Ugly Phillies hats are a tradition in Major League Baseball. Pick an occasion that happens here or there, make a new hat for it, and charge $34.99 to sell them. We've been through plenty of ugly alternate hats throughout the years, and the baseball has added one more: All-Star hats. Teams no longer have to represent their teams with the team's actual hat.
The reason given for the hats is that New Era's Vice President wanted to honor Minnesota tradition, as per this piece on MLB.com:
"Returning to Minnesota for the first time in almost 30 years, we wanted to honor the Twins history with new ideas and their distinctive batting helmet design from the 1970s made perfect sense," said Tim Brosnan, Executive Vice President, Business, Major League Baseball.
"We wanted to highlight the game's illustrious past with a retro design concept, but with the modern twist of utilizing performance fabric," said Christopher H. Koch, CEO of New Era. "We're excited to bring the best cap, to the best players, on baseball's biggest stage."
By "honor the Twins history" New Era means that they want to make as much money as possible and will sell any gimicky hat to do so.
Presumably, they will honor the Cincinnati Reds next summer by finding something else to sell you.
