Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

We are two weeks into Hispanic Heritage Month and calling back to last year's Los Murciélagos de Louisville  post is this week's Abejas de Salt Lake cap, which is another stunning logo created for the Copa de la Diversión campaign which itself is an expansion of the Es Divertido Ser Un Fan ("It's Fun to Be a Fan") fan engagement program that began in 2017. This logo is one of the more understated Copa designs but the clean lines and bright colors—featuring just the right amount of Tealism , by the way—caught my eye instantly and I especially  appreciate how they implement the bee stripes into the "A" here.   The grey undervisor is a special treat due to this cap being a Hat Club exclusive that I purchased in March 2020. Obviously the entire MILB season was canceled that year but even it had not, the team would not have worn this cap as this was a fan only release.  I love how relaxed the Miami Nights/San Antonio Spurs vibe is on this batterman. All of a ...

Wella-wella-wella welcome back, y'all! Last week was way too busy for me to turn in a quality post but we are keeping the spirit of the Midwest League theme going this week with a classic cap from another Iowa-based franchise: the Cedar Rapids Kernels. I've written about the current version of the Kernels cap but in truth, that one has never been my favorite. Virtually every sports team has a logo that I feel is their greatest and to me, this week's cap is the classiest and most elegant logo the Kernels have ever worn. Firstly, a baseball gently emerging from a corn husk is about as Midwest as it gets, folks. Corn's importance in the region is boundless but what I appreciate most about the imagery is it represents new life as every spring, a new season of baseball begins in Cedar Rapids. I've never been to Iowa but teams like the Kernels, Clinton LumberKings and Quad Cities River Bandits have piqued my interest since an early age. The movie F...

Last night, I was all set to deliver some photos and commentary on yet another cap from a previous year's All-Star Game when I realized the whole night had escaped me because I was watching a baseball game between the two worst teams in the AL West: the Los Angeles Angels and the Oakland A's. The only explanation as to why I put myself through such an ordeal is because one of my favorite former San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincecum, was on the mound for the Angels. To say I still have fond memories of The Freak is an understatement. To me, he symbolized the beginning of the current Golden Era of Giants baseball but of course the fact that I just called it a Golden Era will jinx them and they will be bad for the next 40 years. I think I just jinxed that jinx and they'll be good instead now but baseball is weird. I guess I'm weird too because superstition drove me to think that the safest way to ensure Tim Lincecum would be lights out last night (spoiler: he wasn...

Update : While I originally stated that this cap was probably from 1992, I really should have also mentioned that 59Fifty tags didn't appear until 1994. I've seen New Era use older, leftover tags on caps, if this is really from 1992 then this is interesting because they applied a 59Fifty tag from 1994 on a cap with a green underbrim and no MILB batterman. Either I've been wrong about the 59Fifty tag first appearing in 1994 or they ran out of the 1992 tags at some point in the manufacturing process and had to use the ones from 1994 ahead of time, which is so weird. Update (4/20/2019) : This blog has been a learning experience for me over the years but sometimes new information comes to light so I've got to fall on my sword about something here. The previous update to this post mistakenly states that the 59Fifty tag first appeared in 1994 but I've seen caps from 1992 and 1993 that have it so there's that.  More importantly, I should mention that the only Rive...