Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

It seems like just a year or two ago that I wrote about one of the all-time favorites in my collection which is the 1991 Nashville Sounds cap  although in reality that was just over ten years ago. Even more baffling is I've written about four other Sounds caps since then with today's Fresh Fitted Friday selection being the "Music City" variant from the 2015 rebrand. Three of those four caps were from that rebrand with this "Music City" alternate being what will likely be my final entry from that  epic set by Brandiose . I never imagined back in 2015 that a "Made in U.S.A." tag would someday become a thing of the past on New Era caps but I'm still holding onto the hope that the manufacturing of these timeless hats comes back stateside. The hit of red on the MILB batterman over a mostly black cap is fitting for a team from Nashville, which in my mind is a town synonymous with Johnny Cash, aka The Man in Black, who has an entire museum dedicate...

You might have expected the first week of spring training games to bring news  of a particular player or team about to have a breakout season but the biggest story in the  baseball world since my last post is the New York Yankees are now allowing players to sport  "well-groomed beards" which is a major shift away from their stringent facial hair policy of nearly 50 years. While I am personally not fond of the effort needed to maintain a beard or long hair, I can appreciate how some players enjoy expressing their unique sense of style through their grooming methods so from that aspect, the  rule  was needlessly restrictive. This is especially true for  players who  perform at a high level and also  treat their teammates and coaches with respect. At the same time, I appreciate  then-owner George Steinbrenner initiating this practice  because certain players were not putting their "best foot forward" at work. Pushback is to be expected but ...

My pre-jitters of the pre-season have subsided with the first game of the 2025 Spring Training is in the books as the  Chicago Cubs beat the Los Angeles Dodgers to the score of 12-4. I look forward to more Dodgers losses as well as the first San Francisco Giants win that I hope comes in their first Spring Training game of the year which is this Saturday against the Texas Rangers. The Giants made some respectable off-season moves but thankfully nothing so crazy where my expectations are too outsized. While I'm neither a Yankees nor Mets fan, as a New Yorker I have to say things are always better when our teams play well, which unfortunately neither did against the Dodgers in last year's postseason. Now is not the time to hark back to the past though as the best recovery from the Yankees Game 5 embarrassment in the 2024 World Series is to win their Spring Training opener against the Tampa Bay Rays today. I would like to see them ride that energy all the way to another ...

After spending dozen years writing entries in this blog there are not many "firsts" that come along so when I realized that I had not yet done a proper Valentine's Day post for Fresh Fitted Friday , I knew right away that I should bring out the Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino "Cherubs" by the inimitable DJ Mach at the flagship New Era store in Buffalo, NY. The metallic threading here is the most recognizable difference between the 66ers "Cherub" cap design and the Buffalo-exclusive that I'm featuring today. I love how it makes the Tiffany—or Tuscan, depending on your preference of terms—font pop here. The team issued "Cherub" also lacks the side-stitched arrows DJ Mach included which is much appreciated as they are synonymous with Cupid in classical mythology.  The "Genuine Merchandise" tag is something that I started seeing on MILB caps that I've purchased over the last few years, most notably starting with the 1982 D...

The big news around baseball this week was the New York Mets reuniting with their superstar first baseman Pete Alonso on a two-year deal worth $54M.  While the $10M signing bonus is an unfathomable sum for most folks to comprehend, Alonso could have net even more had he not turned down the $158 seven year deal the Mets offered in June 2023. I should note that I find pocket-watching tacky and my approach to the game is based in emotion rather than a place based in accounting! In any case, it is fun for fans to goad the ownership of their beloved teams to pay "whatever it takes" to bring back beloved players like Alonso, especially after giving out a massive payday to Juan Soto  this offseason. As a San Francisco Giants fan, I am pleased with the free agent signings of Willy Adames and Justin Verlander but cannot avoid being annoyed by the  Los Angeles Dodgers even busier offseason as well as in recent years where they've managed to rope in Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman an...

I clung to a faint hope that posting a Buffalo-exclusive from New Era’s flagship in last week's post ahead of the AFC Championship game might bring good luck to the Buffalo Bills against the Kansas City Chiefs.  Unfortunately, my celebratory run of sharing Buffalo-related caps will have to wait for another time. And just like this year’s remaining unsigned MLB free agents who are frustrated with their previous and prospective teams alike, I had to find an alternative route for this week’s post. The main difference between me and players like Pete Alonso or Alex Bregman is that I don’t anticipate receiving a lucrative contract between now and the start of Spring Training. Nevertheless, that mere fact won’t deter me from daydreaming about the sun-soaked games that are about to unfold in Arizona and   Florida in particular as I’ve chosen to focus on the Kissimmee Cobras for this week’s post. In addition to celebrating the “Year of the Snake” during the current Lunar New Yea...