Facts
St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Hancel Rincon wore his cap at an angle while making his major-league debut against Colorado. Umpire Doug Eddings instructed the Cardinals catcher to tell Rincon to straighten it.
Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol challenged the instruction and was ejected. Eddings acknowledged that Rincon had broken no written rule, instead invoking an "unwritten rule." Marmol characterized it as a "power-hungry move."
Eddings initially indicated that a Rockies batter had complained. Colorado catcher Hunter Goodman later denied mentioning Rincon's cap and said he received online abuse over the allegation.
The following night, players from both clubs tilted their caps in an apparent protest. Eddings also apologized to Rincon.
Our Take
Doug Eddings looked at a rookie making his major-league debut and decided the urgent problem was hat geometry.
Not balls and strikes. Not player safety. Not whether anyone had smeared suspicious shit on the baseball. The kid's cap was crooked, and Deputy Doug apparently believed civilization would collapse unless he straightened it with the mighty authority of home plate.
There was no rule against it. Eddings admitted that. He reached instead for baseball's sacred ass-crack of tradition and produced an "unwritten rule," the institutional equivalent of a mall cop saying, "Because I said so."
Then came the complaint that supposedly originated with a Rockies batter. Goodman denied making it and caught abuse from people who believed he had summoned the hat police. One umpire's petty fashion crusade managed to inconvenience the rookie, eject the manager and dump a bucket of internet sewage on an opposing player.
That is an impressive amount of collateral damage for several degrees of cap rotation.
The next night, Cardinals and Rockies players tilted their own hats. Two opposing clubs briefly found common ground through the ancient baseball language of making one authority figure look like a complete dickhead.
Eddings wanted the field to look orderly. He got a clubhouse full of crooked caps and a public apology instead. The hats won.
