From time to time we’ve discussed uni-related issues of trademark infringement and protection. But policing your trademark in lawsuit-happy America is one thing — doing it in a far-off land, where any clown with a heat press can run off a few jillion cheap logo-emblazoned knockoffs of your design, is something else, as reader Eric Trager has discovered. Here’s his long-distance report from the Middle East:

I’ve been living in Cairo since August on an Islamic Civilizations Fulbright grant, which has given me a decent opportunity to travel around the Middle East a bit. It seems like almost anywhere I go, I find familiar-looking caps, none of which are ever official, and almost all of which contain completely incorrect colors. At the famous Khan al-Khalili market in Cairo, for example, I spotted this orange Yankees cap among other mostly Cairo-appropriate headgear. In Casablanca, I spotted this cap stand; you can make out a number of Yankees caps (there’s a proper navy one on the 60 dirham level, though the rest are completely off), along with a 49ers cap, a Florida Gators cap, and a Berkeley cap. [The one I find most amusing is the FBI cap. — PL] Although the Yankees are, unfortunately, the most prominent in terms of merchandise in the region, I happened to find this cap stand in Sana’a, Yemen, featuring Dodgers caps (again, wrong colors). Finding these things in Yemen was particularly surprising, given that most men there dress like this, i.e., sans baseball cap.

Though caps are the most prominent American sports gear I’ve come across in the region, I spotted kid in Jounieh, Lebanon, wearing a very decent Kobe Bryant jersey when I was there in 2004. It looks like it’s actually officially licensed, unlike this horrific Don Mattingly Yankees jacket I spotted in Rabat [Donnie Baseball never wore his stirrups like that! — PL] and this awful Rockies T-shirt I found at the Cairo tent market (although Uni Watch probably endorses the shirt’s use of red in place of purple, no matter how inaccurate).

Of course, the most common sports uniforms found in Middle Eastern markets are local soccer jerseys. I spotted these two brothers wearing al-Ahly jerseys in Cairo, and have purchased the jerseys of Maghreb Fez, Wydad (Casablanca), and the Moroccan national team as gifts for friends. Unfortunately, none of these are remotely authentic, though I was finally able to find an official al-Ahly jersey at the posh, Saudi-built mall in Cairo.

This is really just a small sampling of uni-relevant observations from my time in the region. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the hundreds of MLB, NBA, NFL, NCAA, and NHL T-shirts available in Hebrew in virtually any Israeli tourist area (similar to these online examples), though did happen to pick up this Mets yarmulke.

I’ll close with the most surprising uni-related find. Look closely at the religious insignia on the sports club t-shirt of the boy on the left in this photo — it was taken in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank.

Pretty great stuff. The global, hegemonic reach of the baseball cap, even in cultures that wouldn’t know a baseball game if you plopped one down in their front yard, continues to amaze me.

And wait, there’s more: About a week after sending me that first note, Trager checked in with a nice little epilogue:

As I was packing up my things today to leave Egypt after a nine-month stint out here, I noticed that my Mets cap no longer fit. Fitted caps, as you might imagine, are extremely hard finds in Egypt, and all sorts of people — taxi drivers, camel merchants, children, restaurant owners, and tour guides — have asked me many times for some of my fitted caps right off my head, which I have always declined in the past. This time, however, rather than waste precious suitcase space on a Mets cap that didn’t fit, I went downstairs to find a kid to whom I could give it. He was very appreciative, and I think rather surprised. I might have just stumbled across a new mechanism for American public diplomacy.

Now we just have to get the kid to ditch the black.

Article available on the Uni Watch Blog website here.