(At left, Observer-Reporter staffers model their Pressman caps)

I had it all planned. I was going to write about how to cut a T-shirt so it frays just so, kind of like the ones you pay $50 for at Urban Outfitters. I even drew a diagram with a stick figure.

On Tuesday, however, in perusing other blogs written by Observer-Reporter staff, I couldn't help but notice that a group of my fellow compadres were sweetly leaving comments on each other's blogs. Harry Funk, associate editor and author of the Funky Music blog, had left several comments on Doug Street's baseball blog, Diamonds in the Rough . Our entertainment writer is apparently a regular reader and sometimes contributor to Couch Potatoes , a blog about television authored by several O-R staffers.

The comment lines on my blog had naught but donut holes.

I confronted the nearest culprit, Harry Funk, who had the curse of proximity against him. Harry didn't deserve my wrath. Harry graciously stays late many evenings, editing my always-last-to-be-finished copy, graciously explaining my grammar errors. He always offers to get me a cup when he goes for coffee.

I heard Harry mumble something about my blog and "girl stuff." Within minutes, however, he had logged on and posted comments to three different days.

But I had already switched gears. I didn't just write about girl stuff couldn't he see that? Yeah, the T-shirt posting would probably be more relevant to women, but I recently dedicated an entire posting to recent inductees to the baseball Hall of Fame. That had cross-gender appeal didn't it? And I written about Pigeon man in Ukraine and losing a #1 Dad's cup. I was all over the 23rd chromosome.

So instead of the frayed T-shirt posting, today I will write about a recent conversation I recently had with a MAN, about Major League baseball, a sport played only by MEN, which ended up with us making pressMAN's caps.

So here goes.

One night, a few weeks back, we were sitting at the table after dinner reading a newspaper article about the McClatchy Co.'s takeover of Knight-Ridder newspapers for some $6 billion and change. Why, we wondered, couldn't Pittsburgh Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy funnel some of the family fortune into the baseball team he owns? Didn't they trust him with money? (I could understand this one. Really I could). The particulars aren't so important. The point is, it was a MAN-ly conversation and I held my end up.

We couldn't really settle on McClatchy's motives for being, well cheap, but we did end up making pressman's caps inspired by a graphic that accompanied the story.

In the end, we made enough caps for almost everyone in the newsroom. (See pic above)

I will include directions for making a pressman's cap here. If you still want to learn how to fray a T-shirt, drop me a line. Or, better yet, post a comment to my blog.