The Padres officially haven’t worn the spring training caps that caused such a stir on social media when they were unveiled last week.

And now they only briefly will wear them.

On Tuesday, the day before pitchers and catchers officially report to the Peoria Sports Complex, most players already working out on site wore the new brown cap with the interlocking “S” and “D” that the team will wear during the regular season.


This was instead of the Swinging Friar with the somewhat matrix-and digital-looking “SD” over his torso that may or may not have resembled a swastika and may or may not have looked cheesy.

“Following our offseason uniform rebrand and the overwhelmingly positive response from Padres fans, we’ve decided to wear our regular season brown caps with the gold ‘SD’ for the majority of spring training,” Wayne Partello, Padres chief marketing officer, said Tuesday.

The Padres will wear the caps at least once on the field during spring training, likely for a day or two in the coming week. The lids were, after all, introduced and sold to fans as the official on-field caps of spring training and regular season batting practice.

Major League Baseball and New Era designed the series of hats that melded each teams logo and their letter logo.


Many fans simply thought the logo-within-a-logo logo was loco.

@Padres For the love of god, please don’t wear those swastika spring training hats. #BackToTheDrawingBoard — The Abominable ShowMan (@AbmnbleShowMan) February 6, 2020

Is this really the Spring Training hat or am I being punked? Please insert into the brand standards “DO NOT DO” section. K thx! pic.twitter.com/bSOonl7fnP — Back The Brown (@backthebrownSD) February 6, 2020

@MLB @NewEraCap @Padres. The spring training hats have a swatsika on it. FIX THIS NOW! This is unacceptable. — Sam in San Diego (@SammyGSanDiego) February 5, 2020


Not all fans disliked the new look.