Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

For this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection from The Great eBay Haul, I decided to continue riffing on the reptile theme from last week's Wisconsin Timber Rattlers post with this Norwich Navigators cap from 1998. Get it? Navi-GATORS?!?! HAHAHAHA The Albany-Colonie Yankees of the Eastern League moved to Norwich, CT in 1995 and their rebrand as the Navigators lasted until the 2006 season when they became the Connecticut Defenders. In 2010, the team moved to Virginia and ever since have been known as the  Richmond Flying Squirrels which was a rebrand helmed by Brandiose. The logos and sweatband tags are spot on with other caps that are tagged here as 1998 but as we saw with last week's Timber Rattlers cap, the lack of a New Era flag is not always a dead giveaway that a cap is from before 1999. Just like with last week's cap, I've seen lots of 1999 baseball cards where players wore Navigators caps without the flag.  One last item of note th

Disclaimer : For the first time in a long while, this is a post that is not about Tim Raines or the Montreal Expos. I've spilled much ink over Raines and the Expos lately but now is the time to move past the celebration phase of the 2016 Hall of Fame voting results. I do believe this is an acceptable time to make a case for a player I grew up watching and one who deserves more Hall of Fame votes than he's received thus far: the inimitable and easily irritable Gary Sheffield! I realize a one-off blog post isn't going to get the man inducted into Cooperstown. Shef had his troubles defensively but it's hard to argue against the strong  offensive numbers he put up during his 22 year career. Even though Shef wasn't a DH, his numbers rival Edgar Martinez, Vladamir Guerrero and David Ortiz who are each worthy of induction.  /rant Whether you think Shef belongs in the Hall or not shouldn't stop you from enjoying the photos below which are of a signed hat th

Update: I modified some formatting below and fixed some broken image links (with old, somewhat blurry photos) but kept the content the same otherwise. (10/13/2021) I'm not going to mince words here: the best news of this entire week is that Tim Raines has been selected to join the 2017 Baseball Hall of Fame class. I've mentioned before how special Raines is to me and it brings me an incredible feeling of joy to know that he will be enshrined among the other great players who have contributed so much to this game. As a cap enthusiast I wonder which one he will be wearing on his plaque. Of the 23 years Raines played in MLB, 13 were with the now-defunct Montreal Expos. He had a few quality years with the Chicago White Sox but his three years with the New York Yankees were certainly special considering he picked up two World Series rings in that time. Of course, the decision of which cap he will wear on his plaque does not need to be decided just yet, so let's take a momen

Considering one of the earliest minor league baseball caps I ever owned was a Greensboro Hornets one, it's hard to believe it's taken me this long to write about this team's hat. Well, I suppose that's only partially true as I once posted a 1996 Greensboro Bats cap but I'm really glad to finally show some love to this iconic gem. Greensboro only had this cap logo from 1990 through 1993, but it was glorious while it lasted A red hornet is not one you want to tangle up with, especially not one wielding a bat The sweatband tags here are identical to those found on my post of this Everett Giants cap Grey underbrim, white sweatband and the absence of the New Era and MILB  batterman logos is the best combination  When I first started going to Norfolk (then-Tidewater) Tides games as a youth in the early 1990's, I'm not sure if I knew there was any difference between the players I was watching on the field and the ones from televised games

This week's Fresh Fitted is not only a freshie but it is one that has a deep sentimental value to me as it is the cap that the Virginia Tech baseball team wore when they hosted the New York Yankees in a preseason exhibition game at English Field in the spring of 2008.  As I've noted in a previous post  about the cap that the Yankees wore during that game, it was played in memoriam of the Blacksburg Massacre at Virginia Tech the previous year. Tomorrow marks the 9th anniversary of the shooting, so today we will look upon the hat that the Hokies wore when the Yankees came to town.   The Yankee's "NY" logo has seen many custom colorways but very few are as powerful as this tribute made to Virginia Tech The Hokies "VT" logo on the wearer's left side is a solid show of respect from the Yankees The orange batterman and eyelets really pop here. This cap also varies from the one the Yankees wore that game in that it swaps out the

I admit that I might have gotten a little case of Yankee Fever after last week's showcase of the 2007 All-Star Game cap . I wore that cap to the Yankees game that night as they hosted the visiting Seattle Mariners but the game was only exciting if you are a home-run addict. The Yankees won that night and thankfully the run tally was not lopsided as it had been in a few of the recent games that I've attended. I also enjoyed a healthy serving of second-hand schadenfreude watching a former beloved Yankee struggle at the plate as a visiting player. Robinson Cano went 0-4 and the Yankees fans had a tad too much fun booing him every time he was denied access to a base. Even though Cano had a rough night, he was 3-4 the next day and clubbed his 9th homerun of the season to boot. I'm sure even those who jeered him Friday could applaud his efforts Saturday despite him playing on another team. They probably won't though. I can relate to the frustration that Yankees fan

Update: I modified some formatting below and fixed some broken image links (with old, somewhat blurry photos) but kept the content the same otherwise. (10/13/2021) I know that it's not right that it has been such a long while since I've actually showcased a fitted cap on "Fresh Fitted Friday" but believe me when I tell you that I have been waiting for just the right time to drop this one y'all. This is the ultimate cap to wear when you are trying to say, "Yeah I'm at a Yankees game but I'm a sneaky Giants fan at heart!" To fully appreciate the significance of this cap, perhaps a little background story might be in order. I was living a happy life in the Bay Area w hen the San Francisco Giants hosted the 2007 MLB All-Star Game, although I was not fortunate enough to attend the Mid-Summer Classic that year. I'm fine with that though; there are lots of baseball fans that never get to go to an All-Star Game. What is not acceptable though is t