TFHS: Cap Tournament Primer

The colorway war among Padres fans is very much real and still burns across the Internet. For ages, we Friar faithful have debated on which colorway best represents our San Diego Padres. Movements have arose to Bring Back The Brown: to bring a change to the colors donned by a navy blue and white team middling through the 2000s now building to a brighter sunshine yellow future. Even with the Brown brought back, many fans have debated whether the new cap is the right direction to go. An amalgamation of brown and gold both old and new will make its debut at Friday home games. Wayback Wednesdays will hark back to the glory days of the late 90s with the return of the navy/white/orange colorway after last year's 20th anniversary of the brown/orange. Of course, we can't forget the change made this year: a new color added to the uniform and cap refreshes a palette long since relegated to mediocrity. Even still, our own Friar Fever stands defiant as a flagbearer for the sand.

So let's be honest. Which cap is the best Padres cap ever?

Whoa, slow down. I know you have a cap in mind already. At least a top 2 or 3, right? Well, let's make things interesting. Let's have a tournament to decide the best Padres cap in history. Allow me to explain some prerequisites:

1) These caps are the on-field, authentic caps. No need to think about the Spring Training or Stars & Stripes versions; we're talking about the base standard caps.

2) The Sunday alternates are allowed in. They've become part of Padres history and have seen on-field action plenty of times. I'm not interested in the Wayback Wednesday caps, since they're sorta carbon copies of caps already in our past. We want to find out which cap colorway is truly the best.

3) Try to judge the cap on its own merits rather than the uniform it was paired with. The uniform debate would require a huge bracket and is probably more divisive than anything else.

Sounds simple otherwise, right? Here's what such a contest will look like:

This bracket designed by yours truly will be utilized to keep everything tidy. Just like March Madness, we'll pit caps against each other in a vote until we narrow it all down to the best Padres cap in history.

I've separated our long history of caps into two separate brackets: Historic and Modern. I thought it proper to pit caps against others in their own era in order to get the best matchup of each cap from each era.

Here's where you come in: we'll be seeding each bracket together! Each side will feature 6 caps from our Padres' storied past. We'll have a Selection Weekend to seed each side and get our brackets filled from the best cap of the era to the worst.

Well...why is there 7 spaces on each side? I'll make things really interesting: the first matchup will feature a secret Wild Card cap against the lowest seed. This Wild Card cap is indeed a cap from the Padres' past. Maybe you'll figure it out before the matchup. I won't tell, though. The inclusion of the Wild Card cap means your #1 seeds get a bye until the following contests as veritable cap division champs.

Selection Weekend will be this Saturday and Sunday. Start thinking about how you'll rank our Padres caps through history and be ready to make your voice heard in less than a week! I hope you'll join me in deciding the best cap in Padres history!