Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

For those who  don't care about details pertaining to the materials New Era used in its caps over the years, I   admit that the posts from the past few weeks haven't been super exciting. But then again, would anyone who didn't at least have a passing interest ever purposefully come to this blog in the first place? What is exciting (for me at least) is I found a backup for the Denver Zephyrs hat that I wrote about in the early years of Baseball Milquetoast.  This is a hard one to find and I'm glad it didn't cost me an absurd amount of money.  The cap logo is a little frayed but consider this: when the Denver Zephyrs suited up for their last game in 1992, a good majority of my co-workers were not born yet. So let's just think about that for a moment. Not the crispest sweatband but what can you do? Like I said earlier, this cap couldn't have been worn by a Denver Zephyr after 1992 and these sweatband tags seem to be most consistent with caps from 199

Considering one of the earliest minor league baseball caps I ever owned was a Greensboro Hornets one, it's hard to believe it's taken me this long to write about this team's hat. Well, I suppose that's only partially true as I once posted a 1996 Greensboro Bats cap but I'm really glad to finally show some love to this iconic gem. Greensboro only had this cap logo from 1990 through 1993, but it was glorious while it lasted A red hornet is not one you want to tangle up with, especially not one wielding a bat The sweatband tags here are identical to those found on my post of this Everett Giants cap Grey underbrim, white sweatband and the absence of the New Era and MILB  batterman logos is the best combination  When I first started going to Norfolk (then-Tidewater) Tides games as a youth in the early 1990's, I'm not sure if I knew there was any difference between the players I was watching on the field and the ones from televised games

As I'm sure anyone reading this is already aware, Monday, April 3, 2016 was Opening Day however I have a question for the baseball purists out there: did it feel less special because there were three televised games on Sunday, April 3, which was the day before Opening Day? This question is tricky because some might say having Opening Day on a Monday is a tradition that must be observed but then there are also those that wonder who in their right mind would be upset that the baseball season began early ? I love the traditional aspect of the game but I admit that I fall into the latter camp simply because my motto is "more baseball, more better". Well that's not really my motto but one of my dreams is for Major League Baseball to expand and have a short-season league in the Southern Hemisphere (or make the Australian Baseball League a thing) so that MLB could have games year-round, meaning there would be two Opening Days! In that case, let's talk logistics

In celebration of the 2013 World Series being underway, I thought it would be fun to showcase a couple of caps from a Pacific Coast League franchise where St. Louis outfielder Carlos Beltran played: the Spokane Indians. The PCL is a league that was officially founded in 1903, just two years after MLB's American League. I find comfort in the fact that baseball has been played in the Pacific Northwest ever since the United States' Western Expansion reached the  Oregon Territory .  So let's get to talking about this cap. First up you'll notice that the logo features the letters "S" and "I" interlocking on a royal blue crown.  As many of you know from reading this site, I love the style of serifs used here and I really enjoy that the "S" is so similar to the"S" in the Shreveport Captains cap logo. It's no secret that I heavily favor these old school caps made of 100% wool with the green-underbrims. I especi

Just know that the tag has been attached to this cap for over 22 years. That tag could buy you a beer, provided of course that you are of legal drinking age. Also, the tag would need money to purchase the beer and everyone knows tags don't have money. Variations of this logo have been around since the early days of the Memphis Chicks, but this particular version was only used in 1992.  The squarish green underbrim is typical of New Era minor league caps from this period. I am not certain what fabric makes up the inside of the front panel but it seems like this will be a nice breathable cap for the summer months! I've spent the past few weeks celebrating some different New York Yankees fitted caps so I thought it would be a fun change to take a look at a minor league snapback this time around.  As far as minor league hats are concerned, the 1986 Memphis Chicks on-field cap is holy grail for me. This is mostly because Bo Jackson made his debut for the Kansas

I'm back on the train and I have to admit that it feels pretty darn good to post two weeks in a row after such a long absence. One benefit of the hiatus is that I've got a steady pipeline of hats to write about. This one is from a team whose cap logo  I've admired  for a while now and that team would be none other than the Nashville Sounds: Since 1901, Nashville has enjoyed virtually continuous professional baseball, the only interruption being a 14 year dearth that occurred between the Nashville Volunteers' final season in 1963 and the Nashville Sounds' inaugural season in 1978. Interestingly enough, the earliest images I could find of anyone wearing a Nashville Sounds cap or uniform was from a 1981 team set issued by Arby's. Yes, that Arby's. Here's a card from that set showing Don Mattingly in this iconic get-up.  It looks like that same photo shoot also provided the shot used for a 1982 Nashville Sounds promotional sc

Update : While I originally stated that this cap was probably from 1992, I really should have also mentioned that 59Fifty tags didn't appear until 1994. I've seen New Era use older, leftover tags on caps, if this is really from 1992 then this is interesting because they applied a 59Fifty tag from 1994 on a cap with a green underbrim and no MILB batterman. Either I've been wrong about the 59Fifty tag first appearing in 1994 or they ran out of the 1992 tags at some point in the manufacturing process and had to use the ones from 1994 ahead of time, which is so weird. Update (4/20/2019) : This blog has been a learning experience for me over the years but sometimes new information comes to light so I've got to fall on my sword about something here. The previous update to this post mistakenly states that the 59Fifty tag first appeared in 1994 but I've seen caps from 1992 and 1993 that have it so there's that.  More importantly, I should mention that the only Rive