24-year-old Hancel Rincon wasn’t some hyped first-rounder who arrived in St. Louis overnight to begin with. MLB’s prospect material says he signed for $70,000 at 17, spent years working his way through the organization, and only really broke out after improving his changeup. Then, on Sept. 1, the Cardinals finally selected his contract. Three days later, he was standing on a major-league mound for the first time.

Before Friday’s game, Marmol had already been talking about the excitement around the organization’s rookies. “I love observing those moments to see what they do,” Marmol had shared. Instead, Rincon’s debut quickly turned chaotic at 5,200 feet. A wild pitch and an inside-the-park homer cut the Cardinals’ lead from 4-1 to 4-3. Then, with the rookie still on the mound, home-plate umpire Doug Eddings stopped play and asked him to straighten his crooked hat. Rincon fixed it. Marmol wasn’t about to let it go. But Oliver Marmol wasn’t about to let the moment pass.

“Fix your hat? Fix your hat?”- the broadcast cameras caught a furious Marmol yelling at Eddings, per Jomboy Media on X. “You need to grow the f*** up. He’s a rookie. You kidding me about his f *** hat? You need to grow the f*** up.”
The strange part was that Rincon himself hadn’t made an issue of the request.

“I had no idea why he told me to do it,” the rookie said through an interpreter. “It’s fine.” He simply straightened the cap and got back to work.

And the request hadn’t originated with Eddings, either. Rockies catcher Hunter Goodman was the one who first noticed Rincon’s hat and asked the umpire, “Hey, can he wear his hat like that?” Eddings said the cap was “really, really crooked,” so he asked the Cardinals catcher to relay the message. Rincon complied.

From there, the sixth inning got considerably worse for St. Louis. Rincon retired Goodman on a liner to second, but then surrendered a triple to TJ Rumfield, a wild pitch that brought Rumfield home and an inside-the-park homer to Cole Carrigg. After Connor Norby singled, Marmol turned to Justin Bruihl. By then, Colorado had erased the 4-1 deficit and moved ahead, 5-4, with two more runs coming after the pitching change.

But the pitching change did not stop Marmol from confronting Eddings, and in the process, he earned a pitch clock violation for Bruihl. Marmol stayed in Eddings’ face during Bruihl’s warmups, and the argument eventually ended with the manager being ejected, his fourth ejection of the season.

Marmol later made clear that he wasn’t arguing the triple itself or trying to overturn what happened on the field. His problem was the instruction Eddings had given Rincon in the first place.

“Some words were exchanged there. I thought it was pretty embarrassing on his [Doug Eddings] end,” Marmol said postgame, per Foul Territory. “We have a kid making his debut, and in between an at-bat, he tells them that he needs to fix his hat, and ‘a kid’s not going to wear a hat like that on my field.’ So, last I checked, this is Coors Field. So I took issues with it.”

Marmol went further, pointing to a long list of players who have worn their caps at pronounced angles without drawing the same kind of intervention.

“You got Dontrelle Willis, CC Sabathia, Pedro Strop — plenty of guys that have worn it way more tilted,” Marmol said. “I have an issue with that. That’s just a power-hungry move, in my opinion.”

That distinction matters because Rincon wasn’t actually breaking an MLB rule. Eddings acknowledged as much after the game. His argument was that the cap had become a potential distraction once Goodman brought it to his attention.

Doug Eddings on Friday’s hat-gate

There are no guidelines in the MLB rulebook on how players should wear a hat. The home plate umpire, Doug Eddings, also admitted that the 24-year-old Rincon was not breaking any rules. But Eddings viewed the situation differently from Marmol: once a player identified the cap as a possible distraction, he felt it was something he should address. The home plate umpire even called for time to convey the message.

“It’s not [a rule],” Eddings said postgame, per MLB.com. “I guess it’s a little unwritten rule. They can’t wear [their cap] backwards like a catcher. If it’s a distraction, like anything on the field, like a glove or something, and someone makes you aware of it, then you kind of address that.”

Eddings also stressed that nothing was said between him and Marmol until after Rincon had already surrendered the runs. “Nobody said anything until he gave up a couple runs,” Eddings said. That detail offers some context for why the confrontation didn’t happen immediately after Rincon adjusted his cap.

For Rincon, meanwhile, the hat episode was hardly the defining part of his first night in the Majors. The 24-year-old simply shrugged it off, even as his debut became increasingly chaotic.

He ultimately recorded one out while allowing three runs on three hits before Bruihl took over. Starting pitcher Andre Pallante, returning from the injured list, was left with a no-decision after five innings of one-run ball.

The Cardinals then had to watch a 4-1 lead become a 6-4 deficit. Rumfield added a solo homer in the seventh to extend Colorado’s advantage, leaving St. Louis needing a late rally to rescue a game that had already produced one of the more unusual managerial ejections of the season.

They got it in the ninth. After a throwing error in the previous at-bat extended the inning, Iván Herrera drove a Statcast-projected 430-foot three-run homer to center, flipping the game back in St. Louis’ favor and completing the Cardinals’ 7-6 comeback.

So Rincon’s first Major League appearance ended with three runs charged to his line, Marmol in the clubhouse instead of the dugout, and a win that had somehow survived all of it. The crooked hat was fixed in seconds. The argument over it lasted much longer.