Aggies coach puts a lid on tradition
Backward hats rarely are acceptable — unless A&M celebrates a title.
There are few times in a young man’s life requiring a baseball cap turned backward, at least in the mind of Texas A&M coach Rob Childress.
“Fireworks on the Fourth of July,” Childress reasoned. “Driving a boat. Kissing a girl.”
The baseball cap was designed in the 1800s to help keep the sun out of players’ eyes, but that clever motif also blocks a good view of fireworks in the sky, save for a crick in the neck. The jutting brim also is capable of ruining a romantic moment with a nasty bump of a young woman’s forehead on an attempted first kiss.
And who knows how many hats are on the bottom of lakes across the country because of eager boaters ignoring aerodynamics when skimming across bodies of water?
Which brings us to Childress’ most resounding reason for turning a hat backward.
“Winning a championship,” he said.
The Aggies, who will play Louisville at 1 p.m. Sunday in the opening round of the College World Series in Omaha, Neb., hope to turn around their hats one more time this season. That would mean they won the school’s first national title in the sport.
The players already have turned their hats backward twice this year, the first time after winning
an NCAA regional at the University of Houston and the next after winning a super regional against Davidson at Blue Bell Park. Now the Aggies are in the eight-team CWS for the first time since 2011.
There’s a worn axiom among players and coaches in sports along the lines of, “We’re going to enjoy this
win tonight and then get back to work tomorrow.” Part of the Aggies’ enjoy- ment in that span is wear-
ing their hats to the rear. “There are only a few different occasions we can have our hats backward,” senior outfielder Nick Cho-
ruby explained while wear- ing his hat in just that fashion after A&M’s regional-clinching victory over UH. “So I’m going to wear it backward for as long as I can.”
What happens if players are caught wearing their hats in reverse with no pyrotech- nics, females or vessels in sight? Childress owns a pretty nice collection of caps.
“If I see your hat back- ward,” he said, “then it becomes my hat.”
Childress distributes the more kempt ones on recruit- ing and goodwill trips.
“The other ones end up on my dashboard, getting smoked by the Texas sun,” he said with a grin as wide as a maroon brim.
So what exactly is wrong with a hat turned backward, at least to a no-nonsense East Texan who wouldn’t be caught maroon-handed committing the (allegedly) rebellious act?
“The way you wear your hat is kind of the direction of your life,” said Childress, a Gilmer native. “At least that’s my philosophy.”
Traditions, superstitions and perhaps oddball philosophies are nothing new in baseball or the A&M program. Steve Scarborough played shortstop on the 1999 A&M team that reached the CWS, and he wore the same hat the entire season — a saltstained relic that turned dark pink along the way because it bled so much maroon. And that stench ... “It was old, dirty, smelly,
and the stitching was coming off,” Scarborough once recalled. “Really, it just stank.
Every day when I put it on, I had to get used to the smell all over again.”
He wore it backward plenty but never on the field. That’s something hardly any baseball coaches allow, from Little League to the majors. When Childress arrived at A&M in 2005, he brought the “no hat backward with few exceptions” tradition with him from Nebraska, where he had been pitching coach.
“It’s become important to our guys to have that opportunity,” he said of one more Aggie tradition at a university brimming with them.
An opportunity players can enjoy for a night before getting back to work.