This week's episode of The Quarantine Road Trip takes us to Denver which is just a few miles away from my alma mater, University of Colorado at Boulder. I showed love to Denver's MILB past back in one of my earliest posts but it must be said that the longest-standing team name associated with the Mile High is the Bears, and not the Zephyrs.
The story of why this week's cap is very special to me is a long one but we're all in quarantine so luckily you have time to hear it!
So by the time I got to Boulder in the late 1990's, it had already been a few years since the Colorado Rockies had replaced the Denver Zephyrs and while it was exciting to live in a major league market, there were aspects about minor league baseball that I remember missing and I now wonder if some of those newly minted Rockies fans felt the same way.
My main issue was that getting to Coors Field from Boulder was a major challenge as I was a college student without a car so transportation had to be worked out in advance and missing my ride back was not an option! Another consideration was that the only seats I could afford were about a mile higher in altitude than the Mile High City itself.
Despite all that, it was eye-opening to now have the option to see an entire team of major league ballplayers playing another team of major league ballplayers as opposed to the medley of grizzled veterans and greenhorns that I was used to seeing at Norfolk Tides games.
By that point I had stopped collecting autographs which makes sense as meeting new people in college is daunting enough let alone finding those who had any interest in showing up to the ballpark an hour before the game to take part in that activity.
In addition to those obstacles, I also struggled with a bit of befuddled envy as to why Denver was able to land a MLB team––and have baseball's best attendance record from 1993 through 1998––while my hometown seemed destined to be AAA for eternity.
Ay, there's the rub!
In all seriousness, being a AAA town is not without its charm. Also, it wasn't fair for me to expect Norfolk to be something that it had no desire in becoming. Moving to Colorado was a step that I made so that I could experience new things and once I realized that much, I was able to view all the old comforts of home with a new sense of appreciation.
The greatest benefit of all those Rockies games was the fact that I was finally able to witness Barry Bonds play in front of my very eyes. In my final years at Boulder I became enamored with the idea of living in San Francisco and those Giants-Rockies games were the push I needed to make the move to the Bay Area after college.
My baseball obsession returned to full strength when I moved Northern California and has continued to grow since I came to New York City ten years ago. And because it's easy for me to get to games now, I try to catch the Rockies when the Mets host them at CitiField as those games are good way for me to remember my roots as I continue on my path.
Anyway, if you made it to the end of this super long-winded post you deserve a treat. But I don't have one so I'll just take the opportunity to once again thank Hat Club for this Denver Bears retro. I hope that if they decide to do another release that they'll try to match the logo dimensions of the version featured on the cap that's been on my Wish List for ages.
This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is not going on the Trading Block however please don't hesitate to reach out if you want any other cap from that list and you are willing to part with any of the hats 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:
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| According some really low-quality photos I had to squint to decipher, I've determined that the Denver Bears only wore this logo from 1982-84 and I'm going to go on believing that until someone proves otherwise! |
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| I normally wear 7 3/8 so I'm not really sure why I went with a 7 1/2 here. Either way, it's better to go a size up than a size down, or two sizes down which is also a thing that I accidentally not long ago. |
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| The MILB batterman looks a little strange with the green underbrim but it's incredibly difficult to find a Denver Bears hat so I'll take it. |
The story of why this week's cap is very special to me is a long one but we're all in quarantine so luckily you have time to hear it!
So by the time I got to Boulder in the late 1990's, it had already been a few years since the Colorado Rockies had replaced the Denver Zephyrs and while it was exciting to live in a major league market, there were aspects about minor league baseball that I remember missing and I now wonder if some of those newly minted Rockies fans felt the same way.
My main issue was that getting to Coors Field from Boulder was a major challenge as I was a college student without a car so transportation had to be worked out in advance and missing my ride back was not an option! Another consideration was that the only seats I could afford were about a mile higher in altitude than the Mile High City itself.
Despite all that, it was eye-opening to now have the option to see an entire team of major league ballplayers playing another team of major league ballplayers as opposed to the medley of grizzled veterans and greenhorns that I was used to seeing at Norfolk Tides games.
By that point I had stopped collecting autographs which makes sense as meeting new people in college is daunting enough let alone finding those who had any interest in showing up to the ballpark an hour before the game to take part in that activity.
In addition to those obstacles, I also struggled with a bit of befuddled envy as to why Denver was able to land a MLB team––and have baseball's best attendance record from 1993 through 1998––while my hometown seemed destined to be AAA for eternity.
Ay, there's the rub!
In all seriousness, being a AAA town is not without its charm. Also, it wasn't fair for me to expect Norfolk to be something that it had no desire in becoming. Moving to Colorado was a step that I made so that I could experience new things and once I realized that much, I was able to view all the old comforts of home with a new sense of appreciation.
The greatest benefit of all those Rockies games was the fact that I was finally able to witness Barry Bonds play in front of my very eyes. In my final years at Boulder I became enamored with the idea of living in San Francisco and those Giants-Rockies games were the push I needed to make the move to the Bay Area after college.
My baseball obsession returned to full strength when I moved Northern California and has continued to grow since I came to New York City ten years ago. And because it's easy for me to get to games now, I try to catch the Rockies when the Mets host them at CitiField as those games are good way for me to remember my roots as I continue on my path.
Anyway, if you made it to the end of this super long-winded post you deserve a treat. But I don't have one so I'll just take the opportunity to once again thank Hat Club for this Denver Bears retro. I hope that if they decide to do another release that they'll try to match the logo dimensions of the version featured on the cap that's been on my Wish List for ages.
This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is not going on the Trading Block however please don't hesitate to reach out if you want any other cap from that list and you are willing to part with any of the hats 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
Twitter: @FittedFriday
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