Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

I'm back on the train and I have to admit that it feels pretty darn good to post two weeks in a row after such a long absence. One benefit of the hiatus is that I've got a steady pipeline of hats to write about. This one is from a team whose cap logo  I've admired  for a while now and that team would be none other than the Nashville Sounds: Since 1901, Nashville has enjoyed virtually continuous professional baseball, the only interruption being a 14 year dearth that occurred between the Nashville Volunteers' final season in 1963 and the Nashville Sounds' inaugural season in 1978. Interestingly enough, the earliest images I could find of anyone wearing a Nashville Sounds cap or uniform was from a 1981 team set issued by Arby's. Yes, that Arby's. Here's a card from that set showing Don Mattingly in this iconic get-up.  It looks like that same photo shoot also provided the shot used for a 1982 Nashville Sounds promotional sc

In 1993, an instant classic was born for minor league ballcaps. While many might think that Conrad the Crawdad is a hokey mascot, I'm a complete supporter of this cap. Upon the team's relocation to Hickory from Gastonia, they changed their name from the Rangers to the Crawdads and thusly switched from being an affiliate of the Texas Rangers to the Chicago White Sox. The mid-1990's was a new golden era for the White Sox from a marketing perspective when you consider the wild success of this cap as well as the oft-photographed Michael Jordan during his stint with their Double-A affiliate, the Birmingham Barons. I can't say with any certainty that the Nashville Sounds or Vancouver Canadians made as much of a splash as the other two aforementioned teams but I wouldn't mind owning a cap from either one of those clubs. These days, the Crawdads are back to being an affiliate of the Texas Rangers but I'll always remember them as an affiliate of the White Sox. I'm