Personal Stories About Ballcaps: 1962 Los Angeles Angels

This series is inspired by the must read book “All Caps, Stories That Justify an Outrageous Hat Collection” by Craig Colby. Craig wrote this book about the many caps he has and the stories behind it. Anyhow, this series will be about the caps I own and the stories behind them.

This blog post is about a cap, I craved thirty-one years for. A cap that I saw for the first time in 1995 and that was on my wish list ever since.

Back in 1995, I spent my second vacation in the USA. During that vacation, I attended my first MLB game. At that point, I did not have much of a choice but to go to the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team I didn’t like because of the highjack by Walter O’Malley, who stole the club from Brooklyn. As an “act of protest” I wore my Brooklyn Dodgers cap to the game.

During that game, I saw an older gentleman, who should not be there. He was wearing a Los Angeles Angels cap from the early 1960s. Even though I had never seen that cap before, I knew it had to be an early Angels cap with that awesome halo on top of the crown.

From that moment on I wanted that cap so badly, but I never could lay my hands on it. Through the years, I saw several replicas of this cap but most of them were of poor quality with bad looking cap logos (with or without raised embroidery), with a white New Era logo on the side or with the MLB logo on the back.

But finally, a week-and-a-half ago, I bumped into a specimen on Vinted, the European version of Ebay. The cap was posted only twelve minutes ago and I knew I had to act quickly. I approached the seller to see if I could get the cap for a lower amount and eventually we found each other at a certain point. The cap was shipped inside a box, like it should be and eventually, I received it Tuesday. I won’t say that this cap is perfect, as I think the halo is rather small and thin, but it is the best I have seen in a long time. In fact I am very happy with it

After thirty-one years the eagle has landed.