Embarrassing MLB "Tetas" Hats Sell for Over $1,000 on eBay

Good news baseball fans, Opening Day is just around the corner. We’ve only got a few weeks left until the familiar sounds of cracking bats and drunk fans are blaring across every bar in America.

And what better way to kick things off than with new merch? The MLB certainly agrees and has been hard at work spinning up new collections for old teams. One of these is the “Overlap” hat collection, which overlays a team’s logo over their city or team name.

They’ve done this for every team in the league, and the designs are all consistent. It’s not a particularly bombastic concept, so what’s all the fuss?

Well, a lot of team’s logos are letters, and if you overlay letters on existing text, you can change their meanings.

The most obvious example comes from the Texas Ranger. Their “Overlap” design is the word “Texas” with a big “T” slapped over the “X”. In other words, “TETAS”, essentially “tits” in Spanish.

Did anyone proofread this designs? These seem like very obvious bungles that could have been easily avoided – just use the city name instead of the team. How did the MLB let these go into production?

In any case, the gaffe quickly came to the attention of the MLB. Rather than sitting on their hands and letting people have a little fun, they pulled the hats from sale. The first to go were the Rangers Tetas hats, but the Ashos and Anaels hats got the boot quickly after.

Problem solved, right? Not exactly, especially if you’re familiar with the Streisand effect. With a rush of fans finding out about the design online, MLB deciding to pull them from sale only intensified the joke.

And it didn’t take long for humor to translate into genuine commercial interest. Now that they couldn’t buy them through official channels, fans had to go to eBay to get their fix.

The numbers we’ve been seeing are hard to believe. MLB “Overlap” hats originally retailed for $45, but the Rangers Tetas hats are now reselling for up to $1,000 at a time.

Yes, seriously. The attention has also triggered a flood of Etsy copycats, but sellers with genuine MLB hats are getting most of the attention. MLB Ashos and Anaels hats are also being listed on eBay, but aren’t getting the same kind of bites.

We’re reminded of a pretty similar incident from last year. The MLB launched their “Team Shadows” collection that featured unified designs for all the teams in the league. The A’s hats got special attention because it looked like they were spelling out “Ass.”