Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Ahead of the Modesto Nuts final homestand, I have finally procured my first ever Nuts cap as I stated that I hoped I would do this year back in my  San Bernardino Spirit post   from December 20, 2024. As I mentioned in that post, Modesto has fielded a team for almost 80 years so closing out the California League's season with this cap seems like a fitting tribute. This logo is not the first one that comes to mind when minor league fans first think of the team but it has made its fair share of appearances over the past 20 years of their existence and it plays a fine straight man to the wild embroidery design of the side patch. I had a hard time trying to decide if I wanted a cap featuring Al Almond or Wally Walnut so thankfully Topperzstoreusa came through in the clutch by featuring both on the embroidery. It is done up in a metallic style that is not easy to read however if you are familiar with the team's designs it's fairly obvious. The embroidery is so massive the hat is...

This post marks the second week in a row that I have brought out an Ebbets Field Flannels retro but the wool serge fabric and a stiff crown on this retro of the hat logo the San Jose Giants wore for one year only in 1989 is far less common than the wool broadcloth found on the majority of the Ebbets caps. Something this esoteric and awe-inspiring could only have come from ballcap aficionado Paul Carr of The Ballcap Blog who is a native of San Jose and is the force behind the 1986 San Jose Bees retro  that I have wrote about here just a few years ago. I met Paul many years ago and other than our shared love of hats, I was glad to hear we are both really into music as well. We're both into a variety of music and last I checked his favorite band is Green Day who hail from the East Bay. I have been a big fan of theirs since I was a teenager in the mid-1990s but the Bay Area band that I dig the most is the Grateful Dead which I have a sneaking suspicion is not a band that most Green Da...

Today's date is June 6 (aka 6/6), so the theme of this week's post is the Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino. This is my second 66ers post of the year, but the date falling on a Friday seemed like better timing than waiting until it happens again in 2031, although the next time after that would be in 2036, which would have been especially cool because six times six is 36! I am a big fan of all-cap logos featuring any type of character swinging a bat or any object resembling a bat, and this one fits the bill.  I picked this cap up in 2023, so I added that year as a label on this post to help identify the years caps are from in future posts. Glancing upon the colorful MILB batterman here for the "looking back" segment of the post, I should stress how glad I am to have picked up this cap in 2023 as it is now almost impossible to find on most sites. My assumption is it's being phased out, which is a shame! In my Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino "Cherubs...

After spending dozen years writing entries in this blog there are not many "firsts" that come along so when I realized that I had not yet done a proper Valentine's Day post for Fresh Fitted Friday , I knew right away that I should bring out the Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino "Cherubs" by the inimitable DJ Mach at the flagship New Era store in Buffalo, NY. The metallic threading here is the most recognizable difference between the 66ers "Cherub" cap design and the Buffalo-exclusive that I'm featuring today. I love how it makes the Tiffany—or Tuscan, depending on your preference of terms—font pop here. The team issued "Cherub" also lacks the side-stitched arrows DJ Mach included which is much appreciated as they are synonymous with Cupid in classical mythology.  The "Genuine Merchandise" tag is something that I started seeing on MILB caps that I've purchased over the last few years, most notably starting with the 1982 D...

Since the close of the 2024 MLB season, I have had no shortage of blog topics thanks to the flurry of roster moves this offseason. Ass a San Francisco Giants fan I am thrilled at the seven-year deal the team made with shortstop Willy Adames and I am also hoping for a solid addition at first base like Christian Walker and as well as a strong starting pitcher like Corbin Burnes. Even if neither happens, the Adames signing is huge but sadly I do not have a Giants-related cap with a "W" or "A" logo to write about like I did when having a bit of fun  with the "J for Juan" on the Jackson Mets cap for last week's post. Perhaps the "S" can be for Soto on this week's San Bernardino Spirit hat and thus be the conclusion of the "Soto Sweepstakes" celebrations. This week's post is my first featuring a cap from Topperzstore and I have to give them credit for knocking it out of the park with the simple white "S" over the gold st...

Unless something changes between now and next week, the last cap in this recent tour throughout the California league is going to be this San Jose Giants cap which features a patch commemorating San Jose hosting the 2013 California League All-Star Game. Side-patch mania is at another one of its peaks with cap collectors currently and while I'm not personally seeking out these newfangled releases, my thing will always be vintage caps of Giants affiliates that feature truly special patches such as this week's  Fresh Fitted Friday  selection. This patch ranks right after the 2007 MLB All-Star Game patch as far as I'm concerned. I love the Giants wordmark logo featured prominently on top of what looks like the In-N-Out logo and bonus points for the text specifying that the exhibition game was played between the Carolina League and California League. I'm only just now popping tags on this one so forgive me for the sticker shock here but wow... a Made In China cap retail...

I've enjoyed welcoming the first signs of Fall here in New York lately as the days get shorter and the air becomes increasingly more brisk however it's important to think of our friends on the West Coast who receive no quarter as wildfires continue to rage across those states.  Natural disasters are a possibility no matter where you live but in the five years I spent in the Bay Area, my greatest fear—besides my irrational phobia of getting eaten alive by a shark— was being helpless in the middle of a major earthquake/fire type scenario.  I'm overcome with sadness for those affected by these current happenings, especially since  I never experienced any of those things firsthand. In truth, I have a hard time even thinking about those situations so it goes without saying I'm not going to be rewatching Jaws or sitting through any sort of disaster movie sometime soon.  Hats are a different story with me for some reason!  I've had my eye on a certain (not telling...

I'm getting close to putting down the landing gear on this six-month long  Viaje  (Spanish for "Road Trip")  of west coast MILB teams and there is not a better California League cap to bring it on home on than the Lake Elsinore home cap, which the team has worn consistently since 1999. This is one of the most popular logos in all of minor league baseball, but I'm personally not as into it. The eyes remind me of those "No Fear" shirts from the early 1990s which are only fondly remembered by those who enjoyed wearing toxic masculinity on a t-shirt back then. I'm unable to pin down a year for this cap because it was acquired secondhand a few years ago through a bulk purchase that I occasionally refer to as the Great eBay Haul, or just the eBay Haul if I'm feeling modest. Also, the team has worn this logo since the beginning of time. The price sticker on this "low-profile" style cap reads $28 so it would seem whoever owned this cap before me...

This week's Stockton Ports hat is similar to last week's High Desert Mavericks cap in that they are both California League caps that I was completely certain I had already featured but alas, had not. I  wish I had a cool backstory here but to be completely honest, I don't even remember when I purchased it.  I tried digging through my emails for a confirmation for more details and the closest I got was one from 2015 for a purchase for "STO NE AU ROAD 5950 CAP RYL/SCARLET-HAT" which isn't too descriptive but  "STO" seems to be an appropriate abbreviation for "Stockton" and  the colorway listed checks out for the  Ports "road" cap. The Ports road cap is my favorite of all the versions they currently wear. I love the anchor's hook piercing the baseball and the colorway surrounding the "P" reminds me of the Peninsula Pilots , which, as I've mentioned before is one of my all-time favorite cap logos. Made in U.S.A. qua...

I've got another old-fangled cap for this week's edition of Fresh Fitted Friday but please note this High Desert Mavericks post is actually evocative in multiple regards. The first is in the traditional sense as this week's hat is almost thirty years old however the second aspect has more to do with metaphotographical attributes since the photos themselves are almost seven years old! I unearthed these relics-depicting-relics during a recent reorganization effort of my photo library and the timing couldn't have been more perfect as I felt like this tour through the California League needed at least one more contribution of the vintage variety.  As a San Francisco Giants fan, Bruce Bochy's career path is of great interest to me so I'd like to highlight the fact that the future Hall-Of-Fame manager was at the helm during the Mavericks' inaugural season in 1991. This was Bochy's third managerial assignment but his first was one I discussed in a Spokane Ind...

After two weeks of retro versions of most short-lived––yet iconic––logo designs of the early 1990's, it's finally time to feature a true vintage cap from that era with this Central Valley Rockies hat which could be from either 1993 or 1994 as that was the last year of the team's existence. Behold! I can't think of any other time that a Rockies farm team employed teal on a cap whose logo was repurposed from the big league club. Fun fact: the V is for Visalia, which was where the team called home for those two seasons. Because the Central Valley Rockies were only around for two years, the only name associated with the team that clicks with me is Paul Zuvella (the happy smiley guy shown above) who managed during the inaugural season in 1993.   In the previous photo from the team's first season in 1993, you'll notice that Zuvella was wearing a cap with a grey undervisor. Because it's green on this week's cap, I'm thinking the team just must have had both...

In accordance with adhering to the current theme of “defunct California League teams”, there’s really not a more logical successor to last week’s San Bernardino Spirit cap than the one the Salinas Spurs wore for just one season in 1992. Starting things off with an image of Dick Little wearing the famed Spurs hat in 1992 I was searching high and low for California League teams that featured a star in the logo but I settled on one that just featured an “S” with spurs attached. I picked this one up from eCapcity back in 2018. Unlike with my San Bernardino Spirit buying experience, I selected the right size this time. The green underbrim, no batterman and a tonal New Era flag that you barely notice all join forces to make this one of the better retro releases of the last few years This isn’t one that I own, but just for reference here is an image of a vintage Spurs cap from 1992 Update (8/19/2020): I had to add this image post hoc because it's important to show this combination of a g...