Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Welcome to the first Baseball Milquetoast post of MLB's 2020 postseason!  Those who remember my grim outlook at the beginning of the season might feel the urge to blow me a raspberry paired with a healthy "I told you so!" because those early predictions didn't come true and to that I say, hold your raspberries until the final out is recorded in the World Series as there's still time to fail, friends! In all seriousness, I hope this season wraps up as planned even though I'm feeling mighty bitter about my Giants postseason plans get squashed on the very last day of the regular season. That it was at the hands of a division rival stings but not as bad as it would if they lost to the Dodgers. Still though, I'm not at all sure how to process my emotions about the PADRES playing the villain. To their credit, the Padres have been grinding all season and I wouldn't be mad if they made it all the way to the World Series as they've been a fun team to wat

Editors note: Whoopsie, forgot to publish this last week! Enjoy. This week's Tucson Toros retro from Ebbets Field Flannels is the last vintage/retro style Pacific Coast League hat from my collection that I've got to share with y'all for the time being so I hope you enjoy the nostalgia before it's gone. Sorry, I shouldn't have gone there. Well maybe I should have because my love for baseball was born in the 1980s so of course I mostly remember the Toros as a Houston Astros affiliate who wore a garish red cap like  last week's Albuquerque Dukes cap . I've written about the lurid cap the Toros wore during that era however this week's hat features the design the team wore for the 1977 and 1978 seasons when they were the top farm club for the Texas Rangers. July 4th Weekend is as good a time as any to take a moment to remind everyone how important Ebbets Field Flannels is to baseball fans who appreciate quality caps that are Made in U.S.A.

The last pitstop on the Quarantine Road Trip converts last week's Ebbets Field Flannels "back-to-back" feature into a "three-peat" which is absolutely fitting because like most sports fans around the world, I'm completely enamored by The Last Dance , the 10-part ESPN miniseries documenting Michael Jordan's final season on the Chicago Bulls. Similar to the Bulls brand gaining worldwide recognition due to Michael Jordan's heroic efforts, Ken Griffey, Jr. aka "The Kid", is responsible for helping to right the Seattle Mariners ship and making their cap the most popular logo in baseball during the early 1990's.  This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is a replica of another cap design made famous by Griffey as he wore during his first professional baseball assignment with the Bellingham Mariners in 1987. A vintage Baby M's cap with this design is next to impossible to find but thankfully Ebbets Field Flannels decided to retro

Welcome back to another fun week on the Quarantine Road Trip which is basically just me going "back-to-back" with showcasing Ebbets Field Flannels retro cap and this week's Spokane Indians cap is a replica of the style the team wore in 1979. That is actually pretty significant to me as that was the year I was born. Ain't that swell? This cap combines the "Taco Bell" aesthetic employed by the San Diego Padres in the 1970s along with the blue and yellow of Spokane's parent team at the time which was the Seattle Mariners. In my mind, to call this anything but the "Long John Silver's" style would be criminal. Besides death and taxes, the one sure thing in life is that if you order from Ebbets Field Flannels, you're going to get a top-quality cap that was Made in America and is built to last. As I've mentioned before, I'm not crazy about the satin underbrim on caps that are based on ones from the 1970s and 1980s but

Walla, Walla Welcome back to Week Two of the Quarantine Road Trip, folks! Since this whole "Shelter In Place" thing is a new experience for all of us, I decided to break from my usual habit of posting vintage hats in order to focus on retro caps for the next few weeks. In fact, it was last week's Yakima Bears hat which inspired me to select this Walla Walla Padres retro cap from Ebbets Field Flannels as this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection because like Yakima, Walla Walla Walla is a former Northwest League (NWL) city which currently hosts a collegiate West Coast League (WCL) team called the Walla Walla Sweets. This "Brown and Yellow" colorblocking is instantly recognizable to OG baseball fans as being distinctively Padres in nature. As an SF Giants fan, it's hard for me to wear a cap with these colors out in public but since we are all under quarantine, all rules have gone bye-bye. A lot of noise has been made about New Era closing down

Last week I mentioned I was running low on Southern League caps so it's no surprise that I'm stretching a bit for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday . As you probably know, most of my posts are on-field caps, but  this week's Jacksonville Suns cap is a replica of the cap worn in 1968, which to make things worse is when they competed in the International League. I dig how the "J" here looks super laid back, like it could almost be a "G" and the more I think about it, this "J" is just a metaphor for a super laid back Florida guy. The Made In USA tag is proudly on display here and with good reason. Ebbets Field Flannels might not produce all of the cap logos that I wish they would, but the ones they do release are of utmost quality. I don't write about Ebbets hats much but I just want to note how I appreciate how the black sweatband doesn't show signs of wear and the green underbrim slowly gets darker over time which is fun to

After last week's spotlight on the Durham Bulls , I realized that I haven't featured nearly enough Carolina League teams so I decided to ramp up a little series on some classic hats from that league starting next week. For this week however, I have to shift the focus onto a more pressing matter: my birthday which is tomorrow, January 26. That date happens to be Australia Day so this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is a reproduction of the cap worn by the Australian national baseball team for an exhibition game against the US team  on December 1, 1956  as part of the 1956 Summer Olympics. Wait. December? Don't forget when it's winter here, it's summer over there, mates! Behold the Green and Gold! I like the gold felt "A" here against the dark green crown and bill but I really hope people don't mistake me for an Oakland Athletics fan. The great thing about Ebbets Field Flannels is their caps are always top-notch so there'

Well, it looks like my super-awesome streak of attending an MLB game once a week is ending as the mini-trip I had planned to see the Padres play the Pirates in Pittsburgh is not happening. Nevertheless, I still want to share photos of the perfect hat to wear to the series: a retro 1986 Hawaii Islanders cap produced by Ebbets Field Flannels in 2016. From the images of baseball cards I’ve seen, the Islanders wore this cap with a red crown and yellow brim from at least 1984 all the way through 1987, which was their last season. I have to give Ebbets props for the logo and cap construction in this retro release. The caps from the 1980’s probably did not have black sweatbands and satin underbrims like this one but I actually like those touches here. There are a couple of reasons why I could have worn this hat to the Padres series in Pittsburgh this weekend and the most obvious is that the former Pacific Coast League franchise was an affiliate of each club for many years.

If you are reading this post then you are probably some sort of a baseball nerd which means you know that the last time the New York Mets won the World Series was in 1986. If so, then it's also likely that you recognize this week's featured cap as one the Tidewater Tides wore in the early 1980's when they were the Mets' AAA affiliate.   This is the most iconic Tidewater Tides cap of all time. Clearly the "T" here is more stout than every other Tides cap you will see from this period. Holy Orange! It's held up great after 30 years in storage. Thank you Polyester! Negative points for the flimsy foam construction on this snapback but it captures the spirit of the era perfectly! I'm going to try to keep this gem as crisp as possible so for everyday wear, so I'm thankful that Ebbets Field Flannels has just released this reproduction of the 1983 version of the cap: This is what the "T" should look like on the pi