Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

A few weeks back I mentioned wanting to write about teams in the playoff race but instead opted to feature the  "Mystery 'N' Star" post —which in a way is adjacent to the Texas Rangers, who are now in the postseason—however despite the League Division Series starting this weekend, I am holding off on showcasing any of those eight teams until the games are officially underway. Of course, half the teams could be eliminated by the time next Friday comes along but I am taking that risk because today's date is October 6 and any fan of Lewis Carroll's 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  should associate 10/6 with the Hatter and thus felt compelled to write about a cap where the logo prominently features a hat for National Mad Hatter Day. I write about the Trading Block a lot and while I do hoard a large portion of my caps, there are a good amount that I am willing to move if I can find the right trading partner. And that's what happened recently when...

Last week was a celebration of all things hip-hop but at the end of the post, I mentioned how I began this blog's  Fresh Fitted Friday tradition with my 1992 Seattle Mariners post on August 16, 2013 . To that point, it only makes sense that ten years later I'm coming through with a Riverside Pilots retro which to me is undoubtedly one of the best Mariners affiliate logos ever. It's hard to believe it's already been a year since my  Wichita Aeros post celebrating National Aviation Day  and I am glad to showcase this Riverside Pilots hat to continue the tradition as this year the holiday falls tomorrow, August 19. Made in U.S.A. tags are a welcome treat here for sure as they become increasingly more rare by the year with whatever is floating around continues to get snatched up. The teal, navy and silver batterman looks great on a navy crown and especially here. I love all things 90s so of course the current colorway the Mariners have rocked since 1993 is near and dear ...

It's been over a month since my last post but things don't feel all that different for me as it's just as cold in New York now as it was then although at least I've got a little change of scenery right now as today I'm en route to New Orleans for my first time as an adult! I was hoping to make this trip during Jazz Fest but the timing worked out for it to happen this weekend so here we are! I won't be in town long but I'm going to cram in lots of food and music-laden adventures and thankfully I've got a fresh New Orleans Zephyrs hat to wear while doing so. I love the distinctive logo on this cap and even though this team's origins are based in Denver, the vibrant colors worked well when the team moved to New Orleans in 1993 as the team used the Zephyrs moniker until changing their name to the Baby Cakes in 2017. The sweatband tags here are consistent with MILB caps that New Era produced from 1994 through 1996 and writing ones initials on the undervis...

We are about to enter the final weekend of MLB's regular season and a t the time of writing this, t he National League West is the only division that has not been clinched. My beloved  San Francisco Giants have the best record in MLB but have yet to clinch due to the pesky nature of those bum Dodgers! Nevertheless, I have no doubt that my team will emerge victorious. So to take my mind off this stressful situation I'm putting the focus of this week's Fresh Fitted Friday  on a vintage Tampa Bay Devil Rays cap to celebrate the team that will without a doubt finish the season with the best record in the American League. I remember not being moved by this this logo when it was introduced to the public in late 1995 but now I've come to realize that I was just a very young curmudgeon at that point in my life. The rainbow gradient logo rules.  The Devil Rays played their first game on March 31, 1998 however these sweatband tags are clearly from the 1993-96 era which tells me t...

I was speaking with someone recently who made reference to some album having come out 30 years ago and after a few automatic nods in obligatory agreement, it dawned on me that we were talking about something that happened in 1991, folks! I'm not sure if this type of confusion becomes a more frequent occurrence the older we get but, this one really threw me for a loop. I happened to be watching baseball during this conversation so it's no surprise I started to think about how this year's top teams fared thirty years ago.  The Atlanta Braves were the big story in 1991 when they became the first National League team to appear in a World Series after having finished the previous season in last place. Even though they ended up falling to the the Minnesota Twins in Game 7 of that most memorable series, that season brought the team its first of 14 consecutive division titles. The Braves had an even better record the following year, returning to the Fall Classic once again however ...

I have been so hyper-focused on trying to achieve so many firsts  with recent posts in celebration of this blog's tenth anniversary that I think I've lost touch with what drew me into cap collecting in the very beginning which is fitted MILB caps from the mid-1990's. It's been fun showing off some of my vintage MILB snapbacks and the newer gems which are mostly from Copa de la Diversion but for me minor league caps peaked in the 90's and this week's Kissimmee Cobras cap is a shining example of that. Its also the perfect cap to feature on World Snake Day which as it happens is today, July 16! I admittedly was not the biggest fan of this cap when it debuted in 1995 but maybe that's because it felt a little too reminiscent of The Karate Kid for me. Over the years though, I've realized the snake wrapping its tail around the baseball is a total power move that other limbless animal logos can only try to emulate   The sweatband tags here are of the 1994-96 v...

For those with a keen sense of foreshadowing, last week's Oneonta Tigers cap might have been a pretty good clue that I would be featuring the infamous Oneonta Yankees for  this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection . A class-act logo like this deserves the retro treatment although I'd be hoping for true-to-original dimensions and flat embroidery. My sweet spot for sweatband tags (sweat spot?) has always been 1994 through 1996 and I'm so happy that a cap I've been on the hunt for all these years features that set of tags. I would have been ok if this cap didn't feature the MILB batterman but it's a nice touch on this one because at least no one would mistake it for a college team or one from any other sport for that matter. If you're a regular reader here you know that that the Oneonta Yankees hat is one that's been on my  Wish List  for a long time and I imagine that being the case for anyone who collected MILB cards in the 80...

Something I enjoy doing with this blog is reflecting on previous posts while working on new ones. This week's Fayetteville Generals cap not only harks back to a  Generals snapback that I wrote about just over two years ago  but it also relates to the  Lakewood BlueClaws  which was the first team featured in this run of South Atlantic League caps. What I appreciate most about the Generals logo is that it pays tribute to a legendary figure of the American Revolutionary War from France named Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, or as he's more commonly known, Marquis de Lafayette.   Not only is the team's name derived from his role as a major general of American forces in the war but the city of Fayetteville, NC is also named in Lafayette's honor. I should have mentioned this information when I wrote about the Generals snapback in 2017 but I'm glad to be able to right this wrong now.  O...

Y'all know how much I love these little "mini-series within a series" things so brace yourselves for the second part of the Columbus RedStixx celebration within the greater South Atlantic League jubilee! To celebrate this meta-gala proper, I'll be popping the tags on a cap that is about 25 years old! This week's cap is special because it's the logo I remember most from my time as a minor league baseball fanatic in the mid-1990's. The RedStixx wore this one from their inaugural season in 1992 through 1994 but possibly up until 1997. For some reason MILB cards from seemed to become more scarce as the decade progressed. The sweatband tags here are standard issue for the mid-1990's but the white satin taping has inspired me to create a new label that I'll be applying to previous posts as needed. The MILB batterman on the back of the cap here tells me this one's from 1994 at the earliest and the last year it could be from is 1996 ...

I've probably mentioned this more than a few times already but my life-long love for baseball truly is something that's shaped the person I am today. F lipping through baseball cards as a child helped developed my knack for matching names with faces while poring over stats on the backs of those cards led to my o bsession with analyzing data.  As far as the subject matter in this blog, my appreciation for visual aesthetics in design is rooted in hours spent staring at logos on caps and uniforms of ballplayers while organizing my cards and watching games on television. My penchant for nostalgia is so blatant, it should't surprise you that my first hats are ones that resonate the deepest with me. My first MLB caps were the caps worn by the Chicago White Sox and Florida Marlins in the early 1990's and my first MILB caps were the New Haven Ravens, Greensboro Hornets and Prince William Cannons. Because the current theme here is the Carolina League, I've got not one, b...