish was Hollomon’s subsequent work. Bobo won just two more games and at the end of July, with a 3-7 record and 5.26 ERA, he was sent to the minor leagues, never to return to the bigs.