The Central Committee of the Rockaway Park Philosophical Society unanimously wrung its hands at the practise of wearing baseball hats backwards. The Society claims to be the only such society which promotes the National Passtime as a cultural art form and Casey at the bat as the National Epic. "The custom which has sprung up among the youth of today is deliberately effrontry to the National Passtime. Only the catcher may reverse his hat!"

The National Passtime sprung up in the democratic-republican administration of Andrew Jackson first in the all American City of Brooklyn. Unlike the blood escaplades of the corrupt monarchs, petty tyrants and autocratic dictators, baseball is a game of balance: individuality and team work, competitiveness, yet gentlemenly conduct and decorum. All the town supports the local nine who toil through the lazy summer afternoons of August. In the movie The Chosen, every boy's dream is to wear the sacred hat with Brooklyn's proud "B."

How did the baseball hat originate? What eventually became the baseball cap was the common workingman's cap of the time with a flat top and a narrow brim. As baseball was spread from the Elysian fields of Brooklyn to the rest of the nation during the American Civil War, caps took the form of the soldier's Kepi. In these seminal times all players wore their hats with the brim proudly facing outward.

An exception was made for the catcher for whom a caged mask was developed in the 1870s. The catcher wore his hat backwards to secure the straps of the mask. Iron men in cloth hats strode to the plate with brim bravely outward. Only the catcher, a player who bravely guarded the plate, wore his hat otherwise as a mark of distinction. In the words of Brooklyn's catching great Roy Campenella, "One does not have to have a lot of meat to be a catcher; one does have to have a lot of smarts."

The practise of indiscriminately wearing hats backwards is the greatest loss to baseball since the heartland of baseball, Brooklyn NY, lost its long standing National League franchise. "It," the Society bemoaned, "marks the passing of yet another token of distinction and a loss of Brooklyn's gift to the nation."