Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

As we enter the penultimate weekend of the 2024 Major League Baseball season, the Milwaukee Brewers are the only team that has clinched its division which means the excitement will only ramp up as the other division and wild card results unfold. And as a beer lover, I appreciate the opportune timing of the start of  Oktoberfest just after the  Brewers clinching   so I selected their cap from Hat Club's "Cereal Pack" for this week's post. Each hat in the "Cereal Pack" release offers a nod to an iconic cereal box design which in this case is Frosted Mini-Wheats. Of course, wheat is an integral part of beer which makes it no surprise why this version of the Brewers logo was chosen here.   Compared to the younger generation of cap collectors out there I am admittedly a curmudgeon as the seemingly haphazard patches on these exclusive "drops" don't get me too chuffed however they break up the monotony as well as make it easier to locate caps if you h...

The past two write-ups have been notably more verbose than usual around here so  I hope this 4th of July weekend brings a sort of return to form as we celebrate the tailgating and cookout aspect of the holiday with a Milwaukee Brewers City Connect "Grill" cap for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday post. This is a Hat Club exclusive which varies from the on-field version the Brew Crew wears during its City Connect games. In terms of aesthetics, I actually prefer how the baseball-stitched grill design from the right sleeve patch of the team's j ersey is the primary focus on this hat. Hat Club also released a non-rail version of this cap which flips the placement of the cooler and grill designs. Even though the "Brewed in Milwaukee" is not as easy to read here, I chose this one because the baseball grill logo needed to be front and center. Clean flat batterman logo on a powder blue crown is one of the most ultimate retro 1980s ways to go which means I am in full...

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...

I'm not regaining your trust am I? See, I know I was absent last Friday but I really did have something come up that prevented me from posting: my pride. I had a great one written congratulating the Milwaukee Brewers on their unexpectedly great playing in the NLCS but suddenly got cold feet as it looked like the Los Angeles Dodgers had it locked down when they went 3-2 after their Game 5 win. I know the Brewers had a chance to come back and win the series but I just wasn't feeling it by the time it was time to publish so instead of starting over with a sad post, I caved. At any rate, it looks like the Red Sox are about to make quick work of the Dodgers in the World Series so my spirits are up again! To celebrate that, this week's cap involves the Brewers as well as the two teams that they faced in the postseason: the Colorado Rockies and the Dodgers. From 2015 through 2018, the Colorado Springs Sky Sox were affiliated with the Brewers but from 1993 through 2014 they w...

Has it really been almost four months since my last post? Of course that’s a rhetorical question but I still want to explain why I lapsed for so long. The quick answer is I’ve been preoccupied with other activities over the past few months however at some point during that time I should have posted a quick blurb about the hiatus but I kept getting distracted. I also lost interest in all things baseball as I saw my San Francisco Giants play terribly once again this year and now that the regular season has come to a close, I’ve decided to hate-watch the NLCS. For the second year in a row, the Los Angeles Dodgers are clear favorites to win the pennant but I’m going to be rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers in the series. This petty tactic is the reason why this week’s Fresh Fitted Friday selection is a Carolina Mudcats cap as they are the Class A affiliate of the Brewers in the Carolina League. How fortuitous that I just happened to have the tags still on this cap that's ov...

Howdy Folks! Once again, it has been far too long since my last dispatch so I decided to make a change to the blog's format in hopes of consistently producing weekly Fresh Fitted Friday content. The FFF posts will now solely consist of a few photos with captions and when time permits, I will post in-depth analysis of the cap or its team's history. Those will be less frequent and perhaps a Throwback Thursday sort of thing. I'm eager to see how it plays out as well as hearing your feedback! If an oyster (or any other bivalve for that matter) did have a head, its eyes would give you a menacing look such as this. If an oyster decides it's going to use the bottom-half of the letter "B" as its bed, let it be. Over the past few years New Era has employed the cost-saving strategy of manufacturing some of its caps i and I believe quality suffers in that caseat case. This particular one has a "Made in U.S.A." tag and I appreciate...

It seems like lately I haven't been able to come up with an answer to this very simple question: what is it that makes a minor league ballcap interesting? In the past I argued that a minor league team's cap logo is inherently more interesting if it has very little resemblance to that of its parent club.  Yet, I've also recently applauded caps that make an interesting allusion to their parent clubs while maintaining a local sensibility in the logo. The latter is certainly the case with this Stockton Ports cap: An item of note is that the Stockton Ports have long-believed that the  Ernest Thayer poem "Casey at the Bat" was based on their team. While that might or might not be true, I like that they believe it enough to use an image of a Mudville Nine batter-man, who himself is wearing a pillbox cap with an M on it. I love meta-caps! As for the production year on this cap, there is no evidence of it before the 1994 season. It's not often-see...

What's good today? How about a fitted so vintage that it dares to consider itself fresh ? Well, this week's edition of Fresh Fitted Friday goes out to a man who is known to have brought some serious heat in his day: Rollie Fingers! Before going any further, I would guess that most people in the fitted hat game, when hearing the name "Rollie Fingers" think of this guy: I wouldn't fault you for immediately thinking of Inspectah Deck as he's known to have used this alias on multiple occasions. For me, the most fun part of listening to Inspectah Deck -and Wu-Tang Clan in general- is that they drop some of the best pop-culture references in all of hip-hop. Just do a web search for any of the topics they rap about and you've got some interesting research ahead of you! On Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) , Method Man describes Inspectah Deck as having the uncanny ability to judge the character of others: " Inspectah Deck, he's like that dude that...

Now that the postseason is at the League Championship Series (LCS) point I'm starting to feel a bit nostalgic for baseball seasons of the past. What greatly excites me is that the Diamondbacks didn't make it past the first round. Any division rival that gives my Giants a hard time will definitely not receive any support from me during the playoffs. By the time the season officially ended I had already begun cheering for the Brewers, if only because the Cardinals lead all National League teams with 10 World Series championships. While the Giants can boast of 6 World Championships, the Brewers have won none. Before the Brewers switched to the National League in 1997, they had earned one sole trip to the World Series, in 1982, where they lost to the Cardinals. I'm fairly certain the Brew Crew will make it to the World Series this year and I hope they face off against one of their former American League East rivals, the Detroit Tigers. I think it would be a fun match-up, and on...