Having raised the lowly baseball cap to an art form, New Era Cap Co. is faced with the same dilemma every American business is confronting in the recession: The need to put a lid on expenses.

Last week, the Buffalo-based manufacturer took a regrettable but necessity-driven step in that direction by closing one of its three plants and one of its distribution centers, both in Alabama. But, ominously for this region, it also said it must soon confront the possibility of closing one of the two remaining plants. One of those is in Alabama, too. The other is in Derby.

That means a possible loss of jobs—the Derby plant, New Era’s oldest site, has 334 workers although about 30 percent have been laid off. But it also means a possible blow to local pride.

Anybody who watches baseball is familiar with the New Era logo—a familiar backdrop to dugouts from New York to L. A. For that matter, anybody who watches director and sometime-cap designer Spike Lee knows the brand, too. It’s a touch of Buffalo, worldwide.

New Era also has been a good corporate citizen downtown. The company closed its Buffalo manufacturing plant in 2004, but it followed that up with the dramatic reclamation of the vacated Federal Reserve Bank building on Delaware Avenue as its corporate headquarters, expanding its staff in the process.

Recent years have brought expansion into other apparel lines and the opening of sales points and offices nationally and worldwide. But the recession has taken a toll, and fewer customers are buying caps. An especially ominous sign was the recent scaling back of orders by a major New York Cityarea retailer even as the Yankees were heading into championship- cap territory.

We don’t wish Alabama ill. But we’d urge New Era to remember its roots, and even to dig them a little deeper into Western New York. Tip of the cap, if it does.