Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Over the past few weeks, I have created something of a tradition by posting caps of teams that have fallen in the MLB postseason and this week's Albany-Colonie Yankees cap completes it. This one stings a bit more though because I was at  Yankee Stadium for Game 5 of the World Series this past Wednesday and had to suffer through watching the Dodgers clinch over the Yankees. As a fan of the Giants and Yankees that was a tough experience. Coincidentally, I spent this past weekend in Albany to see some live music and surprisingly received lots of anti-Yankee comments from folks over the first two nights the concerts took place because of the Hudson Valley Renegades " Hudson Line " cap I wore. I suppose those detractors could have been Dodgers fans or perhaps even Red Sox fans but in all likelihood, you could chalk it up to everyone hates the Yankees except for Yankees fans. I flew under the radar on the third and final night by wearing a Staten Island Pizza Rats cap howe...

Summer just started feeling like it was in full swing but the heat letting up in the middle of August is a sure sign the season is about to wrap up. When you think that most MLB teams now have less than 40 games to play, it really does seem like time has flown so with that feeling coinciding with National Aviation Day this coming Monday, August 19, this Peninsula Pilots cap gets the spotlight in this  week's post. I have previously given props to my Buffalo homie  @yellowsub73  who came through in the clutch big time by letting me know about about the listing for this Pilots cap that is in remarkably better shape than the other one I own which  I wrote about over five years ago  and  was signed by former Pilots pitcher Dan Sullivan. Ok so maybe the undervisor is a little tattered but that can be expected for a cap that is over 30 years old! Plus I love that the last place on this cap's journey seems to have been a sort of thrift store within the Kiln Creek ...

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday finds me barely able to contain my composure as my  San Francisco Giants are in a two-horse race with the New York Yankees in the Aaron Judge Sweepstakes. For anyone who needs a reminder, the Giants haven't made a splash this big in the free agent realm since signing Barry Bonds to a 7 year deal on December 8, 1992. When Bonds signed that deal I became even more steadfast in preferring the Giants over the Oakland Athletics whose popularity across the Bay extended all the way to the east coast where I was just a lad firmly obsessed with baseball and learning everything I could about the game. The player who had my full attention though was Frank Thomas of the Chicago White Sox. I was lucky to be living in the Bay Area when Thomas had stints on the A's especially during his brief "return to greatness" season in 2006. In retrospect, I was probably more focused on catching Bonds' at-bats as he marched toward breaking the career hom...

It's been a month since my last post but in all likelihood it's going to be a more weeks before I'm ready to return to posting more regularly. Nothing to worry about though as there are lots of good things happening on my end and I have a feeling I'll be fully energized once I get a bit more charge in me! Let's just consider this week as a sort of check-in at the halfway point of the hiatus which, as the All-Star break is almost upon us strikes me as a bit ironic considering the players who have been grinding up to this point of the season are ready for a well-deserved break so here I am to relieve them! I normally like to feature All-Star Game caps for posts around this time of year but since tomorrow is National Snake Day, I feel compelled to showcase my Chandler Diamondbacks cap which was most likely worn during the Arizona Fall League's inaugural season in 1992. I'm not the biggest fan of snakes but I definitely don't get squirmy when I see one on TV...

I’m back on a vintage kick for this week’s Fresh Fitted Friday post which is inspired by today, March 11, being Johnny Appleseed Day. The obvious logo to showcase on this holiday would be the home cap that the Fort Wayne TinCaps have worn since their inaugural season in 2009 however I decided to go in a different direction this time around. Just for some background, the TinCaps logo features an angry apple wearing a cooking pot as a reference to Johnny Appleseed who for some reason wore one on his head as well. I’ve always thought the design was fun but held out on acquiring one for the collection because I was hoping there would one day be a version that incorporated a baseball or bat into the motif. Well, here we are all these years later on Johnny Appleseed Day and I don’t have the one cap that was inspired by this great American nurseryman pioneer! Nevertheless, I won’t let that sink my spirits because I recently got my hands on an Elmira Pioneers cap from the Boston Red Sox era th...

Today is September 17 which means it's also "National Fox Day" and I'm not sure that I have any way to celebrate that holiday outside of sharing this Appleton Foxes cap that I estimate to be from 1992. So I guess this means I'm back on my MILB grind, folks! Fans of 1990's MILB caps are no doubt familiar with this one as it was made famous when Alex Rodriguez wore the  teal version of the Appleton Foxes logo during his first assignment as a professional ballplayer in 1994.  I got this cap as part of a haul so please excuse that gnarly sweatband. I'll need to find a way to clean that thing if I ever want to wear this one. The lack of batterman embroidery indicates this cap has some age on it but the MILB tag on it tells me it has to be from 1992. The oldest cap I've come across with any MILB tag is my 1988-92 Colorado Springs Sky Sox cap which is more likely than not to be from 1992 as well.   I have two other caps from 1992 in addition to the aforemen...

Shortly after publishing last week's Bangor Blue Ox post , I realized that I was in the midst of a nice little streak of featuring hats from Northeast cities whose name begin with the letter "B" (ie. Buffalo, NY and Bangor, ME) thus this Batavia Clippers retro cap from Ebbets Field Flannels seemed like a natural fit for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection.  Batavia's affiliation with the Philadelphia Phillies lasted from 1988-2006 and the team heavily leaned on their parent club when it came to uniform design for the first ten years of their arrangement, after which they rebranded as the Batavia Muckdogs. This permutation of the Phillies "P" into a "B" was only in use from 1991 and 1992 but because those were two prime years during the height of my early obsession with baseball, this logo is the first one that comes to mind whenever the Batavia Clippers are discussed. I cannot say enough good things about the quality Ebbets put forth on ...

Welcome to the third––and perhaps final––Keystone State Party post, folks! After neglecting to discuss the nautical components of last week's Erie SeaWolves logo design, I've decided to dive right into examining the maritime theme in this Erie Sailors retro cap from Ebbets Field Flannels that I've selected for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday post. Incorporating the baseball into the ship's wheel tie-in to Erie's deep naval history, especially when one considers Erie's role in the War of 1812, and more specifically the Battle of Lake Erie . In fact, the town's first known and recorded baseball team in 1906 was called the Erie Sailors. A cap that encapsulates the proud naval tradition of this fine nation deserves nothing less than Ebbets Field Flannel's "Made in U.S.A." construction. Their faithful reproductions and attention to detail in workmanship is what every cap maker should strive to emulate.  The shade of green featured on the underv...

Well folks, thanks for being understanding of my need to take a minor break from the good ole Baseball Milquetoast blog experience last week but rest assured because we're back now and ready to be better than ever!  I've spent most of this pandemic writing about West Coast caps and since I'm ready to start showing love to the East Coast once again, we're going to start that trend off with a Reading Phillies hat which is fitting as I'm totally STOKED on Pennsylvania at the moment. I've never been much of a fan of red hats and especially less so over the last four years but there's a small chance I'll warm up to them again soon because 2020 has been a wild year so who knows what's going to happen next, right?!? Reading wore this cap from 1992 through 1997 but the lack of the New Era flag tag on the sweatband confirms that this particular one wasn't worn after 1996. I have come to believe that the MILB batterman began to appear on MILB caps in 1993 ...

I've got another old-fangled cap for this week's edition of Fresh Fitted Friday but please note this High Desert Mavericks post is actually evocative in multiple regards. The first is in the traditional sense as this week's hat is almost thirty years old however the second aspect has more to do with metaphotographical attributes since the photos themselves are almost seven years old! I unearthed these relics-depicting-relics during a recent reorganization effort of my photo library and the timing couldn't have been more perfect as I felt like this tour through the California League needed at least one more contribution of the vintage variety.  As a San Francisco Giants fan, Bruce Bochy's career path is of great interest to me so I'd like to highlight the fact that the future Hall-Of-Fame manager was at the helm during the Mavericks' inaugural season in 1991. This was Bochy's third managerial assignment but his first was one I discussed in a Spokane Ind...