A Hat So Bad It’s Good

Yes, yes, I believe that’s mesh.

Anyone that is a fan of trashy cinema is familiar with the concept. Sometimes, something is so bad that it turns around and is good again. Call it the Last Action Hero law. The Snakes on a Plane law if you’re not into the Gubernator these days.

It looks like the rule applies to some baseball uniform choices as well.

The old Pittsburgh Pirates stovepipe hat seems like a classic to this Baseball Card Tournament President. For effectively scorning the rest of settled baseball cap law and going with a completely new form, the hat has earned its detractors and lovers alike. In fact, the hat helps us graph the Last Action Hero law. Because, obviously, even on NotGraphs we like our graphs. It’s in the name, people.

The back story: David Schoenfield at ESPN’s SweetSpot collected what he believed to be the worst hats in baseball history and asked his readers to vote. Witness, the results in one particular case:

Do you see what I see? It’s like a perfect reverse bell curve. Perhaps it needs a little… emphasis.

Transfer it to some graphical paper background, add some words, and voila. Your graph of pleasure/awesomeness versus the good/badness of a thing. Totally scientific!

That should go right into the cannon of accepted cultural science.