Over the September 9-11 weekend series vs. the San Diego Padres, the Arizona Diamondbacks donned their throwback jerseys which included their iconic purple and teal uniforms for the first time since the finale of the 2006 season. With the start of the 2007 season, the Arizona Diamondbacks switched over to their Sedona Red, Sand Beige, and Black, these changes were highly controversial and took a long time for the Arizona fans to finally accept the changes. Since the 2006 season, the original purple Diamondbacks hats were out of production and could only be acquired through custom orders and were never released in an authentic fashion since.
When the Throwback Weekend was approaching, all of the New Era cap fans knew that the Diamondbacks were going to produce a new On-Field Fitted in the original purple style, so we had the expectations that the caps would be as accurate as they once were, being that the caps were out of print only several years ago so they would have to try very hard to get these wrong. Turns out, New Era probably didn't try hard at all, in fact they didn't try what so ever as it appears, but no one knows exactly who to blame for the mistakes.
The Diamondbacks New Era that was released at the game was extremely inaccurate, but even more confusing was the fact that the team didn't even wear these on the field. The differences between the caps are extremely noticeable, most notably the size of the "A" located on the front of the cap which appears to be 30% larger than on the original. The other major error is that the fangs in the cavity of the "A" is teal, whereas the original should be black; this area along with everywhere else that has black thread should be raised when this cap expresses flat embroidery.
Image owned by Major League Baseball
Being an Arizona Diamondbacks fan, I am extremely disappointed with the way that New Era handled the cap situation. As mentioned above, the team itself didn't even wear the caps which were supposedly worn on field, being that they appeared to have a second style of cap to wear which were significantly accurate as compared to their original sources. It is hard to say why this is the case, but when it comes down to it the caps that were sold as "On-Field" were not. One theory that I had come up with when the story first broke was that the team might have had old stock back from when the team originally wore purple, which isn't that far of a stretch due to the fact that they sell them during their FanFest in February, but pictures of players in the caps beg to differ.
Image owned by Major League Baseball
As shown above, the caps have different coloured threading inside of the "A" which can be explained due to New Era discontinuing the original thread, and the patch on the interior of the cap tends to lean towards it being a reproduction such as those sold by stores like My Fitteds or Hat Club.
The only element of the cap that wasn't a disappointment was that they were made in the USA, noted on the interior of the cap on the inside of the sweatband. It was very hard to walk away from the cap, since I have been an Arizona Diamondbacks fan since their formation in 1998, and I was really looking forward to getting a modern throwback hat made out of the modern Performance Polyester material. Buying the cap wouldn't justify anything in my mind, the frustration of the lack of accuracy was really the nail in the coffin when it came down to my determination on whether to buy it or not.
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