By Paul M. Banks
If you’re obsessed with that hooded sweatshirt you wear, you’re in an elite fraternity of NFL and MLB head coaches. New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick made an overt expression of his solidarity with Tampa Bay Rays head man Joe Maddon. BB’s letter and gift to Maddon conveyed “although both you and I are oppressed because of our wardrobe dominated by hooded sweatshirts, we must struggle together, and the establishment will not defeat us!”
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Nevertheless, the ridiculousness of last week’s HoodieGate (second only to the ridiculousness of actually calling something HoodieGate) got national attention.
Now, Maddon will be forever associated with that particular piece of clothing. And to welcome him into the exclusive Brotherhood of Hooded Coaches, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, the most famous hooded-sweatshirt-wearing coach in all of the land, sent Maddon his own Patriots hoodie, personalized with the letters “JM.”
It goes without saying that the Pats hoodie won’t be MLB-approved for the dugout, but this is a pretty good-natured and funny gesture by Belichick, someone that most people generally think of as dour and humorless. And from the looks of things, he was even kind enough to give Maddon a sweatshirt that he hadn’t ripped the arms off of yet.
Maddon says he’ll send a Rays hoodie back to Belichick as thanks. And who knows, maybe it’ll be good luck for the Pats. After all, the Rays have been to the World Series more recently than they’ve been to the Super Bowl