Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

In honor of today being  Harry Potter Day, this week's  Fresh Fitted Friday selection is this  Spellbinder cap designed by Clinker Wynne Studio  which by  my current count is the 14th cap I've featured from The Clink Room. I believe I should be thankful for that distinction because celebrating wizard stuff with number 13 would have maybe been too on the nose. Now I must admit  I was a bit too old to get into  the Harry Potter books when they first released in 1997 but thankfully was ready to appreciate these stories when the movies came out a few years later. I am still not as well versed as my niece who is a rabid fan and is really looking forward to visiting the Harry Potter Shop during an upcoming trip to New York in July. I am brushing up on Harry Potter lore in preparation beginning with a marathon viewing of the movies tonight although I need wizard strength to make it through them all in one sitting. This would be quite the feat as the reason f...

Any country worth the dirt their trees are planted in should have a holiday to pay homage to their land's woody perennial plants and those of us in the United States observe National Arbor Day on  the last Friday of April which happens to be  today! The holiday dovetails nicely with Earth Day and I happened to celebrate both in 2023 with retro caps of the  1940 Oakland Oaks  and a  1948 Oakland Oaks   produced by Ebbets Field Flannels . The current state of Ebbets is dreadful but I am so thankful I purchased as many caps as I did because soon enough those caps will become vintage relics themselves!  Moving my focus to current things that are thriving, I am celebrating the trees this year with an Asheville Tourists retro designed by  @djmach716  of the New Era store in Buffalo, NY. M y friend  @yellowsub73   came through once again with a clutch assist for which I am so thankful as this version of the Tourists logo hardly ever gets t...

There hasn't been much noise in the baseball world outside of the massive deal signed by Vlad Guerrero and the Toronto Blue Jays with his first homerun of 2025 being delivered right after the ink was dry on the agreement. It is still too early to pass judgement on what the season holds but I can't help but wonder, does the slow start mean Vladdy's power beginning to fade already? I must admit I am envious of Toronto getting so much production out of their first baseman but despite having a much lower batting average, I am quite content with the output Wilmer Flores has produced for my San Francisco Giants. He went 0 for 4 in the game I saw between the Giants and Yankees last Sunday but what is most important is the  electric Giants series win. I've got my first New York Mets games of the year lined up this weekend as the St. Louis Cardinals make their first and only trip to CitiField and I am looking forward to some lively games. The Pittsburgh Pirates are visiting Quee...

I can hardly believe it has been a full two weeks since Opening Day and yet, I can tell my honeymoon period might be winding down. I seem to be taking for granted that baseball games are being played every day because I have already forgotten to set my fantasy rosters a few times so far. To be fair this past week was an extra busy one for me but thankfully I carved out some time to make it to my first game of the year at some point this weekend for at least one of the three games between my San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees. As long as the weather in the Bronx cooperates, the only thing I need to consider is what hat to wear. In previous times when the Giants came to town, I wore hats featuring some of the different variations of the current San Francisco logo as well as retro New York Giants caps which have elicited a few "Mets Suck!" taunts from Yankees fans who clearly do not know their baseball history. Lucky for me I don't wear hats for other people's...

With Opening Week of the 2025 MLB regular season in the books, I am thrilled to report I have  gorged on as much baseball as I possibly could. I am also happy with my  San Francisco Giants' 5-1 record although it is a shame that is only good enough for third place in the NL West as the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers hold records of of 7-0 and 8-0, respectively. Sadly the Atlanta Braves were unable to hand the Dodgers their first loss this past Wednesday night and are now 0-7 to start the season giving them the worst record in baseball. The Braves have 155 more games to play so this slow start does not necessarily negate the preseason prognosticators who predicted expected their season totals finishing second only to the Dodgers. I am amused how the "0" in their win column aligns with 404 Day which is an unofficial holiday in Atlanta celebrating the city's first area code while a  404 error is a HTTP status code when a webpage or resource cannot be found....

The long wait for baseball's return is over! The 2025 MLB regular season has begun for every team except for the Colorado Rockies and Tampa Bay Rays, who face off today at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. I have written enough about the Rays lately, so I'd like to focus on my favorite team, the San Francisco Giants, who won their first game of the season today! Celebrating my team on the first post of each season should be a tradition I follow going forward because it sets the tone for things to come. Thankfully, I have no shortage of Giants hats to write about! And instead of flaunting one of their recent World Series on-field caps, I selected one with the iconic wordmark that debuted in 1983 which was actually a bleak point in Giants history. When I see this logo I envision it as a chest back or large patch on a very specific satin Starter jacket which I think a kid on my school bus had in 1987. Thinking back on it, he might have been the first Giants fan I ever met an...