A few weeks ago, I was thinking about the baseball slang term "golden sombrero" and how it came about. So, in honor of Willie Bloomquist accomplishing the feat tonight, here is a rundown of my thought process...
I was driving at the time, so I couldn't click over to Wikipedia and learn about the origin, but I didn't need to. I had come up with a perfect solution for how the term was derived. If you don't know, in baseball, when a player strikes out four times in a game, he gets the proverbial "golden sombrero." I thought about the term literally — what would a golden sombrero be like in real life, I thought. It would certainly be a nice gift for a guy that just whiffed four times in a game. Is he supposed to wear it? What would that be like? Ooh ... that's it! It would be so heavy, he would hang his head in shame, like he's supposed to after striking out four times in one game! BINGO!
When I did look up the term, I was not satisfied with the result.
"The golden sombrero comes from hockey's hat trick, three goals in a game. More grand than a hat would be a sombrero that is gold. It is awarded to any player who strikes out four times in a game."
I like my answer better.