NEW YORK — Thirty years ago director Spike Lee, one of the most recognizable New York sports fans in the world, and New Era, the company behind the on-the-field headwear of Major League Baseball for almost a century, were on to something big. They just didn’t know it at the time.
The legend is as follows: in 1996, Lee was attending the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves. The Yankees opened the series with two straight losses at home in The Bronx and were headed to Atlanta for the next three games. Lee was traveling to those games in Atlanta and knew he’d be wearing a black Yankees Starter jacket with “Yankees” emblazoned in red on the front. He then made a coordination call both literally and figuratively that would change the baseball hat game forever.
He wanted a red Yankees hat to match the red scripted letters of his Starter jacket. But not just any novelty hat. He wanted a 59FIFTY from New Era. The exact, authentic model worn on the field by MLB players. At the time, MLB and New Era only produced hats in teams’ standard colors. So Lee called Chris Koch, the CEO of New Era, whose family has been running the company since its inception in 1920, and made his bold request. Koch wasn’t even sure such a thing was allowed, but he did know Lee would need permission from Yankees ownership. Lee made a call to then Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who gave his personal approval to the idea.
The red Yankees fitted was born, and gave way to a baseball hat revolution.
If you’ve ever worn a hat of your favorite baseball team in a color that isn’t the team’s standard look, but instead a color that just so happens to match your shoes, you can thank Lee and Koch’s decision to make a wider variety of MLB hat color offerings a reality.
In 1996, Lee’s hat went viral before the internet was even at high speed when he was seen on television in Atlanta during the World Series. New Era and hat retailers all over started getting calls asking if the hat was available. The spectrum of what was possible for baseball hats was now wide open.
The Yankees would end up going unbeaten from that point on and won that World Series. It still has not been confirmed or denied if Lee’s red hat had something to do with shifting the mojo.
Three decades later, Lee and Koch were front and center at New Era’s flagship store in the SoHo neighborhood of New York on Saturday, May 9 (which the company declared to be 59FIFTY Day) at a private, invite-only event celebrating the 30th anniversary of the little red hat that could. Lee held a hat signing open to the public at the store earlier in the day.
“At that time teams only had one hat… not like the alphabet now,” Lee told The Athletic before speaking to attendees of the event with Koch. “Everybody (now) and their crazy colors. … That (red hat) changed everything. The entire industry. I mean … teams got colors like the Froot Loops (now). But no one knew what that was going to mean. And that was 30 years ago.”
To commemorate the anniversary, New Era recreated Lee’s trend-setting red Yankees hat with some new additions, including a patch on the right side that says “A Spike Lee/New Era Joint” and “Since 1996-Ya Dig?” as well as the logo for Lee’s production company, 40 Acres and a Mule, and the New Era flag. The hat also comes with a “30 Years” pin, the Yankees’ secondary logo on the back in place of the MLB logo and a facsimile of Lee’s signature underneath the bill.
The new collection of Spike Lee/New Era Yankees hats to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the director’s original request. (Photos courtesy of New Era)
New Era additionally released a curation of six of Lee’s favorite Yankees hat designs from their previous collaborations together (in standard Yankees navy blue, with multiple patch designs from pennants to baseball bats, balls and gloves, commemorating the Yankees’ championship years).
All seven hats in the collection (which retail for $69.99 each) have sold out at New Era’s website. On eBay the hats have sold for as much as $200.
Lee has been a faithful wearer of fitted MLB hats for years. Don’t ever try to hand him a snapback.
“I don’t wear that plastic thing in the back. I’m old school. Fitted. Gotta be official,” Lee said.
Speaking on his decades-long relationship with New Era, Lee says it’s been aided by some personal perks.
“It’s been a great relationship for over thirty years,” Lee said. “And you know, occasionally they might make a Knicks cap for me, but that’s on the low.”
Lee is rarely seen with the same hat twice, so one has to ask, how many hats does he have? Even he doesn’t know for sure.
“I don’t count,” Lee said with a smirk. Do his hats have their own closet? “No, but it’s coming to that, though. They’re stacked from top to bottom.”
From left to right: New Era CEO Chris Koch, Spike Lee and moderator Brandon “Jinx” Jenkins during a panel discussion in New York. (Photo courtesy of New Era)
No one knows how traditionalist MLB can be with their hats quite like New Era and the Koch family. Koch says it was his father David that convinced MLB to place the MLB “Batterman” logo on the back of team’s hats in 1992 (to mark them as the league’s official hats). The New Era flag didn’t start appearing on MLB hats above players’ left ear until the 2016 postseason, in part Koch says, because previous MLB commissioner Bud Selig, who held the office from 1998-2015, was always opposed to it. MLB hats are treated like prime real estate when it comes to what is allowed on them, which is why Koch thinks Lee’s red innovation was such a turning point for everything a MLB hat can be today.
“Red has always been taboo with the Yankees,” Koch said. “It was a real tipping point, I think, at that moment in time when we worked together with the Yankees … Spike making the call, me saying yeah okay we’re going to do this. It really changed New Era for sure. It changed the industry. Major League Baseball had the guts to say … we’re going to do something that’s completely different that’s never been done before. It was a pretty cool moment in history.”
The Yankees wore commemorative red hats pre-game last week at Yankee Stadium in honor of the 30th anniversary. Lee was in attendance, but had to be whisked away before the Yankees took the field to attend a Knicks playoff game at Madison Square Garden. But Lee got to see his innovative idea worn by players on the grounds of Yankee Stadium. He even took a picture with Yankees manager Aaron Boone wearing the red hat. It makes you wonder if a color other than navy blue could make it onto the field in the Bronx in the form of a City Connect uniform (a league-wide program with Nike that the Yankees do not participate in) or some other form. There may still be a ways to go, however, given how much New Era says they had to work with the ultra-traditional Yankees just to get the red hats worn before a game.
New Yankees colors though? That’s something Lee says he wouldn’t be opposed to, noting that even Aaron Judge has been advocating for wearing something a little different every now and then.
Is there anything Lee has yet to see on a baseball hat that he’d like to get made at this point?
“I mean…clothing is art,” Lee said. “So who knows what the next fly s— is going to be.”
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