The Yankees Cap Goes Viral in Brazil: ‘Is It Basketball?’
Matheus Gustavo arrived for his second day of labor at a hat store in Rio de Janeiro sporting a black New York Yankees cap. His new job, for probably the most half, was promoting Yankees hats. On the shows round him, about three out of 4 caps promoted that baseball crew within the Bronx.
Yet Mr. Gustavo had a confession. He had worn a Yankees hat for years, he mentioned, “but I never knew the real reason for the NY.”
When informed the Yankees had been a baseball crew, the 23-year-old regarded unimpressed. “Ah,” he responded. “It’s more about soccer here.”
That is an understatement. In Brazil, soccer is life, and baseball confounds. But a number of days in any of Brazil’s metropolises or past will clarify that, regardless, the Yankees cap is probably the nation’s hottest headwear.
It is ubiquitous on the seashores of Rio, and within the bars of São Paulo. It was perched on the heads of some right-wing protesters demanding a army coup to oust Brazil’s leftist president. And final month, it hung from a tree, torn and muddied, at an unlawful gold mine deep contained in the Amazon rainforest.
Just don’t count on many Brazilians to grasp what the hat means.
“It’s American football? Or is it a brand?” mentioned Carlos Henrique, 20, hawking Yankees caps off a steel rack he was carrying on Rio’s Ipanema Beach. Either manner, it was his greatest vendor. “I just know it calls attention,” he mentioned. “And it looks good on everyone.”
More than another sports activities paraphernalia, the Yankees cap has change into its very personal trend development, unmoored from the game or the crew it represents. Lifted by starring roles in hip-hop movies, movie star endorsements and collaborations with Gucci and Supreme, the hat has gone absolutely international, crossing borders to lands the place mentions of Babe Ruth and Aaron Judge will elicit clean stares — by no means thoughts making an attempt to elucidate the “Evil Empire.”
This week, the Yankees begin enjoying significant baseball as soon as once more, and Yankees followers in New York will pull on the caps to indicate their allegiance. But to many others in locations like Brazil, China and Africa, the interlocked NY insignia will stay merely a basic piece of Americana, a standing image, or a generic — maybe stylish — emblem of the West.
“The logo is super stylish and, I think, sophisticated,” mentioned Natalia Monsores, 40, whereas trying out a wall of Yankees hats in a luxury-mall store owned by New Era, the Buffalo, N.Y., firm that makes the official Yankees caps. “It’s the symbol of the brand, right? New Era,” she replied when requested what the brand meant. “You’re sending a sign: ‘I’m wearing something quality.’”
Isabel Cunha, 26, an advert skilled in a Yankees cap consuming breakfast in Rio, admitted that she, too, was not fairly positive what she was sporting. “I think it’s pretty,” she mentioned. When informed it was a sports activities crew, she replied, “basketball?”
Artur Regen oversees Brazil for New Era, Brazil’s largest — and, he mentioned, solely — licensed Major League Baseball hat vendor. “Ninety-eight percent of Brazilians don’t know it’s a baseball team,” he mentioned. “New York is cool and they want to be associated with it.”
New Era sells Yankees hats in almost 150 nations, Mr. Regen mentioned. Since getting into Brazil in 2010, the corporate has added greater than 2,000 accomplice shops and 150 franchise retailers. Over the previous two years, gross sales have doubled.
At two New Era retailers in Rio this month, the shows had been blanketed in dozens of variations of Yankees caps — clashing colours, delicate designs, rips, stripes, camouflage, mesh. There had been a number of Los Angeles Dodgers hats. Some different American groups had a hat or so every. That different New York hat — for the Mets — was not noticed.
“Walk on any beach in Brazil and 90 percent of the New Era hats you’ll see are probably going to be the Yankees,” Mr. Regen mentioned. Four employees throughout the 2 retailers mentioned 9 out of 10 hats bought had been Yankees caps.
How does Mr. Regen, who wore a Yankees shirt to an interview for this text, really feel about baseball? “Personally,” he mentioned, “I don’t understand it.”
That was the chorus on baseball throughout Brazil: Everyone had heard of it; some had seen it; nobody understood it.
“We can’t even understand how a sport like this is so successful,” mentioned João Ricardo Santos, an artwork director in Rio, who was purchasing for a baseball cap downtown. In the United States, baseball “fills the stadiums and soccer doesn’t,” he mentioned. “Like, in our head, that doesn’t make any sense.”
Mr. Santos acquired his first Yankees cap greater than a decade in the past — a red-and-white model he sought out after seeing the American singer Chris Brown put on it.
He has seen much more Yankees caps round Brazil currently, which he attributed to rising American affect fueled by the web. “With YouTube, people don’t just listen to the music. They see the video, they see how the artists dress,” he mentioned. “People want to feel like they belong. So brands play this role, and the Yankees cap is part of that.”
In 2009, Jay-Z rapped, “I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can.” But whereas he and different artists could have helped spark the development, Brazilian celebrities now carry the torch. Among them are funkeiros — the artists who play Brazilian funk, a uncooked spinoff of hip-hop — and social-media influencers.
Gabriel Maximo, an actor, was smoking a cigarette on a Rio avenue nook lately, throughout a break from capturing a brand new TV sequence by which his character — a well-known social-media influencer — wears a Yankees cap. Mr. Maximo mentioned he owns about 15 Yankees caps, which he wears in most of the photographs he posts to his 51,000 Instagram followers.
“My friends all buy New Era,” he mentioned. “They buy the Yankees.”
“It fits my head,” he added. “I have big hair.” (He does.)
While New Era’s business is booming in Brazil, the Yankees don’t revenue a lot; the 30 M.L.B. groups cut up income from most official attire gross sales. But most Yankees hats bought in Brazil — Mr. Regen estimates 9 in 10 — are knockoffs anyway.
At a bustling avenue market in downtown Rio, six separate hat distributors mentioned Yankees caps had been their high vendor, which they bought for $5 to $8 every. At the New Era retailers, they price as a lot as $48.
Some avenue distributors purchased from wholesalers close by, whereas others mentioned they ordered in bulk from out-of-state factories. Maria Rodrigues, a vendor sporting a Yankees cap, mentioned her provide comes from a person who reveals up weekly with a bag of Yankees caps, priced at $4 every. She sells them for a buck extra. “I don’t know where they come from,” she mentioned.
Mr. Regen mentioned New Era, which imports its hats from Asia, has labored with the authorities to destroy tens of millions of counterfeit hats in Brazil over the previous decade, however you “close one factory and they open two more.”
Cristiano Souza used to promote solely low-cost, clean hats in his wholesale store in downtown Rio, however final 12 months, his purchasers started demanding Yankees caps. Now they’re amongst his greatest sellers, bought in bulk for $3 every.
He mentioned he will get the hats from a manufacturing facility close to São Paulo. They weren’t from New Era, but most had the New Era emblem stitched on the facet and a few had New Era tags. Others had been much less convincing, together with some with a shiny sticker that mentioned: “special offer. PREMIUM QUALITY. Authentic Cap collection. BEST Quality.”
Mr. Souza mentioned few of his purchasers — the hat distributors themselves — know what the Yankees are.
One of the few folks interviewed for this text who did know what the Yankees are was Jesus Tacae, an immigrant from Venezuela, a baseball hotbed. He was sporting a Yankees cap whereas using a motorbike from his job at an ice manufacturing facility in Boa Vista, a metropolis within the Amazon.
Yet he had his personal confession. “My favorite team is Boston,” he mentioned. “But they don’t sell that here.”
