The Braves Want Ronald Acuna, The Top Prospect In Baseball, To Keep His Hat On Straight

Old white people HATE when baseball players don’t wear their hats on straight. It’s hilarious watching the dinosaurs on Baseball Twitter lose their collective minds over Fernando Rodney’s crooked hat whenever he comes into a game. I don’t know why 20-year-old Ronald Acuna doesn’t wear his hat on straight, perhaps there isn’t a reason at all, but the Braves want to make sure that when he gets called up to the big leagues as baseball’s top prospect that his hat will, in fact, be on straight.

Per MLB.com’s Mark Bowman, the Braves “want Acuna to wear his hat straight and maintain a professional appearance while in uniform.”

Andruw Jones thinks the Braves are right to strip Acuna of that playfulness and individuality.

“You’ve got to be cocky to play this game,” Jones said via MLB.com. “You’ve got to be confident in yourself to go out and show you belong there. You don’t want to sit in the corner and put your head down every time. You want to stand out there and show you belong in that league at that time.

“Cocky is a good thing. But respecting the game is also very important.”

I’ll be honest in saying that I’m not red hot passionate about this particular topic. I’m not going to scream injustice over the Braves telling Acuna how to wear his hat. It also doesn’t bother me at all when players don’t wear their hats straight. I don’t give a fuck. If you’re a position player, can you hit? Can you play defense? Can you run the bases well? If you’re a pitcher, can you pitch well? Great! Wear your hat crooked, wear baggy pants, wear your socks up, wear your pants down, wear black cleats, wear orange cleats, wear big gold chains, button all the way up, unbutton three buttons. All fine by me. As long as you can play well, that’s all I care about.

I get what Andruw Jones is saying, though. You don’t want to immediately come up to the big leagues and act like you own the place. There is a pecking order, for sure. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t come up to the majors and be yourself if you’re actually playing well. Nobody wants to watch some supposed stud prospect come up, act all cocky and then hit .210 for three months. That doesn’t sit well with anybody. But if this kid comes up and hits .325 with an OPS pushing .900 like he did last year between High-A, Double-A and Triple-A, then wear your hat however the fuck you want, my man. I don’t know why the Braves are acting like they’re the 1980 Soviet Olympic hockey team.

But as far as crooked hats go in general, a few players actually have reasons for it beyond just making a fashion statement. Believe it or not, the aforementioned Fernando Rodney has a reason for wearing his hat crooked:

Rodney says he wears his cap tilted to the left side of his head as a tribute to his father — Ulise Rodney — who died six days before Fernando made his major league debut with the Tigers in 2002. Ulise was a fisherman in the Dominican Republic and wore his cap tilted to the side because “that’s the side the sun hits his face.”

Bet you feel like a dick now for yelling, “FIX YA FAHKIN’ HAT, YA FAHK!” at him from the bleachers.

Then, there was Abe Alvarez. Probably only Red Sox fans remember this guy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if even Red Sox fans didn’t remember him, either. He pitched in four games over three years (2004-06) for Boston and was never seen again at the major league level, but he was also blind in his left eye.

So, there’s reasons why players do it. I think the funny thing about all of this is that if you Google image search Ronald Acuna, you can’t even find a picture of him wearing his hat crooked, so what a weird thing to make public about your top prospect.