Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

I can't recall when I first saw a cap that was designed by Brandiose but I'm guessing it was the current Asheville Tourists home cap that I picked up in 2014. I think until then I was more into collecting vintage caps but once I acquired my most sought-after logos, I was better equipped to appreciate the recent designs that had come onto the scene. We have seen a great many Asheville Tourists alternates ever since their Brandiose rebrand was pushed live in 2011 but I believe this week's "White-Navy-Light Blue" colorway was done as a custom rather than an on-field. The starry night motif really pops on top of the white panels but I also think the blue stitching along the edges of those panels pops but in a distracting way. This is definitely the oldest cap I've seen with that contrasting stitching so it might be all that nonsense started in 2014. I've got more Asheville caps than any other team but this is my only one with the craftsman-...

The 2016 MLB All-Star Game will be here in less than two weeks and I have an important question to ask: do you have a cap that is equally garish and banal enough to show support for your team? If you are a San Francisco Giants fan like I am, click here to pick one up in your team's flavor. I'm less than enthused about the stars on the eyelets but I appreciate that there are efforts being made to take new and interesting design choices on this year's on-field cap. In keeping with a trend that was started in 2014, this year's All-Star Game's on-field cap is a Diamond Era style hat where the colorways are not necessarily consistent with the one's a team uses normally. There are a few interesting palette choices overall and you can see a few examples of how this looks here . While they decided to keep the All-Star Game cap understated this year, you've no doubt seen the atrocity that is the 2016 Home-Run Derby cap . This design schema is in contrast to h...

I'm not usually into Giants hats in colorways other than black and orange but the combination of dark navy and gym red on the 2014 MLB All-Star Game Home Run Derby cap is mighty snazzy. The left-side patch seems almost painted on here. Not complaining, just an observation! In retrospect, it would have been cool if they honored Prince's hometown of Minneapolis with some purple here. Standard issue Diamond Era materials on the inside but of course I must dock points because the cap was not Made in U.S.A. The red, white and blue batterman seals the deal here even though the cap is imported from China. We are one week closer to the 2016 MLB All-Star Game and since last week’s post, there haven't been many new images released of this year's cap and uniform lineup. As of now, the only photo I’ve found of the cap that the players will be wearing during this year's ASG in San Diego is this one: Oops, sorry about that. The image...

I had so much fun last week writing about my vintage Asheville Tourists cap that I decided one post was simply not enough! While last week touched on a vintage cap logo, this week's post features the one they have worn from 2011 through today. What made last week's cap especially fun for me was that I had friends visiting from out of town which meant that I wore it spending all day Saturday in my current home city of New York being a...you guessed it: Tourist!  That symbolism was giggle-worthy when it finally occurred to me and as it happens his week I'm on vacation in Colorado which is one of my former homes as it is the state where I attended university. This only means that it is now my turn to play the part of Tourist in a place that is both familiar and foreign to me! While I'm here, I'll be looking forward to revisiting all of my old haunts and learning about new ones, all while wearing this sweet Asheville Tourists hat that I've had in waiting since 20...

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is a Jackson Generals cap that I picked up in late 2014. I initially thought that this cap's team was the same  Jackson Generals that I knew about in the 1990's but it turns out I was wrong. Check out these photos of this week's selection and then read more about how a team's moniker confused me ever so greatly! I probably love the serifs on the "J" and "G" because I'm a San Francisco Giants fan. This is super classy. Standard sweatband tags but a surprise under the New Era tag lets you know this cap is Made in U.S.A. Black and white MILB batterman? Yes please! Have you ever listened to Johnny Cash and June Carter’s song “Jackson” and wondered whether they were referring to Jackson, Tennessee or Jackson, Mississippi? Well, you might not have but that’s probably because you either don’t care or maybe you just assumed that they were singing about Jackson, TN because Cash spen...

I've written about the Ft. Myers Miracle on-feld cap before so this week's Fresh Fitted is just going to be a cursory look of a custom variant of that hat.  The main colors here are black, silver and pink and this colorway definitely goes nicely with sneakers that took part in the "South Beach" trend over recent years. They could have made the brim black but I think that the gunmetal is a nice touch as is the grey underbrim. The silver M is nicely subdued on the black crown and I dig the palm tree's pink leaves. The pink detail on the New Era flag and the MILB pops nicely. This custom colorway came out in late 2014 and the inside tags are consistent with other caps from that year not excluding the aforementioned Ft. Myers Miracle on-field cap. Of course, no trip to Miami is complete without an obligatory Golden Girls reference so I've got this enamel pin of my favorite character from the show: Sofia. The text belo...

The team logo for the Scottsdale Scorpions might not be widely recognized by most casual baseball fans but die-hard San Francisco Giants fans sure know it when they see it.  I have had my eye on this one for a good while now as I have enjoyed watching many young Giants wearing this Arizona Fall League affiliate's cap over the past few years. Major League Baseball's teams typically send their top prospects to varying Fall League teams every year but the Giants have consistently sent their top prospects to Scottsdale since the 2006 season and possibly before.  The first few current Giants who are Scorpions alumni that come to mind for me are Buster Posey and Brandon Crawford who both played for Scottsdale in 2009. All murdered-out simplicity at its finest but curiously there is no MLB/MILB tag on the inside but there is the Batterman patch on the back. I wish I could share some fun relics of Posey and Crawford as Scorpions from yesteryear but all the photos ...

This cap features a fun logo from the guys at Brandiose. I always dig their work. This scombrid is a mighty surly one indeed. Notice how the Wahoo is gripping a bat with some mysterious phantom phalanges. I just trademarked "Phantom Phalanges" as a band name, btw. Nothing crazy about these sweatband tags but maybe one day they will seem crazy! That is an MILB batterman logo in Pink, White and Blue. I love it. If you have been keeping up with the blog over the past few weeks, you might have noticed the focus on caps from teams that play in Major League Baseball's spring training states. I've said this many times before, but the most hopeful time of the year for a baseball fan is when spring training reaches its final weeks as it is now. Being a fan of the San Francisco Giants, it pains me to see my team floundering in the spring instead of deftly defending the championship that they won last November. As of publishing time, the Giant...