Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

We are halfway through the 2025 Major League Baseball season, and as it happens, today I attended what was most likely my last game at Yankee Stadium until after the All-Star break and am especially thankful the Mike Trout home run I witnessed did not spoil the sole win the New York Yankees could muster against the Los Angeles Angels during this four-game series. Catching an Angels game where Trout homers at the halfway point of the year is good enough pretext for me to share photos of this Midland Angels hat. While  the one I posted back in 2014 was size 7 1/4 , this week's hat is actually in a size that I can wear which is a welcome change! Mike Trout was definitely mashing bombs when I last wrote about this hat but the fact that he's still at it despite his nagging injuries is something I wholly welcome.  The size tags are the same as the other cap except this one is actually my size! Just too perfect that there's a red, white and blue batterman this close to the Fourt...

I'm realizing that I've been fixated on this need to spotlight teams with "original" monikers and I think it's time to switch things up a little bit. Just because a team was called the "Midland Angels " doesn't mean it lacked an identity of its own. It might just seem like some weird combination of logos from the Los Angeles Angels and Texas Rangers, but this Midland Angels cap from the mid-1990's is a fine example of a minor league club achieving an ideal balance of showing respect to its parent team while also displaying (Texas-sized) state pride. In 1999 though, things became more confusing for baseball fans in the Southern Plains of western Texas when the team's 14 year long affiliation with the Angels ended and a new one (that still lasts today) began with the Oakland Athletics. They rebranded themselves as the Midland RockHounds, a nickname that I still do not understand. I guess there are special dogs that roam patches of rocks in...