An ode to the hat of the summer, and all it represents
The must-have hat of the season was free and vaguely bisexual
As much as we hate to admit it, summer 2025 is winding down (or is it? Answer our Question of the Week!). It’s safe to say at this point there was no song of the summer, which is just another indicator of how bad the vibes are in this country right now. But while we didn’t have a song of the summer, New Yorkers were lucky enough to have a hat of the summer.
You saw it in parks and on the street, you saw it on children and adults, you'd see a clutch of people all wearing it on a subway train; I even spotted it a few times on nationally broadcast baseball games. I was stopped by friends on the street who asked me about it and pestered by strangers in bars to find out where I had come across it. People called it Miami chic, labeled it “the bisexual lighting” hat or assumed they were Pride related, but no. The only thing you needed to have was pride in was the insanely cheap magic of minor league baseball in Brooklyn, and a few friends — you didn’t even really have to pay for it.
The hat of the summer was the Brooklyn Cyclones group ticket giveaway hat, and I’ll be holding on to mine for years to come.
“We had a lot of people that would just see them in the ballpark and ask, 'How do I get them?'” Cyclones assistant general Manager Billy Harner told The Groove. “That’s kind of the whole reason we do it. It accomplished the goal.”
The Cyclones, a high-A affiliate of the Mets, always have a free hat they giveaway during the summer, available as an incentive for those who purchase group tickets, a throw-in freebie that acts as a way to build up the team’s visibility around the city. You might only attend one Cyclones game a year as part of a work outing but you end up with a free hat you can wear all season long.
Sometimes, they very much look like a free hat: last year’s was a dull gray and blue that I never wore, a past year was a violent pink that didn’t really work for me; one time, however, it was a throwback Dodgers-style flat brim cap that was one of my favorite hats ever, but I lost somewhere in a breakup and am still sore about.
But the team has never quite had one like the hat this year: a white base with aqua blue brim, neon pink eyelets and clasp; instead of a BC found on many of the team’s other hats for sale, this one just had “Cyclones” written out in blue script with a pink shadow, with the Cyclones roller-coaster inspired logo patch on the side. It’s elegant, sleek, modern, and very summery, not always the kind of explosion of fashion and color you expect from a free ballpark giveaway. Typically, baseball fans are used to getting freebies like 2XL shirts with a Chase bank logo across the front.
We have a little league team to thank for it. Harner said he was at his nephew’s little league tournament before this season and noticed the kids wearing “neon-y type colors,” with the blue and pink combination particularly standing out. The gear was from a company called Baseball Lifestyle, which was having fun with an ice cream cone-themed collections.
“Everything in that collection was sort of in that blue and pink colorway,” he said. “I thought it looked good. I suggested when we were doing the design to see a couple different options in that color scheme.”
We know not everyone stays in New York during the summer, but those of us who do experience the season as one of the great democratizing forces in the world, and the annual Cyclones hat is often part of that. New Yorkers are forced out of their stuffy homes to seek relief on crowded beach blankets and shared picnic tables at Rippers, we’re smooshed together at free concerts or shooting the shit with each other camped out for Shakespeare in the Park.
Virginia K. Smith
Hats have become an unfortunate uniting social indicator for tacky fascists in our times, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. There is a positive unifying force in just leaving the house in this shit world and seeing hordes of people wearing the same free minor league baseball hat, even if it’s just walking the dog or running to the gym in the rain.
Most people, I know, are not diehard Cyclones fans (those people do exist though). But wearing the hat of the summer does symbolize something, namely that you had friends with whom you enjoyed at least one summer day at the ballpark gathered together in the sea breeze of Coney Island while King Henry does his corny magic trick schtick around you while you guzzle a tall boy of Kona beer that you may regret on the actual Cyclone later that day. Maybe your friend group or workplace sees your name on the jumbotron, creating a moment of minor-league celebrity for Jeff’’s 30th or Mill Basin Concrete Supplies, everyone cheering on like a VIP for one game at least. The rest of the team’s promotions, the Minecraft jerseys or Seinfeld bobbleheads, are open to anyone who arrives at the ballpark in time; but the group hat was only for those arriving in pre-booked hordes, with team spirit for the local team. You can't buy them in the team store; you can't even find one on eBay right now.
Groove contributor Kate Mooney once told us “minor league baseball is the most fun you can have in America,” and it’s hard to argue that isn't true these days. As prices at major league stadiums climb horrifically but inevitably to the $20-can-of-beer level, a Cyclones game remains dumb cheap. A ticket that costs the same as the price of a new CD at Sam Goody in the year 2000 gets you nine innings of minor league ball that features some potential future Mets; buy one on one of the "Fri-yay" deal nights and your ticket comes with 50 oz. of free beer too.
Tim Donnelly
It is, we regret to inform you, probably too late to get your hands on the hat of the summer. The Cyclones host game two of the playoffs today, potentially their last home game of the year. The team started the year with 35,000 of the hats, but fans this week might end up with one of the leftover old designs instead.
“We’re down to the bottom of the barrel,” Harner said. “At this point, we're almost out of them.”
Next summer will come along before long with a new hat; it might not reach “hat of the summer” status again, but it will be free, and all you have to do to obtain it is to get some friends together to go to the ballpark.
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