Before I left the States, I wondered to myself what the Yankees/Red Sox hat distribution would be like in China. I can't remember when or where exactly, but on a previous overseas trip I took with my family, DJ and I played this same game and the Yankees won by a lot, which interestingly enough also reflected the results on the diamond. Perhaps spurred by 2 World Series in 4 years but this trip I have seen more Red Sox hats than Yankees hats. I haven't kept an actual count, but I bet its something like Red Sox 9, Yankees 6. There aren't very many baseball hats, even in a country of so many people, which probably is not that surprising. What is surprising though is the people wearing the hat.
Besides my friend John who wore his Yankees cap to the Great Wall with me (although he's a White Sox fan...) basically every single one of these baseball caps have adorned the head of a Chinese. While this would seem to suggest that the donner is Chinese-American, after all I wear my BoSox cap around sometimes, evidence has suggested otherwise. One of my first nights here, while dancing wasted in Propaganda, I saw a guy wearing a dark blue Boston cap. Anyone who knows me from outside Boston will not be surprised that I proceeded to ask this guy if he came from Boston. A combination of factors - the loud dance music, my slurred speech, and his inability to understand English... - contributed to a very confused expression on this guy's speech. Christie Gibbons later told me that he said he just bought the hat cause he saw it at a market and liked the B. At a Beijing market? 太奇怪. Although if you think about it, the Boston B is terrifically designed, with each whole in the big B being smaller b's. Anyways, I haven't interviewed everyone else wearing the B but for the most part they seem to be Chinese and surrounded by other Chinese and appear to be speak fast Mandarin. But the average Chinese does not know a thing about baseball - you could definitely find a billion people here that did not know what that B stood for. So why is the Red Sox hat so popular here? It does not have anything to do with the fact that the Red Sox have their own Nation and so much recent success...or does it?
Basically my theory is that more Americans are wearing the hat, even when they're abroad in China. I mean its great, you see someone else wearing the hat and you two now have something to talk about for the next 2 hours. The locals see this hat more and more often, think it looks pretty cool and realize that foreigners like it, and thus when they see it at a market, they decide to get it. I still don't know why its at a market here...but supply and demand have ways of working these issues out. The end result is that wearing that hat around now as a foreigner has less and less effect, as most of the other people I see wearing the hat will not be Red Sox fans and we will only have something to talk about for the next 2 seconds. Interestingly enough, I saw a white guy walking into Lush wearing a green Red Sox t-shirt. I immediately asked him if he was from Boston. He responded, "什么?" and when I repeated Boston, he just walked away, met up with his girlfriend and told her, "that guy just asked me if I was from Boston..." I still don't really understand that one.
By the way, what the heck? Swept by the Rays? The real Red Sox need to step it up.
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