Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is a retro production of a 1959 Buffalo Bisons cap and let me tell y'all, in an alternate timeline this hat would be taking us into a Super Bowl weekend where the Buffalo Bills would be playing in the big game for the first time since 1994! Well, if "if's" and "but's" were candy and nuts that would be friggin' awesome because that would mean my plan of featuring Buffalo hats up through the Super Bowl came together. But it didn't. But  that doesn't matter because this logo's simplicity is just too perfect to pass up this week. I can't imagine anyone on the street will recognize this logo for what it is but that's ok. Maybe I'll hear "Boston Sucks" or perhaps someone will think it's a Birmingham Barons cap. Whatever happens, I'm ready for it because I will hit them with the story behind this hat no matter what! Made in U.S.A. is something Ebbets Field Flannels has...

The luck in my Buffalove well seems to have run dry but even though the Bills won't be in the Super Bowl, nothing is going to stand in the way of the Buffalo posts that I had planned for the rest of the playoffs. For this week, that means a showcase of the Buffalo Bisons team store's retro production of the cap I featured last week, which in case you needed a reminder,  is the design the team wore from 1988-92. The "B" here is a lot more beefed up than what we saw on the vintage cap last week but for some reason I'm not beefing ! Nothing much to report on here, but in case you were wondering the unseen portion of the New Era tag states that the cap was Made in China. Sad! It's a nice touch when the retro caps feature the grey underbrim as it gives the whole thing a more vintage feel all around.  In the captions earlier I mentioned that I wasn't bothered about this cap's logo not being 1:1 with the vintage version that I own and frankly, I think that is...

I hope y'all had fun these past few weeks with the NFL hats but unfortunately, my well of Buffalo Bills caps has run dry. Rushing out to buy more caps for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday isn't an option which means it's the perfect time to dig into my reserves for a vintage Buffalo Bisons cap that I estimate to have been worn between 1988 and 1992. The period during which this cap logo was worn represents a generally happy time for all three of Buffalo's main sports clubs but especially for the city's football team as the Bills' 12-4 record was good enough to put them at the top of their division for the first time in almost a decade.   Approximating years to sweatband tags on caps this old can be a chore but thanks to the handy reference by Paul Carr on The Ballcap Blog , it's a cinch. From there I was able to confirm this particular New Era tag and the "LOT/PRICE" size tag were used in 1988 and 1989! The mesh on this cap is unbelievably fres...

I hope y'all don't mind that I took last week off but I was worn out from Turkey Day and that's too bad because I had a Part II edition of the previous week's  Fresh Fitted Friday by featuring the current Buffalo Bisons cap. What sparked the two-part series is news of New Era Cap closing their manufacturing plant in Derby, New York. Over the past few years New Era has shifted a good chunk of its production overseas making it increasingly difficult to find US-made caps. I would imagine that in a few years those hats are going to come at a premium on the secondary market similar to the 100% wool/grey-bottom craze that began after New Era switched to the 100% polyester/black-underbrim build in 2007. So what's the correct course of action here for a cap addict? Do I lie down and die because there's nothing I can do? Do I take a seam-ripper to the New Era logo on my hats? Do I stop buying New Era hats completely and just stick to Ideal Cap Co. and Ebbets Field...

Fall doesn't officially end for another month but we had our first snow in New York yesterday so I've decided to put myself in a winter mindset starting now. Another wintry experience I had this week was attending the Buffalo Bills-New York Jets game at MetLife Stadium and in the eight years that I've lived in New York, i t was my first time seeing a game there  which isn't surprising as I'm not much of a football fan. Even though I'm not that big into football, I've always made it a point to half-heartedly adopt a team from any city in which I've resided.  I latched onto the Denver Broncos when  I was at the University of Colorado and in the following years when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I took to the 49ers but when I moved to New York in 2010, I just couldn't decide between the Jets and the Giants. There wasn't anything about either one that attracted or repelled me in any way so I decided to expand my definition of a "loc...

I've said it before but here it is again: it really has been too long since I've last posted. I hope y'all know how much I enjoy sharing these sweet glamour shots of my caps on here. If what they say is true and absence does in fact make the heart grow fonder then you will surely have no reason to turn away this week's featured cap: a Buffalo Bisons Snapback from 2003! I dig this red "super-hero" style "B" on the cap. Also, the lighting may be a bit off in this shot but it's definitely a green cap! I don't mind the Christmas colorway one bit! Very crisp representation of a New Era snapback from the early 2003's, complete with the squarish brim. Sweatband tags and panel liner definitely fall in line with other New Era caps from 2003. When I first got the idea to write about this cap (I'll get to that later), I thought the  Buffalo Bisons were a more popular baseball team than they are . It turns out that there weren...