Sorry about the radio silence there, I have been deep in reflection on the

Nguzo Saba.

The “Babe Ruth hat” conundrum seems to have been solved. A reader on the

other coast: “Babe Ruth (aka The Bambino, aka The Sultan of Swat) was often

photographed wearing the fashionable sporting cap of the day (the ’20’s)

which would nowadays best be known as a ‘newsie’ cap. See attached. I

always associate that style of cap with what a proper English gentleman

wears whilst hiking through the woods in coat and tie.” The reader

helpfully added an illustration. It is what in England we called a “cloth

cap” (think Andy Capp), and had peculiar and contradictory class

connotations. It was basically an item of working-class attire–my father

and both my grandfathers wore them–but could also be found among certain

narrowly-defined subsets of the upper-middle and lower-upper classes, e.g.

when golfing. Here http://www.hats-online.com/hats-online/newsboy.html is

something of the kind.