For the second year in a row, a Major League Baseball apparel controversy has surfaced during spring training.
New Era’s “Overlap” line of team hats, which retail for $44.99 and feature a design that places the team’s logo over text of the team nickname, produced some confusing outcomes.
Beyond being difficult to read, the design created a variety of awkward word mashups, ranging from Boston’s “Bobon” and Houston’s “Ashos” to Seattle’s “Masers” and Philadelphia’s “Phipies.”
By far the most controversial mashup was the hat created for the Texas Rangers, which inadvertently read as a vulgar word in Spanish. The hat no longer appears to be available for purchase, and an attempt to visit the product page’s direct link instead redirects to a URL.
The miss from New Era follows the controversial MLB uniforms designed by Nike last year. Heavily disliked by fans and players alike, those uniforms were met with criticism over a number of elements, including their overall fit and the size of logos and lettering.
Those uniforms last just one season and have been adjusted for 2025. According to Sportico, all road grey uniforms will revert to material and designs previously used from 2018 through 2023. Other uniforms are expected to be updated in 2026.
The New Era controversy is also far from the first for the company, which has been known to experiment with oddball designs and concepts.
New Era was criticized in 2015 when the Jacksonville Jaguars Draft caps featured the wrong skyline on the inside of the brim.
Among the most recent flops was the design for an Oakland Athletics cap last year, which appeared to awkwardly spell out another vulgar word with the A’s lettering. Eventually pulled by New Era, one of those caps sold on eBay in November 2024 for $365.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.