Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Lots to discuss this week, y’all. First up: baseball’s back! Well, kinda. Sort of. Not really. I'll get to my take on all that but first I’d like to discuss this week’s Fresh Fitted Friday cap which is just like the one worn by Russell Martin, Brad Penny and Takashi Saito as they represented the Dodgers at the 2007 All-Star Game which was held in San Francisco. You’re probably wondering what in tarnation an SF Giants fan is doing with an LA Dodgers cap in his possession, let alone being so excited to feature it on his blog. Well the quick answer is that this cap is special in that it is a role-reversal of what would have happened had the 2020 season gone as planned. In that scenario, the Dodgers would have hosted the MLB All-Star Game in Los Angeles this coming Tuesday, July 14. As you might have noticed from previous blog posts, I tend to purchase the Giants version of almost every All-Star Game hat. This year however, I would have found myself in an interesting predicam...

As I sit here writing this week's post on All Hallow's Eve, I'm contemplating how superstitious I can be when it comes to baseball. It's an unwritten rule that you don't acknowledge a no-hitter as it's happening and I think that factored in me not discussing my desire for the Washington Nationals to win the World Series in last week's post.  I realize that sounds like I sincerely believed some form of Murphy's Law would occur but I think it had more to do with the fact that a t that point, the Nationals had won two games against the Astros and I didn't want to pile on too much since they were coasting along. I also didn't want to rub any salt in the wounds of my Yankees Empire friends! My only horse in the American League was the Yankees so once my current hometown team was eliminated, I simply hitched my wagon to the Nationals. On the topic of wagons, here's an article on John Loughney, who is better known as the "Since Today"...

You know it's the end of the baseball season when I'm trying to cram as many games in as possible. Last week's Staten Island Yankees game was loads of fun so this week I ventured to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to watch the big league club take on the Texas Rangers. That matchup reminded me that I hadn't featured a Texas-related hat in far too long and in fact, it's been over two years since the 1991-92 Jackson Generals  post so this week's 2005-07 Round Rock Express cap has a connection to not only that cap but the Rangers as well.  The Express wore this cap throughout the entirety of their first stint as an Astros affiliate which was from 2000-2010 The MILB tag and "Originators of the True Fitted" text on the satin taping as well as the "blue box special" New Era and size tags are something we've seen on caps from 2005-2007 such as the Portland SeaDogs and the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx . As we saw in the SeaDogs and D...

I made it to my first and only game in the month of June last Saturday and while I considered posting the new hats I picked up at the stadium that night, this week's Portland Sea Dogs hat is even more special as I am choosing to feature it in honor of my friends getting married in Maine this weekend.  You have to respect this logo's longevity as the design has been with the club since the inaugural season in 1994. There's no chatter of it going away although there are a few weekend specific caps being worn this year. As we've seen on other hats, the blue box sweatband tags came about sometime in 2005 as did the "Originators of the True Fitted" text on the satin taping, both of which are featured here. I don't usually have much to say about the MILB batterman but one thing of note on this cap is that it's a thicker patch similar to the 2006 West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx hat I wrote about in June 2017. As I mentioned earlier, there a...

For this week's edition of Fresh Fitted Friday , I want to acknowledge and pay tribute to the 10th anniversary of the 2007 MLB All-Star Game that was held in San Francisco. Two years ago, I wrote about the cap that the New York Yankees wore during that game but for the 10 year milestone I feel the need to show y'all pics of the Real McCovey , I mean Real McCoy . I've lamented before about how I regretted not scooping one of these when they were originally being sold in Bay Area stores but at least I was lucky enough to eventually find one! I love this All Star Game patch and just to show I'm not a complete homer, I'll tell you I make every attempt to get my hands on any hat that has this patch, not just Giants ones!  In contrast with the aforementioned 2007 All Star Game Yankees cap, this one has the "Blue Box" New Era sweatband tag however the other tags and the satin taping match up with that hat.    One thing I did get wrong wh...

If this is your first visit to the blog, I welcome you! And if you're a regular reader, thanks for coming back despite my neglect of minor league caps for the past three consecutive weeks, which might be some kind of record; I'm not sure. Either way, I hope this week's vintage West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx cap makes up for the recent lack of MILB love! This is another cap that came from The Great eBay Haul that I've been writing about over the past few weeks. The Diamond Jaxx rebranding in 2002 was the first big client win for Brandiose , which back then was a just a fledgling design firm known as Plan B Branding. Plan B (now Brandiose) conceived "Jim Dandy" as the mascot for the Diamond Jaxx in 2002. According to Bloomberg Businessweek , "Dandy" is "a Disneyfied version of  a miner wielding a baseball bat modified into a pickax" While every MLB team began wearing New Era's polyester caps with black sweatbands and...

Update: I modified some formatting below and fixed some broken image links (with old, somewhat blurry photos) but kept the content the same otherwise. (10/13/2021) I know that it's not right that it has been such a long while since I've actually showcased a fitted cap on "Fresh Fitted Friday" but believe me when I tell you that I have been waiting for just the right time to drop this one y'all. This is the ultimate cap to wear when you are trying to say, "Yeah I'm at a Yankees game but I'm a sneaky Giants fan at heart!" To fully appreciate the significance of this cap, perhaps a little background story might be in order. I was living a happy life in the Bay Area w hen the San Francisco Giants hosted the 2007 MLB All-Star Game, although I was not fortunate enough to attend the Mid-Summer Classic that year. I'm fine with that though; there are lots of baseball fans that never get to go to an All-Star Game. What is not acceptable though is t...