THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2007 SPORTS 5B Pitching a fit Gareth Copley/ASSOCIATED PRESS Police restrain a man as they try to maintain the peace after violent clashes before Manchester United and Roma's Champions League quarterfinal, second-leg soccer match at Old Trafford Stadium, Manchester, England, on Tuesday. Microfibers replace wool Baseball hats receive overdue upgrade, high-tech fabric BY JOSH L. DICKEY ASSOCIATED PRESS MLB Pity the wool baseball cap. It didn't stand a chance, utterly alone as it was, with vanquished woolen sportswear littering the playing fields all around it: football jerseys, hockey sweaters, ski jackets, golf pants and the like. Each had long ago succumbed to a tide of manmade textiles boasting superlative stretliness, stain resistance, insulation, water repellency "It was something we determined a while ago: that we needed to keep up with what was going on in the sports apparel world." — innovations that spawned revolutions in sports fashion and fabric terminology alike. (Doubhtful that Honus Wagner ever pondered the "breatheability" and "wicking" abilities of his famously rumpled lid.) JOHN DEWAAL New Era VP of brand communications So it shouldn't have surprised anyone this winter when Major League Baseball quietly announced it was tossing the wool cap for good. New Era Cap Co., the Buffalo, N.Y.-based manufacturer of baseball's signature vestment for decades, declared that a new polyester-blend model would debut on opening day. This was never a fair fight, really. How could simple old wool compete with fabric named Gore-Tex or Lyrca, Coolmax or Kevlar? Still, wool and baseball were interwoven some 150-odd years, from the day the New York Knickerbockers switched from straw to merino until last Oct. 27, when a summer's toil could be traced in the salt-stained caps of the St. Louis Cardinals as they celebrated winning the World Series. But with stain-resistant polyester, those saline smudges will besmirch baseball no longer. The switch went off with nothing close to the griping that accompanied the NBAs ill-fated introduction of a microfiber basketball this season. Perhaps that's because New Era put its product through a two-year, off-field testing period that included input from dozens of players. In fact, the cap was conceived, designed and implemented with a sole purpose — to perform better on the diamond, said John DeWaal, vice president of brand communications for New Era. "It was something we determined a while ago: that we needed to keep up with what was going on in the sports apparel world," DeWaal said. "We needed that kind of moisture management and performance in our caps." New Era and MLB argue that the new caps do a better job of wicking sweat from the brim and distributing it to the crown, where surface- ness springs from fans' desire to don the exact same model — stitch for stitch — as their heroes on the diamond. From a business perspective, the immediate impact of the change may only be felt by New Era's wool suppliers; the larger consequence for wool producers comes in the form of perception. "It's significant in the visibility that it's had," said Rita Samuelson, marketing director for the American Wool Council, a nonprofit association representing U.S. sheep ranchers. "It was one of the last places in sports where wool was used, and so many people are now hearing that wool is being replaced by high-performance fiber. Samuelson knows of at least one wool producer in Canada that may have to shutter its mill with the decreased demand. And the change has done little to help wool's reputation as a scratchy, old-fashioned fiber that's ill suited for our daily duds. While New Era will continue to make some of its "fashion" caps out of wool, the better part of its busi- as a fashion statement, declaration of territorial loyalty, baldness camouflage, bad hair day remedy, and occasional grooming substitute it's remarkable how little resistance New Era met when announcing what amounted to a sartorial sea change. It's a shame, she says, because no matter how advanced manmade Considering the authentic baseball cap's work day role in the uniform of the modern American man fibers become, there are still things wool fibers can do that plastic cannot, such as the ability to shrink and stretch to fit conditions. The new caps have switched from a white band and light But DeWaal quickly dispels any notion that the switch had to do with the bottom line. gray underbill to black in both places. And the price has gone up, from $29 suggested retail to $32. "The way we make the new cap is no less expensive by any means," he said. "It's more expensive, between the sweatband, the visorboard and all parts of the system that have changed and become performance-enhanced." Bonds' former trainer testifies 》 STEROID HEARINGS SAN FRANCISCO — A former San Francisco Giants trainer testified before the federal grand jury looked into steroid use in sports, a sign the investigation of Barry Bonds was not derailed by the firing of the investigation's top prosecutor. Mark Letendre told The Associated Press on Tuesday he testified for about an hour Feb. 14 and was asked about Bonds' size and confirmed the slugger hurt his elbow in 1999. Bonds' former girlfriend Kimberly Bell has told an earlier grand jury that Bonds blamed the 1999 elbow injury on steroid use. Bonds missed seven weeks that season after undergoing surgery to remove a bone spur and repair a damaged tendon in his left arm. "It was all pretty vanilla," Letendre said. "I'm pretty far removed from The 50-year-old Lentrede of Scottsdale, Ariz., served as the team's head trainer until after the 1999 season, when he was appointed director of Major League Baseball's umpire medical services. "There is absolutely no doubt that the U.S. attorney is still running a grand jury and still taking evidence that involves Bonds," said Michael Rains, the lawyer for Bonds. "There is still an active effort to indict Barry." BY PAUL ELIAS ASSOCIATED PRESS Since U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan was fired in December, speculation has mounted that the Justice Department would quietly extinguish the long-running investigation into Bonds. it." Letendre's testimony came the day before Ryan's final day on the job, but a temporary successor had already been named in court documents. U. S. Attorney Scott Schools refused to comment Tuesday on Letendre's remarks. KANSANCLASSIFIEDS SERVICES $5000 PAID. 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