Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Something you might have noticed is that I enjoy doing is going back-to-back with certain teams so the Pacific Coast League fun continues this week by bridging last week's Tacoma Rainiers cap with the home cap that is currently worn by the team.




I've got plenty more PCL caps coming your way however I want to take a break from future hats and instead talk about the future of MILB. As per recent reports, MLB is planning on eliminating up to 42 MILB teams with most of those cuts affecting rookie and short-season levels. Even though I currently live in a major league town, I still fill uneasy about this plan.

Because I grew up in a minor league town, I can't help but fear this change is going to negatively impact many people in those places that are about to lose their teams. There are many people that rely on the existence of minor league teams to make a living besides the players and those jobs are in jeopardy now as well as the ones on the field.

The only silver lining in this…

Now that the Pacific Coast League discovery session is in full swing, we need to focus on the Tacoma Rainiers, whose PCL membership goes all the way back to 1960, thus making them longest-tenured member of the league.

It would be foolish to think that the PCL didn't suffer some sort of atrophy when Major League Baseball began populating the west in 1958 but one benefit was cities in Washington state like Tacoma and Spokane were able to gain entry to the league.




While I certainly appreciate the uniqueness of the 50th anniversary caps looked, I think it should go on theTrading Block because I'm sure someone out there is looking for a rarity such as this one and is willing to part with one of the caps on my Wish List.

As always, thanks for coming back to read about baseball hat geekery. I've got comments disabled here so if you'd like to discuss a trade or simply just chat about hats, please feel free to connect via the following social sites:

Instagram: @baseballmilquetoast T…

The Pacific Coast League theme continues this week as another Tennessee team worth a look is the Nashville Sounds. Sadly, their road cap has just hit the road itself after the 2018 season as the Sounds rebranded once again leading up to the beginning of their affiliation with the Texas Rangers the following season.

For this latest rebrand, the Sounds went with a design firm called RARE which is based in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for this ephemeral design and I'm certainly glad to have scooped up a few caps on clearance from their team store before they cut over to the new logo.


I also find it interesting that the Sounds revamped their wordmark to include Red Sox-esque serifs (pictured above, left) rather than sticking to the Rangers lettering (above, right) however it's possible they felt they wanted to maintain some distance creatively.


This cap is not going on the Trading Block however please do not hesitate to reach out if you want …

As I sit here writing this week's post on All Hallow's Eve, I'm contemplating how superstitious I can be when it comes to baseball. It's an unwritten rule that you don't acknowledge a no-hitter as it's happening and I think that factored in me not discussing my desire for the Washington Nationals to win the World Series in last week's post. 

I realize that sounds like I sincerely believed some form of Murphy's Law would occur but I think it had more to do with the fact that at that point, the Nationals had won two games against the Astros and I didn't want to pile on too much since they were coasting along. I also didn't want to rub any salt in the wounds of my Yankees Empire friends!

My only horse in the American League was the Yankees so once my current hometown team was eliminated, I simply hitched my wagon to the Nationals. On the topic of wagons, here's an article on John Loughney, who is better known as the "Since Today" Nation…

Ok, that's it. I don't have any more Southern League teams to write about (for now) and that's probably a good thing because I'm feeling some mild accomplishment that with this week's Chattanooga Lookouts cap, I have now written about eight of the ten teams in the league!





I mentioned earlier that the Southern League features ten teams which to me is a good number for a Double-A league. By contrast, there are eight teams in the Texas League while the Eastern League has twelve which could easily be pared down to ten if the San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies would move their affiliates over to the Texas League. That change would make sense geographically as well.

I love the symmetry of that move but I also think that a ten-team league provides a more intimate experience and it also reminds me of how my hometown team, the Norfolk Tides, played in the International League which during the height of my MILB obsession featured eight teams. That number increased to te…

Regular readers of this blog know that I like to get topical on here and while that can potentially lead to posts seeming to be dated down the line, I still enjoy the correlation between hats and certain current events and holidays. 

That being said, I am surprised that for last week's post I didn't think to write about a team from a city named Columbus as we were leading into Columbus Day weekend. Thankfully we aren't too many days removed from the actual holiday so it still feels timely to feature this Columbus Catfish hat for this week's post.


I listed this week's cap as being a Columbus Mudcats but there is a chance it was originally sold as a Carolina Mudcats cap because the team continued to mainly wear the caps with red crown and black brims for their first few seasons in North Carolina before they introduced the caps with the black crown and red brims.

Nevertheless, this version fits my narrative and if I want to call it a Columbus Mudcats cap then it's my…