Pink Hat Fan

I don’t like the term girl dad. And maybe I don’t have the right to say this because, as you well know, your cousin Jude is a boy. But girl dad as a term feels both kind of patronizing and self-congratulatory. It feels like it was intended to reassure fathers of daughters, offering them a shorthand to announce that they are sensitive enough for the task. As though they might not be able to manage without membership in this club, as though raising sons doesn’t require sensitivity.

But I guess it’s probably true that dads have historically hoped to raise sons. They don’t need a name for that, they don’t need to feel included because they get to take the boys to ballgames and whatnot.

And speaking of barely-veiled sexism and baseball, I also don’t like the term pink hat fan.

In a lot of ways and for a lot of sports I am a pink hat fan, which I guess gives me more of a right to speak on it than on my dislike of girl dad. But then the types of sporting fans who coined and upkeep pink hat as a designation might see it the other way, might feel that my feelings about the phrase only solidify my place in the club.

The Red Sox are in the playoffs and I have watched maybe 10 cumulative minutes of their 162 game regular season. I’ve seen a couple quarters of the Patriots so far this year. I couldn’t even pronounce most of the names at the top of world tennis when I tried tuning in for the US Open. And if we’re being honest about the status of the soccer season, I’ve only sat down to watch two of Arsenal’s six Premier League matches thus far. For the rest I’ve settled for catching up via highlight packages.

Pink hat fans, according to the phrase’s definition, aren’t real fans. They don’t watch full seasons. They support a team in the playoffs or else if they have a chance to see a game live, using fandom as a lifestyle accessory when it deserves the fervor of a religion.

Hobbes, watching sports—or really any other use of your recreational time—deserves whatever level of engagement brings you joy.

The etymology: sporting teams have learned over the years to merchandise their gear across colorways, so you can now buy, for example, a Celtics hat in colors that aren’t just green or white. That’s just good branding. Give people options. But then the trope here is that most people going to a game and pretending to be fans for social capital must be women, and if they’re going to buy a hat it’s not going to be in the team colors, it’s going to be pink. Because girls.

So, dragging out the phrase’s defining qualities, a pink hat fan gets very excited for the playoffs. She puts on her hat and cheers for the team because the playoffs are important, but she doesn’t really get it. Her pink hat, accordingly, signifies that.

Maybe the conversation here should be, once again, about loving some parts of fandom but not others. So much of what delights me about sports is the emotion of the crowd, but then tethered to that passion is often a pretty aggressive tribalism.

Well the joke’s on them because my Red Sox hat is the same exact dark blue that the team plays their games in.

If I had to rank the hats in my collection I’d say the Red Sox one is my favorite, but for a very long time that honor went to a red brimmed cap with a shark stitched on its front. Long since retired. That hat was just the right depth, it was durable and comfortable. For most of its life the metal clip that allows hats to be resized was missing, but I had sewn the adjustable tab into place so it fit me and only me, and it was perfect. I called it my shark hat, for obvious reasons.

The shark hat spent so much time in the sun and eventually got hand-scrubbed so aggressively clean that the red pigment faded to a wonderful pink.

And of course this year has involved extenuating circumstances, with regards to the time I’ve had available for watching sports. But saying that my lack of attention for favorite teams is the result of having a baby in the house would be kind of disingenuous.

Take hockey. I love the Boston Bruins. Some of my most vivid memories as a sports fan involve watching, celebrating, and mourning various Bruins teams. But for the last decade I really haven’t watched them except in the playoffs. I’ll keep up with the team throughout the season, checking box scores and watching sporadic game recaps, but there are only so many hours in a year and I’ve had to balance out a level of engagement that works for me.

My soccer engagement actually has been a result of circumstance more than anything else. Life is busy right now and sometimes you have to get creative. The Red Sox are in the playoffs for the first time in four years and last night I was watching their game while working on this note. I’ll continue to watch Arsenal’s search for a Premier League title whenever I can, to watch highlight packages when I can’t.

And in the meantime I have a hat that I bought a while ago to replace the shark hat. I don’t like it nearly as much as the original but it’s serviceable. It’s from the same company and is also red but with no shark, which I find to be too bad for a variety of reasons.

I’ve been wearing that hat intermittently for a few years now, and I’ve especially been wearing it this summer and fall while I clomp around doing yard projects and showing your cousin Jude the world. And after so many hours in the sun that red hat is starting to fade, to turn pink. Which is great. It’s just in time for the playoffs.