The formula is achingly simple: solid, single color crown and bill, plus contrast color embroidery featuring city name (generally, anyway) in simple all cap font…and the coup de grâce, and what makes Sports Specialities single line hats so singularly stylish and special, is the script.

Roughly 5x the point size of the single stitch all caps topline, there is something so smooth and effortless about the font pattern, nothing truly outstanding (some letters – the R in the flagship Los Angeles Raiders hat, for instance – actually look rather odd and almost warped on their own), but taken together in a team’s base primary & secondary color scheme (usually anyway, more on that later), the final product is utter perfection.

And it seems as of late, heads have taken notice. For me, an increasingly professional nostalgist, the love affair is rooted beyond the perfect aesthetics of the design, and stems from this hat’s iconic prominence – good and bad, but never indifferent – in my most formative style years: junior high. First released at the outset of a burgeoning licensed sports gear craze in the late 80s, Sports Specialties single lines gained their foothold via, depending on whom you’re asking, the NBA draft (more on THAT later…), or via the logo and color-affiliated gangs of the same era (at least in my native Boston).

The sad reality of the former being that many Boston fans, myself foremost among them, will forever associate the Celtics single line with my hometown’s biggest sports tragedy: the sudden death of franchise torch-taker-to-be, Len Bias. Having pulled off yet another draft coup to secure what many believed at the time could be the best player in the draft (and a next-generation athlete that would allow the Celtics to keep up with an emerging Eastern Conference star of from two drafts prior in the form of Michael Jordan), Celtics fans were treated to a front page photo of Len Bias rocking the kelly green Celtics single line in the morning after the draft. Only to have any and all hopes of a long, jewelry-laden career crushed out before the ink on that week’s SI was even dry, as he overdosed on cocaine (uncut, raw, un-stepped-on cocaine, mind you…imagine being the friend that sourced that for him? Damn…).

That searing tragedy aside, the single line rose quickly to prominence via perhaps the single most iconic piece of licensed sportswear ever, and the chapeau of choice of an entire rap movement: the LA Raiders single line hat. Upon reflection, I’m not entirely sure now what blew my wig back more: NWA’s ‘Staright Outta Compton’, or the hat so prominently featured in every photo of Cube, Dre, Eazy, et al. Regardless, the deluge had begun, and I’ve been open ever since.

Part of the sustained obsession on my end was admittedly fueled by the afore-mentioned irrevocable link with Boston’s most notorious street gangs and a given team’s apparel. Sports Specialties, alongside Starter (jackets and hats), and The Game, had tapped into a rich vein in inner cities, and Boston’s highly active and micro-fragmented gang scene was a particular hotspot. As a suburban kid who happily rolled the dice on venturing Downtown rather frequently to catch (admittedly toy-ass) tags, and more importantly cop adidas, Triple FAT Goose, and other ill gear that one couldn’t sniff in the suburbs, my interest in understanding which crews rocked what team’s shit was rooted in both fashion and function: I obviously wanted to know what was dope at the time, but also wanted to give myself at least a shot at being able to keep whatever gear I bought for the duration of the journey back to the T station, without getting run for it.

To that end, Raiders hats were a no go (Academy Posse, not to mention just about any petty thug in any nearby town with a decent movie theater were all over them), as were Kings (Vamp Hill Posse). Bulls hats may as well have been charged as part of your T fare if you were white and caught in any part of Dorchester (Hecla, kehd), and for some reason Quincy Center. Heath Street wore Miami Heat gear, Orchard Park rocked Portland Trailblazers shit. There were Blackhawks and Bulldogs gangs in Roxbury.

A rather mobile posse based in Brockton repped UNLV, which was unfortunate for me because I loved that gear (something so satisfying about chasing down a grail in vintage deadstock form as a 40 year old that eluded you so cruelly as a youth). They took it a step further, creating, as was popular at the time, a faux acronym (see Edo G’s aforementioned Bulldogs crew, the, supposed, “Black United Leaders Living Directly On Groovin’ Sounds”) of “Us N*ggaz Like Violence”. I believe a bunch of Straight Edge dudes who happened to start the Yankees Suck t-shirt empire used to wear Florida State shit, and lived by the edict of FSU (“Fuck Shit Up”…misplaced preposition and all). But don’t quote me on that.

Hoyas (Germantown, Quincy), Packers (Greenwood Street, Dorchester), Giants (Blue Hill Ave), Magic (Franklin Park, Mattapan) – even the ever-menacing teal and purple of the Charlotte Hornets (although I must admit a much doper and surprisingly more menacing lid when done with the black crown and visor) was claimed by a group of kids in Savin Hill, with spillover into my hometown of Braintree and its rather deep OFD (Originally From Dorchester) set, none of whom I was smart enough to ever have looked askance. Even Notre Dame stuff was off limits in certain circumstances, as Southie kids were always on the lookout to rep it “for free” by taking it off you.

The violence, or certainly at least the threat of it, surrounding this stuff and the accompanying sneakers was so rampant at this time that even Sports Illustrated dedicated a famous cover story to it.

But that simply made the game that much more interesting and the grails that much more important to land. My favorites have always been UNC Tarheels (the winter hat version pictured), Georgetown Hoyas, and the rather rare UNLV all caps.

But another part of their charm is that despite the somewhat staunch uniformity of layout, there were many rather inexplicable one-offs. Some colleges have the school name in small caps and the mascot name in large script below it (like UNC, Georgetown), others have the school name in large script above and the mascot name in small all caps below, like Maryland, and Texas (another grail, but only for that beautiful burnt orange…and the fact that Rakim wore it in a promo photo once). I’ve seen University of Florida presented both ways.

Some initial schools like UNLV above have the school in all caps large script, while UCLA has, for some reason, only the U, and the remaining letters are lower case, not to mention thicker and more rounded. Like Notre Dame, Ole Miss just says the school name on one line, no mascot, while Boston College similarly just has both words in large script, but stacked, again with no mention of their mascot name (?!), as does the Mighty Ducks. Several hockey teams, the Blackhawks and Penguins in particular, have a slightly different font treatment, taller and less fluid, while the NJ Devils is actually smaller and pinched-looking. And the original Charlotte Hornets single line came with orange lettering, despite the color not appearing at all in their 3-tiered branding scheme. Are there “error cards” in licensed apparel? So many strange variations.

As for overall icons, for me there’s the LA Kings hat, which I always preferred to the Raiders, the Bulls (red hat, black letters in particular). And of course The Godfather of them all, the Raiders, respect due, which, thanks in part to the utter butchering of it committed, somehow, by the makers of the Straight Outta Compton NWA biopic (picture below), has risen to even greater prominence and sought-after status.

I owned a good 15 or so of these single lines back in my early 90s heyday. But other than the afore-mentioned favorites I always strove for the more oddball schools and teams so as to hook up to the outfit (Champion gear that I rock…). I started re-collecting these bad boys again about 7 years ago, after, like many of my most once-oddball, now increasingly more popular (and thus exponentially more expensive), sartorial obsessions, started with a particularly rich eBay wormhole. I’ve re-acquired a few favorites – the UNC, the UNLV, Norte Dame, and my tragic Celtics to name a few. I have the Tarheels, Hoyas, and Raiders in the exponentially rarer winter hats as well. To that end, I also own a grip of OG Starter (UNC, Clemson, Notre Dame, Kings) and The Game circle (UNLV, Hoyas, Notre Dame, Tennessee) winter hats. Most were copped on the cheap, although those days are rapidly disappearing.

Like the best of my vintage pieces, there are probably 5 people on a given day who might understand or appreciate the throwback element of this particular item. But that’s the people’s I’m most interested in impressing anyway. Props to cats like @selectvintage_bk for keeping me up on whenever he gets UNLV and vintage Big East gear in (still got my eye on that Johnnies Starter jacket, B). The legendary @foralltoenvy, who’s been on this train for coming up on a decade. And I have to shout out @noahgeoman who has one of the most prolific collections I’ve ever laid eyes on.

I’m sure like early 90s Polo, back issues of The Source magazine, and endless other examples of 90s nostalgia that was once a DITC obsession for a small handful and has now got the noses of somehow cash-rich Millennials wise open, these too will blow the fuck up in no time at all (Addendum: Yup!). And I’ll get old man mad and complain these shitheads don’t even know why this stuff is dope. Though I must admit I do get a slight kick out of several job interviews over the years in which I’ve been told the brand is seeking a “digital native” to attract a “more influential” customer, as away of rejecting my candidacy…when all the things those “influential customers” get into and are moved by is shit I have been repping since I was 14, and I’ve been back on for half a decade before they even knew to start checking for it.

But I digress. For those of us that know, like hearing Bush Babees “Love Song” hum over the restaurant PA in accompaniment to a ridiculously great meal – is there anything better than this now-rather-sustained trend of great restaurants playing almost exclusively 90s hip-hop?! – the originals will always be more than, to quote 3rd Bass, a passing phase (in 80-deca!). They will always mean more. Sports Specialties single lines will always be exactly what they are: singular, and special.