Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Welcome back folks! I hope everyone had a relaxing All-Star Break and for those of you in the US—which I know is pretty much everyone reading this blog, however I still need to be inclusive—a joyous Fourth of July. 
I spent the holiday weekend in Boston seeing Phish play at Fenway Park which was an amazing experience as I was able to see my favorite band play music in a ballpark! Even though there were rain delays on both nights, The Boys from Vermont delivered the goods.
In honor of this momentous occasion, I've decided to finally feature a proper Boston Red Sox cap on the blog. While this week's cap is not one that I personally own, the timing is just too perfect not to share considering my recent trip to Boston and that tomorrow, July 13, 2019 marks the 20th anniversary of when the Red Sox hosted the game in 1999. 






The embroidery's design isn't what anyone would call intricate but I do have an appreciation for the logo's green background which is a nod to the infam…

Be back next week!

Even though the Midwest League festivities officially wrapped up with last week's Beloit Snappers post, I feel compelled to share one more cap from a team that plays in Wisconsin who is not a member of the league. 





The Fond du Lac Dock Spiders play in acollegiate summer baseball league called the Northwoods League alongside the Rockford Rivets, Kenosha Kingfish and Battle Creek Bombers. If those cities sound familiar to you, it's because each of them hosted Midwest League clubs within the last thirty years. 

There are a handful of other teams in the Northwoods League with former ties to the Midwest League towns but a big one that comes to mind is the Waterloo Bucks, whose city I can proudly represent with my Waterloo Diamonds hat, which as you might recall, kicked off this whole Midwest League party just over a month ago!

This week's Dock Spiders cap was an in-stadium pick-up from a good friend who is a big fan of the blog so there's no way a gift like this this would eve…

This week's post is the final installment of my Midwest League extravaganza and we're capping it off with a logo that hasn't changed much since the Beloit Snappers team identity was born in 1995. It's incredible to think that the surly, possibly constipated, turtle on the current home cap has not been refreshed much over the past 25 years.





By now I should have a label for posts that feature a cartoonish logo that was created in the mid-1990's to appeal to kids but then that tag would apply to half the hats I write about so what's the point in making the effort to point it out, right? 

Sorry got off-topic there.  I actually do like this hat for a number of reasons. First, it's green and green is my favorite color. Also, the team's name and logo pays tribute to turtles and I've always felt a strong connection to Testudines order of the Reptilia class. In short, I like turtles!



An even cooler part of the story is that apparently there's some American …

Until now, I've only written about half of the sixteen cities who currently host a team in the Midwest League and this week's South Bend Silver Hawks cap takes it to the tipping point.




For the first three seasons of its existence, the Silver Hawks had an austere cap logo which definitely bucked the trend of the zany animals that many teams started using for their logos in the mid-1990's. In 1997, they finally bit the bullet on that aesthetic and I believe that this week's cap is from that very year.
The New Era flag debuted in 1997 so its absence on the sweatband tags tells me that New Era simply used whatever leftover tags they had for that season's Silver Hawks caps. The earliest photos I can find of players wearing this cap is from 1997 but that doesn't mean it didn't appear in 1996. Either scenario is possible, but I'm sticking with the former.
I also believe most fans of Minor League Baseball enjoy learning about team name origins and I was especially…

Wella-wella-wella welcome back, y'all! Last week was way too busy for me to turn in a quality post but we are keeping the spirit of the Midwest League theme going this week with a classic cap from another Iowa-based franchise: the Cedar Rapids Kernels.



I've written about the current version of the Kernels cap but in truth, that one has never been my favorite. Virtually every sports team has a logo that I feel is their greatest and to me, this week's cap is the classiest and most elegant logo the Kernels have ever worn.
Firstly, a baseball gently emerging from a corn husk is about as Midwest as it gets, folks. Corn's importance in the region is boundless but what I appreciate most about the imagery is it represents new life as every spring, a new season of baseball begins in Cedar Rapids.
I've never been to Iowa but teams like the Kernels, Clinton LumberKings and Quad Cities River Bandits have piqued my interest since an early age. The movie Field of Dreams has also le…