Inside the massive hat collection of a Blue Jays superfan

Lesley Mak, an associate registrar at the University of Toronto, has been a Blue Jays fan since she was eight years old. At the time, she and her brother were enrolled in softball and tee ball, and their parents started taking them to Jays games as a way of nurturing their interest in the sport. What began as a family bonding exercise evolved into a lifelong fandom.

“This World Series run has been magical—an absolute dream,” she says. It’s also given her ample excuse to showcase her other obsession. In 2015, Mak bought her first Blue Jays hat, a single purchase which has since ballooned into a collection of more than 60 lids, which she displays with reverence on a shelf in her bedroom.

Mak estimates that she’s spent about $3,000 on hats over the years. She now considers the owner of merch distributor Styll a personal friend. She’s even collaborated with the retailer on special-edition designs, with the mission of turning baseball-hat fandom into a more diverse community. “Fitted hats have generally been a male-dominated fashion sphere. I really want to get more women and non-binary people involved,” she says.

For Mak, hat-collecting—like baseball—is all about community. “It’s about getting to know other collectors and helping one another. If you can’t actually buy a hat the day that it’s dropping, someone else might lend you a hand.”

Here, a look at some of her favourite pieces in her extensive collection.

This is the first Blue Jays hat that Mak ever purchased, in 2015. It features a lime-green pixel art rendition of the Jays logo and a pineapple Blue Jays pin she stuck on to personalize it—a homage to former Blue Jay Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s famously spiky hair.

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Mak designed this pixel art hat in 2025, inspired by her first hat. She loves the pixellated design because it reminds her of another passion of hers, the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

These hats were part of a promotion by Lids at a Jays game in 2022: anyone who bought the regular-size one received the miniature one for free. Mak later toured the Lids office and mentioned missing out on the mini-hat promotion, so they gave her one that was left over. Now, she puts it on her cats.

Mak’s friend designed this custom Pride-themed Blue Jays hat in 2023. The MLB batter logo on the back is designed to look like a trans flag.

This is the first hat Mak custom-designed, in 2023. She chose her favourite colour, lavender, and added dark-blue, pink and silver accents. The design sold out after a week on Styll’s website.

Mak acquired this Chinese New Year–inspired cap in 2022. It features a golden version of the Blue Jays logo and an image of a lucky cat. On the underside of the brim, it has a pattern reminiscent of the red envelopes given out on the holiday.

This hat, purchased in 2024, was inspired by the team’s “city connect” uniform design, which emulates the effect of the Toronto skyline at night.

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