Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

The South Atlantic League celebration continues this week with another Lakewood BlueClaws cap but this time we're taking a look at the cap logo that the team wore in its early years, 2004 to be exact. 






You might be wondering how I could be so certain that this cap is from 2004 and the answer to that lies in the heart of cap as the gold taping inside the crown commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 59Fifty cap. The only other cap that I've seen with this special taping is the Ogden Raptors cap that I wrote about in October 2017.

The logo on this week's cap depicts "Pinchy" clutching a baseball that is giant in proportion to itself which is fun but the logo is a little blurry. The team corrected this recently by mildly sprucing up the logo and below is a view of one of its alternate on-field caps which features the updated image.



I don't feel a strong connection to this cap so it's going on the Trading Blockas I'm sure someone out there is was in seek of…

So I ran out of Carolina League hats faster than I wanted to but we'll keep the southern flavor going with some South Atlantic League caps that I've had on the back-burner for a while. I haven't written about a Sally League team in almost a year so I dug up some gems to share with y'all over the next few weeks, starting with this Lakewood BlueClaws cap.






Based on the cursory research I've done for this week's post, the BlueClaws having been wearing this logo at most of their home games since at least 2010. Another tidbit I stumbled across is that the BlueClaws will have a Grateful Dead Night on June 22, 2019. No word on special caps but I caught a glimpse of the trippy uniforms they'll be wearing.
Grateful Dead Night announced for Lakewood BlueClaws https://t.co/8ZFK2GWLx6 — Asbury Park Press (@AsburyParkPress) February 6, 2019I'm glad I saw that tweet because it reminded me that I've had this cap on the shelf for far too long and I'm glad to be giv…

Welp I ran out of Carolina League teams to show y'all but that's not shocking considering it's a small league after all. Until 2016 there were only eight teams in the Carolina League and I've already written about six (seven including last week's Winston-Salem Spirits cap) of the cities with current teams, as well as the Durham Bulls who are no longer in the league. 

As for the other cities (both former and current) in the league, there isn't a hat that I've felt the a strong enough need to obtain about besides, of course, the crown jewel of my Carolina League collection: the Peninsula Pilots.



Objectively, the logo is nothing special and could easily be confused with a Detroit Pistons hat. In fact, the only other Pilots hat that I ever found was mislabeled as a Pistons hat in an eBay listing. Unfortunately, the seller removed the item before I had a chance to bid on it and for that reason I feel extra fortunate that I found this beater a few years later.



Now, …

Ok so before we get started here, I have something to admit: this week's edition of Fresh Fitted Friday features photos of a cap that isn't actually in my possession but it's one that I just had to share as the cap logo worn by the Winston-Salem Spirits from 1990 through 1995 is a Carolina League classic that evokes warm memories for me when I look at it.

As long as I've been into minor league baseball, there have been hats that piqued my interest yet never committed to buying. This Spirits hat is a great example of that because there were so many other logos that drew me in while this one was in its prime that it got lost in the mix but oh, how I pine for it now that I rarely see it for sale anywhere.

What's worse is I'm feeling a sort of double regret because I came across one that was too small a while back but the seller wanted $100 which I felt was too much to spend on one hat. I'm sure I would have appreciated this hat as much as four $25 hats but the r…

I've probably mentioned this more than a few times already but my life-long love for baseball truly is something that's shaped the person I am today. Flipping through baseball cards as a child helped developed my knack for matching names with faces while poring over stats on the backs of those cards led to my obsession with analyzing data. 

As far as the subject matter in this blog, my appreciation for visual aesthetics in design is rooted in hours spent staring at logos on caps and uniforms of ballplayers while organizing my cards and watching games on television. My penchant for nostalgia is so blatant, it should't surprise you that my first hats are ones that resonate the deepest with me.

My first MLB caps were the caps worn by the Chicago White Sox and Florida Marlins in the early 1990's and my first MILB caps were the New Haven Ravens, Greensboro Hornets and Prince William Cannons. Because the current theme here is the Carolina League, I've got not one, but two …

I realize that not all of my readers are football fans but I really do think most of y'all are at least a little pumped up for the Super Series, er, World Bowl, um, I mean Super Bowl this weekend. I'm obviously more of a baseball fan but I do enjoy watching "The Big Game" with friends plus you can't deny the awesomeness of the food at Super Bowl parties.

The dilemma for this year's Super Bowl matchup is almost as bad as what I faced during the 2018 World Series: having to make a decision on whether to root for Boston or Los Angeles is nauseating for a resident of New York City who is a fan of San Francisco teams.

I'm not a die-hard 49ers fan but they share a division with the Los Angeles Rams and besides, I can't fathom ever rooting for any team from LA. Thus the New England Patriots are my team this time around even though they are division rivals to the Buffalo Bills, which is the team that I have half-heartedly followed ever since moving to New York …