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Showing posts with the label Poochie Effect

2004 Montgomery Biscuits Alternate

If you're the kind of person who keeps up with the National Today calendar, you'll notice I forgot to mention in last week's Asheville Yacumamas post that another reason (besides Mother's Day) I decided to write about the Asheville Tourists "Copa" cap  on that date is because "National Tourism Day" has taken place in the US on  May 7 every year since 1983. Hopefully you forgive my oversight in that instance and in the spirt of continuing on with the National Day trend, today is National Buttermilk Biscuit Day so I’ve got a Montgomery Biscuits alternate cap that I estimate to be from 2004.  I've talked about the Poochie Effect lots here lately but this logo is latter day Poochie rather than the 1.0 Era, which I believe began in 1994 with the advent of the Charleston RiverDogs, Brevard County Manatees, Ottawa Lynx, Albany Polecats and to a lesser extent, Augusta GreenJackets. This sweatband tag set is identical to my  2003 Hudson Valley Renegades

Charleston Alley Cats (Ebbets Field Flannels Retro) - Snaps Ain't Back!!!!

After two straight weeks of lacking "fitted" content on the blog, this week's motto is S naps Ain't Back !!!! Like most collectors in the cap enthusiast community, my preference is to own a fitted version of a cap but there are times when the retro fitted is not a better option than a true vintage snapback.The caps I've featured the previous two posts are perfect examples of this. The 1983 Charleston Charlies retro from Ebbets Field Flannels released a few years ago has a logo that is a bit more squat than the one on my cap but more importantly, I would have preferred a nylon material over their standard wool offering in that case. I'm also not even sure if the Charlies had a fitted version of that cap since it was only worn for a year. The next instance is the  immediately noticeable   minified Charleston Wheelers logo on Hat Club's retro. This also happened with one of their Portland Rockies releases but then again, these are all such a rare logos tha

1996 Savannah Sand Gnats

In this week's episode of Did You Know…? , I've got a fun little fact to share about today's date that I just recently learned which is March 12 is National Girl Scout Day! For those of us who were not in a troop, the most immediate association commonly had when discussing Girl Scouts is the cookies and to be honest, I was guilty of this before I did a little research. As I dug deeper in reading up on this incredible organization, I learned how it provides an inclusive, all-female environment that nurtures   leadership development skills to all the girls! You're now probably wondering how this ties into a blog about baseball hats. The connection there is through my exploration I learned that  Juliette Gordon Low (founder of the  Girl Scouts of the USA ) is from Savannah, GA which reminded me of my Savannah Sand Gnats cap that has been sitting in my closet for far too long. The Savannah Cardinals rebranded as the Sand Gnats in 1996 which as we know was during the early y

1995-96 Binghamton Mets Snapback

I've got plenty of caps left to write about featuring the letter "B" in the logo however I'm looking to wind down this current theme so that I can move onto other subject matters that I've been meaning to cover. Until then though, I must fall back on one of my favorite parlor tricks which is featuring yet another obsolete team identity from the mid-1990's! This week's Binghamton Mets snapback is one I estimate to be from 1995-96. Binghamton sported this exact logo design from 1995 all up until 2017 which was the year they rebranded as the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, which is the team's name currently. I have no idea how the bee in the logo is connected to the city however the reason for the team's new name stems from Binghamton being known as "The Carousel Capital of the World". The lack of New Era flag branding on the sweatband tags hints this is a pre-1997 cap. Because this logo only first appeared in 1995, I'd say this cap is from th

1996-97 Bangor Blue Ox

I hope everyone has enjoyed the "Buffalove" over the past five weeks and if you didn't that's ok because at least you got to momentarily experience the blog delving into the realm of football, which was definitely a new sort of sensation for me after all these years! Another first that I'm excited about is this week's Bangor Blue Ox cap is the first-ever Northeast League cap to be featured here. It might seem hard to believe that even in this blog's tenth year  I'm still finding new leagues to write about but I think the sheer volume of obscure teams out there is a testament to the widespread reach that baseball has across this country. This cap came to me as part of a larger lot purchase and I have to admit I had no idea what team used this logo when I first saw it. Thankfully the hat nerds on Instagram were out in full force that day and provided me with an answer within minutes! The sweatband on this cap is rather soiled and I have to admit I'm

1997 New Britain Rock Cats

Welcome back folks! I’m happy to report I’ll be picking up this week right where we left off before the break as I’ve got yet another classic, yet now-defunct, Eastern League relic for this week’s Fresh Fitted Friday post. It’s been five years since my New Britain Rock Cats snapback blog post and unsurprisingly the logo on this fitted version of the cap seems just as wacky to me now as it ever has! The lack of an embroidered New Era flag on the outside of the cap tells me this cap is definitely from before 1999 but we will need to look under the hood for the whole story. These New Era and MILB tags were last used in 1996 so it’s safe to say those tags are leftovers from those years and that this cap is actually from 1997 as that is when this particular size tag first appeared. A nice and flat MILB batterman is one of those small touches that I miss most from the caps of yesteryear. The Rock Cats logo has always been an enigma to me. On one hand I appreciate them adopting a fresh and

Pre-2004 Akron Aeros

Something I had not considered before the Erie write-ups over the past few weeks was while the city is undoubtedly located in Pennsylvania, it is less than a half hour drive from the Ohio border. I then realized a good number of folks in that town might have as much reason to root for Cleveland teams as they would ones in Pennsylvania such as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. That duality is  eerily (I'm so sorry that I can't help myself sometimes!) reminiscent to Toledo's situation where it is essentially part of Michigan however is  technically in Ohio. Something similar can be said of Cincinnati's teetering on the border of Kentucky but I really fell down the rabbit hold when I read this article about how the Ohio River defines the borders of five states . So I guess if you couldn't tell by now, I've really got Ohio on the brain so it's really handy that this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is an Akron Aeros hat. Shout out to the good people of Akro

Pre-2004 Erie SeaWolves

I hope y'all are down to continue the love-fest for the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania again this week because I've got this Erie SeaWolves hat that I estimate to be from before 2004 and it really makes me want to keep this Keystone State party going!  There is some mild mid-1990's cheese factor going on here and while this logo properly ranks highly among the worst in all of MILB history, I still somehow prefer it to the bat-less logo that the team has been rocking since 2013. The messy satin taping here is something I've seen on a few caps from 2002, which as it happens was around the time these particular New Era and Size tags began to appear as well as the last year this version of the MILB sweatband tag tag was used. As a Giants fan, I've got serious love for the black and orange MILB batterman embroidery here.  Former Giant Cody Ross was on the SeaWolves in 2002 and here's a  video of Ross the Boss 2010 highlights which has been instrumental in mainta

1997 South Bend Silver Hawks

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

2005-2007 Portland Seadogs - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

I made it to my first and only game in the month of June last Saturday and while I considered posting the new hats I picked up at the stadium that night, this week's Portland Sea Dogs hat is even more special as I am choosing to feature it in honor of my friends getting married in Maine this weekend.  You have to respect this logo's longevity as the design has been with the club since the inaugural season in 1994. There's no chatter of it going away although there are a few weekend specific caps being worn this year. As we've seen on other hats, the blue box sweatband tags came about sometime in 2005 as did the "Originators of the True Fitted" text on the satin taping, both of which are featured here. I don't usually have much to say about the MILB batterman but one thing of note on this cap is that it's a thicker patch similar to the 2006 West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx hat I wrote about in June 2017. As I mentioned earlier, there a

1994-96 Brevard County Manatees - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!

We're wrapping up the second week of MLB's 2018 season however I'm showing no signs of slowing down with the inventory of minor league caps from Florida teams. This week's cap is a Florida State League classic: a Brevard County Manatees cap from 1994-96. From what I've seen, this version of the cap with a teal brim is less common than the all black. For what it's worth, I've only seen it on cards from 1994. Usual suspects as far as sweatband tags from 1994 to 1996 are concerned.  The black and teal batterman here makes me think of pure waters where Manatees may float and snack as they please. Graze on. I've mentioned this before but it's worth repeating that the peak level of my interest in minor league baseball came in the mid-1990's so it's no surprise that when the Portland Sea Dogs and the Brevard County Manatees showed up in 1994 with black and teal caps, I was sold on these teams immediately. The Manatees and Sea Do