Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

My standard process with the blog is to put forth lighthearted topics on the blog; however, today being the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks perpetrated on the United States in 2001 is urging me to honor the solemn occasion in a meaningful way in today's Fresh Fitted Friday post. Looking back at the archives, I am surprised that I did not properly commemorate this anniversary in previous years (2015 and 2020) when it occurred on a Friday; however, in my 1921 New York Giants "Roman Pro Cap Co." Retro Cap post , I did at least select a New York team's cap for that 20th anniversary post, which I  published a day early on September 10, 2001. I've written about New York teams recently, so I decided instead to honor Welles Crowther today, who was a volunteer firefighter and equities trader by profession who worked in the South Tower and saved as many as 18 lives during the September 11 attacks. There are many stories of people who lost their lives sav...

All-Star week is the most boring time of year for major league sports fans, as it’s the only stretch where there is not at least one game played in MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL. As addicted as I am to baseball, I actually don’t mind the break much because at this point of the season, I appreciate not having to set fantasy rosters for a few days! Now that I'm recharged I'm looking forward to my next planned game on Wednesday as the Los Angeles Angels take on the New York Mets for their biennial visit to Queens. The theme for this week’s post is the homestand this upcoming weekend, with Saturday being the number retirement and Mets Hall of Fame induction of former captain David Wright. Mentioning Wright in last week’s post was a foreshadowing of my plan to wear this vintage Wausau Mets hat in honor of “W” being his last initial but alas ticket prices on the secondary market are sky high for that game so I’ll likely be watching from home!  Now that we're firmly in the fine print zone...

I have been saving this 1994 Appleton Foxes retro on deck for a long while in anticipation of Ichiro Suzuki's inevitable inclusion in the 2025 Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) Hall of Fame announcement which occurred earlier this week. That bit of good news was certainly a welcome reprieve from the grief brought on by the passing of Bob Uecker. And even though Suzuki never had a single at-bat in the minor leagues, I chose this cap worn by the former Seattle Mariners affiliate in the Midwest League because it represents the big league club's Tealism years, which comprise the era many of us associate with him. The only year the Foxes featured the Mariners colorway in their caps and uniforms was 1994 however this retro has a colorflip effect by featuring a metallic silver fill on the logo lettering rather than teal which you can see in the last photo at the bottom. The shine of the metallic silver here seems like a lot to handle but I am interested in seeing h...

As a general rule of thumb, I tend to keep the theme of these posts topical with current events, anniversaries of historical occurrences and the like however this Burlington Expos hat was selected as tribute to my favorite band, Phish, who originated in Burlington, Vermont. Tonight is the first of  7 consecutive shows that Phish will play at Madison Square Garden and as you can imagine, I'm thrilled about attending all of them however if you are reading this blog you are perhaps knowledgeable enough about minor league baseball to know that the Burlington where these Expos played is actually in the state of Iowa. According to my latest tally via Wikipedia , approximately half of the states in the US have a town, city or county named Burlington however the cities in Iowa and Vermont are actually connected in the sense that a native of the latter called John Gray chose the name Burlington for the former as a tribute to his hometown back east. I was thrilled to pick this...

This week's post is the final installment of my Midwest League extravaganza and we're capping it off with a logo that hasn't changed much since the Beloit Snappers team identity was born in 1995. It's incredible to think that the  surly, possibly constipated, turtle on the  current home cap has not been refreshed much over the past 25 years. By now I should have a label for posts that feature a cartoonish logo that was created in the mid-1990's to appeal to kids but then that tag would apply to half the hats I write about so what's the point in making the effort to point it out, right?  Sorry got off-topic there.  I actually do like this hat for a number of reasons. First, it's green and green is my favorite color. Also, the team's name and logo pays tribute to turtles and I've always felt a strong connection to Testudines order of the Reptilia class. In short, I like turtles! An even cooler part of the story is that apparently t...

Until now, I've only written about half of the sixteen cities who currently host a team in the Midwest League and this week's South Bend Silver Hawks cap takes it to the tipping point. For the first three seasons of its existence, the Silver Hawks had an austere cap logo which definitely bucked the trend of the zany animals that many teams started using for their logos in the mid-1990's. In 1997, they finally bit the bullet on that aesthetic and I believe that this week's cap is from that very year. The New Era flag debuted in 1997 so its absence on the sweatband tags tells me that New Era simply used whatever leftover tags they had for that season's Silver Hawks caps. The earliest photos I can find of players wearing this cap is from 1997 but that doesn't mean it didn't appear in 1996. Either scenario is possible, but I'm sticking with the former. I also believe most fans of Minor League Baseball enjoy learning about tea...

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...

I hope everyone enjoyed the South Atlantic League caps over the last few months but if the volume of posts was too much, that's ok too because I have a more streamlined set of caps on deck for the Midwest League series, which starts off this week with a Waterloo Diamonds snapback from 1993. For their inaugural season in 1989, the Diamonds were a co-op team (aka baseball's version of polyamory) featuring players from the Baltimore Orioles and the San Diego Padres but they were going steady with the Padres  from 1990 through their final season in 1993 . The Waterloo Diamonds were only a team for five years in total and the fact that they  only wore this cap logo for their last two seasons makes it super unique to me. I think a lot of other hat nerds feel the same way because when  Hat Club recently did a retro release, the cap sold out rather quickly and I wouldn't be surprised to see it return sometime soon. The logo is comically large but you would only ...