Jerry Cohen was standing onstage at Bumbershoot 1989 when he decided to quit the music business for good. It was the cliche rock musician story, really: He needed more time to focus on his niche retro baseball apparel business.

“My dream was always to be a famous musician,” says Cohen. “And that didn’t work out. I tried for 10 years. And, you know, very few people succeed at that. And then by the time I had to give that dream up, it was okay, because I had a new dream.”

That dream was Ebbets Field Flannels, the company that Cohen and his ex-wife, but still-partner, Lisa Cooper grew into an international brand that miraculously straddles the line between athletic wear and high-end fashion by embracing a devotion to both obscure history and authentic vintage materials. Last year, after nearly 35 years of bootstrapping in Seattle, Cohen and Cooper quietly sold the majority interest in Ebbets Field Flannels to holding company Ames Watson, which also owns the mall-staple hat seller Lids.

Over coffee in Pioneer Square, across the street from one of their former retail locations, Cohen and Cooper, who have both stayed on at Ebbets, seem somewhat amazed to be talking about the company at all, especially considering how it started. In the late 1980s, while he worked at a tape duplication facility and played shows around Seattle, Cohen set off on a quest to gift his father with an exact replica of a 1957 Dodgers jersey—the baseball team’s last season in Brooklyn before it moved to Los Angeles. He knew nothing about fabric, or the process of making clothing.

“I got obsessed with the flannel uniforms. In the pre-internet days, I was going to the library and looking through old trade journals of the old sporting goods manufacturers and calling and annoying people all day long with questions.”

When he finally got his father’s Dodgers jersey together, he brought it to work and showed his colleagues—all struggling musicians like him. To his surprise, all of his friends asked for jerseys of their own. Maybe he had a business on his hands.

“It was very punk rock,” says Cooper, who worked as a preschool teacher at the time. Cohen made the jerseys for his buddies and photographed them. He used the pictures to create the company’s first catalog, printed in black and white at a shop on Pine. (“It was a total zine is what it was,” says Cooper. “Horrible,” says Cohen. “I wish we still had a copy of it.”)

Cohen put an ad in Baseball America magazine for his newfound company, named for the stadium where his father had grown up watching the Dodgers play in Brooklyn. “And all of a sudden people are sending checks,” says Cooper. “And Jerry’s dancing around with people’s money, and I’m like, ‘Oh shit,’ and that’s when I got involved.”

The base of operations was their unit at the Biltmore Apartments in Capitol Hill. Each jersey was an adventure: The fabric cutting was done by a mother and son in Wallingford. The man who did their lettering lived south, so Cohen would meet him at the Tukwila Park and Ride, where he’d hand over blank jerseys and pick up finished ones. Once, a cop approached them making the exchange, thinking he’d just witnessed a drug deal.

The world of Major League Baseball-licensed apparel was already crowded with big players. So after getting a slap on the wrist for selling the jersey of the short-lived Seattle Pilots, they decided to focus on historic minor league and Negro league clubs instead. This turned out to be a smart choice.

This was just before the baseball memorabilia boom of the early 1990s, before the Ken Burns documentary reinvigorated interest in the sport’s past. “I felt like we were sort of on a mission to not just sell clothing, but to make people aware of this richer, much more expansive history.”

Cohen became a proselytizer. And he found people willing to listen. In 1990, Ebbets Field Flannels was written up in Sports Illustrated. The article led to a slew of orders, including from celebrities like Spike Lee and David Letterman. Letterman became the company’s first investor, and Lee hired it to make jerseys for his movies. Meanwhile, Seattle itself was a perfect place for the company to grow. The city was affordable and accessible for a scrappy business trying to figure things out on the fly. Plus, it was full of artsy and entrepreneurial types willing to welcome a company with such a specific vision, and even lend a hand.

“Had the environment here not been such a great stew of creativity, I think it would have been much harder for somebody like me with no money and no business background to be able to launch a national company,” says Cohen.

Gradually, Ebbets expanded its product line to include caps, jackets, and even—despite some initial apprehensions about authenticity—T-shirts. The company moved from Capitol Hill to Queen Anne to Pioneer Square and back to Queen Anne, scraping by at times with narrow margins, and other times with negative margins. Cohen and Cooper’s marriage ended, but they stayed committed to the business.

“It was kept afloat through sheer force of will,” says Joe Swide, a former Ebbets employee who describes the teams he worked with as a motley crew: old-school garment industry people alongside friends, artists, and sports enthusiasts. Not what you’d expect in the world of sports apparel.

After the 2008 financial crash, Cohen and Cooper woke up every day thinking that it might be the company’s last. But then something funny happened. Ebbets Field Flannels was discovered by the world of fashion. American-made heirloom garments came into style. Brands like Supreme, J Crew, and Polo reached out for collaborations. That new market led to exponential growth for the company, and a rising reputation among non-sports fans.

However, within a few years it became clear that Ebbets was off course. The fashion stuff had accelerated the business, but it was also threatening to overtake it. Fashion is about looking forward, Cohen explained. But what Ebbets does best is look backward. The company, by its very design, is anti-trend.

Cohen and Cooper dialed back on the collaborations and invested in their website and direct order business. After years of operating a retail store in Pioneer Square, they shuttered it after Covid hit—just in time for the pandemic surge of online shopping. 

“The way Covid started it looked like it was possibly an existential crisis,” says Cohen. “But the way we maneuvered through it, we came out the other side in much better shape.”

Which put them in a strong place to eventually reach the deal they did to sell. Ames Watson is a natural fit, Cooper says, with production, sales, and marketing structures already in place through Lids, and a deep knowledge of the industry. Plus, they committed to maintaining the integrity of the brand. “It was scary, but it made sense.”

Under the new owners, Ebbets Field Flannels is alive but different. Cohen and Cooper appreciate that they can do their jobs without the feeling of dread that often hung over them in the past. Cohen in particular can really just focus on what he loves: researching and recreating obscure historical sports uniforms.

There might not be a retail store, but you can now find Ebbets caps inside of some Lids locations. And under its new ownership, the company is once again making Seattle Pilots gear—this time with a license. Though it’s been a long time since they were made to order, the products remain as obsessively crafted as always. Flannel jerseys. Wool caps. That authenticity will always be part of the Ebbets brand, says Cooper.

“The faster everything moves, and the more everything changes, people want something solid to hold onto.”