CC Sabathia will wear Yankees cap on Hall of Fame plaque, only 2025 inductee not to represent original team

An intriguing question for each year’s Baseball Hall of Fame class is which cap an inductee will wear on his plaque.

However, among the five-man 2025 class, the only player who really had a question about his cap was CC Sabathia. Sabathia started his career with the Cleveland, pitching for them for eight seasons and winning an AL Cy Young Award with the franchise in 2007.

Yet Sabathia is probably best known for his time with the New York Yankees, for whom he pitched 11 seasons. He won a World Series championship in pinstripes and registered his only 20-win season (21 victories in 2010) with the team.

With that in mind, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Hall of Fame announced Monday that Sabathia will wear a Yankees cap on his plaque in Cooperstown. He is the only inductee among this year’s class who will not wear his original team’s cap.

Ichiro Suzuki will wear a Seattle Mariners cap. Billy Wagner, who pitched for five MLB clubs, will sport a Houston Astros cap on his plaque.

Dave Parker played for six teams during his 19-year career but played 11 seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates, making them the clear choice. And Dick Allen, elected by the Classic Era Committee, will have a Philadelphia Phillies cap, representing the team with which he played nine seasons.

There has been a misconception over the years that the players choose which cap they wear on their plaques. (False rumors about teams paying players to wear their cap have persisted as well.) While players certainly have input on the matter, the Baseball Hall of Fame ultimately makes the decision.

However, some inductees have opted for no logos on their plaques. Perhaps they were afraid to offend any teams or fan bases. Or maybe they just felt it wasn’t fair to single out one team over another to represent a career.

For example, Mike Mussina chose to wear a blank cap on his plaque after pitching 10 seasons with the Baltimore Orioles and eight with the Yankees. Fred McGriff, Roy Halladay, Greg Maddux, Tony La Russa and Jim Leyland are among recent Hall of Famers who opted for a blank cap as well.

“It always starts with a conversation,” former Baseball Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson told the New York Times in 2014. “We work with them with an eye toward 50 years from now, so that a casual visitor won’t look at their plaques, scratch their heads and say, ‘Huh?'”