Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

I was considering writing about a cap of a minor league affiliate of one of the teams currently in postseason contention but I decided to write about the Oakland Athletics' Triple-A affiliate instead.  The main reason I chose the Nashville Sounds for this week's post is a good friend of mine from Nashville is getting married in Music City this weekend and unfortunately I cannot be there.  Kind of impossible to deny the awesomeness of the f-hole style "N" over a guitar pick. Standard inside tags and panel taping but I figured I'd offer a glimpse in any case. I've written about a few Sounds hats over the years but this newest version of the cap logo might be my favorite yet. It was designed by Brandiose who you know by now is widely recognized as the clear leader in minor league brand architecture.  Made in U.S.A. guarantee. Here's hoping New Era continues to make efforts to produce some of their caps in the States.

01/20/2022 update: I fixed the broken image links and some text in the paragraphs below which were a complete mess. Rest assured, I left the overall content and tone consistent with the time in which this post was first published Like John "Hannibal" Smith, I love it when a plan comes together and what I don't love is when a plan falls apart. I intended to a story and some photos of a fresh and new fitted last Friday but my plan was beset by sweltering heat at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Even though my plan was temporarily halted, I consider myself to be resilient so I'm going to show those photos today. With no further ado, I present to you this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection which is the cap worn by the team of Virginia's state capital, the Richmond Flying Squirrels.  The Flying Squirrels identity was one of the agency's earliest creations when it was known as Plan B Branding and I appreciate that the outline silhou

I've written about the Spokane Indians only once before  but this week's Fresh Fitted is a cap logo redesign brought to you by - big surprise here - Brandiose. This collaboration was one of their earlier projects and what I appreciate most about this insignia (besides the artwork, of course) is the respectful path the designers followed in the rebranding effort. The Brandiose team (which was known then as Plan B) worked closely with the elders of the official Native American tribe in Spokane when crafting this new look. Their driving force throughout the process was that every design element was executed gracefully and with the sign-off of the tribe's leadership which you can read a bit more about here . The design team wouldn't be able to produce such consistently elegant work if it wasn't for the lengthy amount of research that is done at the onset of the process. Here is a quick retrospect Brandiose performed which covers some of the art that inspire

During the December 4, 2015 write-up of my Vermont Lake Monsters vintage cap, I discussed the wide-range of fan reactions regarding the newly redesigned Norfolk Tides cap logo. Naturally, the old guard was hesitant to swap out the beloved wave-topped T logo that the Tides have employed since 1993 in favor of the trident-wielding seahorse created by Brandiose which for the unfamiliar is a design firm based in San Diego. It turns out that the fans ended up appreciating Brandiose's efforts to the point that the Tides cannot keep the caps in supply enough to match the demand. I've followed Brandiose's output over the past few years and I'm thrilled with this collaboration with the Tides and that my hometown team now has a much-needed fresh new look. If you are browsing this page on a desktop machine, check out the social links on the right and if you are on a mobile device, click these links below: Instagram:  @baseballmilquetoast Twitter:  @FittedFriday F

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