Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

At the time of writing, the New York Mets and New York Yankees have both come away as NLDS and  ALDS champions respectively and I could not be more excited about the increased possibility of my first Subway Series as a resident of New York! The rest of the country is more likely to drool at the prospect of a World Series in which the Yankees face off against the Los Angeles Dodgers and even with that, the San Francisco Giants fan in me would be thrilled to watch the Dodgers lose on baseball's biggest stage. And my third best outcome would be for the San Diego Padres to have a chance to avenge their 1998 World Series loss against the Yankees but I'm holding out hope for the Mets as of now! These  scenarios all assume the Yankees come out on top in their ALCS matchup against either the Detroit Tigers or Cleveland Guardians but neither of these teams appear to be the pennant winners for this season in my estimation. Well, hopefully I did not just jinx the whole thing but if I did...

There are a lot of happenings in the world of sports besides baseball this weekend so for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday I wanted to find a way to tie in the Kentucky Derby as well as the culmination of the first round playoffs in the NBA. Any horse-related cap I own has already been written about here which leads me to the realm of Philadelphia Phillies minor league teams despite the fact that I know fully that their team name has nothing to do with horses because of this article from SportsLogo.net . This brings me to this beautiful powder blue Batavia Clippers fauxback from the Buffalo New Era store. The former New York-Penn League team was a Phillies affiliate from the time I started paying attention to Minor League baseball in the late 1980s and early 1990s so I will always associate them with Philadelphia and to see this power blue blue "motif" warms my heart. The fuzzy feelings continue with the white sweatband and grey undervisor here. Staying true to what would...

It has been over five years since my  1980-92 Reading Phillies snapback  post so I am extra excited bout this this week's  Fresh Fitted Friday  which is a special one because I am finally able to feature a fitted version of the cap. This cap is one of the many stunning MILB releases by the one and only  @djmach716  from New Era shop in Buffalo, NY. Back in August I featured the  "New Era Buffalo Exclusive" Vermont Expos  which was also obtained from the flagship via an assist from my friend  @yellowsub73 . I was hesitant to name which other caps I wanted to scoop up from the store however this week's Reading Phillies hat marks the first revelation of that set and soon enough I will be sharing more from my recent haul. This is about as close as you can get to the 1980s Reading Phillies logo and I am fairly certain we won't see a retro this good ever again. My fear is based on releases in the recent past where the bigger stores have messed up t...

I have written about many cities who have hosted teams for mulitple decades but today's Clearwater Threshers hat marks the first time that I've featured this longtime Philadelphia Phillies farm club, which has been their Single-A affiliate in the Florida State League since 1985. I alluded to wanting a Threshers cap in my Rancho Cucamonga Temblores post  in September 2020 but I made sure not to specify which one exactly because I knew even back then how special this cap was. I wasn't about to ruin my chances at getting it by blabbing about it then but now that I actually it own the time is right to spread the word! It is surprising how much I like this cap because despite being hopelessly anamored with the ocean, I am irrationally averse to sharks. I grew up up near a beach and remember the terror I felt when while swimming in the ocean I would randomly think of the tiny possibility of that a shark was nearby. Well, today is Shark Awareness Day so I figure it is time to face...

Well folks, thanks for being understanding of my need to take a minor break from the good ole Baseball Milquetoast blog experience last week but rest assured because we're back now and ready to be better than ever!  I've spent most of this pandemic writing about West Coast caps and since I'm ready to start showing love to the East Coast once again, we're going to start that trend off with a Reading Phillies hat which is fitting as I'm totally STOKED on Pennsylvania at the moment. I've never been much of a fan of red hats and especially less so over the last four years but there's a small chance I'll warm up to them again soon because 2020 has been a wild year so who knows what's going to happen next, right?!? Reading wore this cap from 1992 through 1997 but the lack of the New Era flag tag on the sweatband confirms that this particular one wasn't worn after 1996. I have come to believe that the MILB batterman began to appear on MILB caps in 1993 ...

The South Atlantic League celebration continues this week with another Lakewood BlueClaws cap but this time we're taking a look at the cap logo that the team wore in its early years, 2004 to be exact.  You might be wondering how I could be so certain that this cap is from 2004 and the answer to that lies in the heart of cap as the gold taping inside the crown commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 59Fifty cap. The only other cap that I've seen with this special taping is the  Ogden Raptors cap that I wrote about in October 2017 . The logo on this week's cap depicts "Pinchy" clutching a baseball that is giant in proportion to itself which is fun but the logo is a little blurry. The team corrected this recently by mildly sprucing up the logo and below is a view of one of its alternate on-field caps which features the updated image. I don't feel a strong connection to this cap so it's going  on the  Trading Block   as I'm sure some...

So I ran out of Carolina League hats faster than I wanted to but we'll keep the southern flavor going with some South Atlantic League caps that I've had on the back-burner for a while. I haven't written about a Sally League team in almost a year so I dug up some gems to share with y'all over the next few weeks, starting with this Lakewood BlueClaws cap. Based on  the cursory research I've done for this week's post, the  BlueClaws having been wearing this logo at most of their home games since at least 2010. Another tidbit I stumbled across is that the BlueClaws will have a Grateful Dead Night on June 22, 2019. No word on special caps but I caught a glimpse of the trippy uniforms they'll be wearing. Grateful Dead Night announced for Lakewood BlueClaws https://t.co/8ZFK2GWLx6 — Asbury Park Press (@AsburyParkPress) February 6, 2019 I'm glad I saw that tweet because it reminded me that I've had this cap on the shelf for far too long an...

I've had a lot of fun over the past two months writing about classic International League teams and the different caps that teams have worn over the years but I think this week's Lehigh Valley IronPigs "Fighting Bacon" cap will be the 8th and final cap of this run. Just like many of the cap logo designs that Brandiose produces, this Bacon is a surly character who's ready to rumble as his anger is sizzling hot. Like the  "Bacon and Eggs"/"Eggs and Bacon" cap  that I wrote about on December 28, 2018, the origin of this cap's logo comes from another Food Fight type of series. This time the IronPigs took on the identity of Bacon while the Fresno Grizzlies of the Pacific Coast League were the Tacos.  While the IronPigs once again turned to the brain geniuses of Brandiose for their design, Fresno used an in-house design team of artists named Dorian Castro and Andy Inman. I like the Bacon logo more but if I also really dig Fresno...

As much as I want to start this new year off with a fresh start for Fresh Fitted Friday, I just can't help wanting to do a continuation of last week's theme so I decided this week's hat needs to be the Lehigh Valley IronPigs home cap. Brandiose designed this cap which the IronPigs have worn for most of their home games since their  inaugural season in 2008 . I love the 3D embroidery on the crown and that the fierce looking pig has become a touchstone in terms of design elements for Brandiose.  Because the logo and sweatband tags haven't varied much in the time since this cap first came out, it's almost impossible to decipher which year this cap was purchased although it was Made In U.S.A so it's likely not that recent. I appreciate you coming to the site to read about this now-iconic cap logo and I hope you return next week as I have another fun cap from the IronPigs cap artillery that I'm looking forward to sharing with you.  Ev...

I've finally run out of classic Eastern League caps, y'all. The last few weeks have been fun but I'm really excited to share a recent pick-up that has a timely meaning to me. I'll be in Philadelphia this weekend celebrating a good friend's birthday and because "R" is her last initial, I'll be wearing a Reading Phillies snapback in her honor. Like the Albany-Colonie Yankees logo, this one reminds me of fond memories collecting baseball cards as a youngster. As far as I can tell from the old photos in my research, this is the logo that Reading stuck with from around 1980 until 1991. The following year was when the caps went from maroon to MAGA-tized red and the serifs went from pointy to bubbly: I tried finding a card from a recognizable player from that 1992 season but there really were none. The closest I could find was Mike Lieberthal. The maroon crown with the green underbrim is such a legendary combination. Don't fight it, Fig...

08/27/2023 Update : I'm rather embarrassed that it has taken me this long to update this post with disclaimer that I don't actually own this cap. I've only written about a handful of hats that I don't actually own but at times I feel doing so is necessary as it helps collectors come up with accurage years in which caps were produced. To keep things more organized, I've added a "Disclaimer" logo to this post as well as others in which it would also be applicable. This Fresh Fitted Friday post is for a cap Every once in a while a beauty comes around that is easy to appreciate even though you don't know exactly what it is. Such is the case with this vintage cap that I (have led myself to) believe is a Reading Phillies cap from the 1980s. A little background: other than the Lakeland Tigers of the Florida State League, no other minor league team has consistently held a player development program with the same major league team as long as the Readi...