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Showing posts with the label Pro-Line

Mystery "N" Star - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

Many of the themes for this blog's posts are planned out well in advance however there are times when inspiration strikes or perhaps some current event takes priority and this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection falls somewhere in between the latter two categories. I considered a few ideas related to the playoff race in the mighty American League East, whose second and third best teams will likely be the ones battling during the Wild Card series. At the last minute though, I decided to hold off on the congratulatory posts because I became aware of a significant baseball-related event that happened on this date 30 years ago. When I first starting got into baseball in the mid 1980s, the style and gas of pitchers like Dwight Gooden and Roger Clemens held my full attention however I am thankful to have eventually learned to appreciate the mastery of future Hall of Famers like Nolan Ryan and Jack Morris before they retired. While I have not yet discussed Morris in any previous pos...

1989-92 Elmira Pioneers

I’m back on a vintage kick for this week’s Fresh Fitted Friday post which is inspired by today, March 11, being Johnny Appleseed Day. The obvious logo to showcase on this holiday would be the home cap that the Fort Wayne TinCaps have worn since their inaugural season in 2009 however I decided to go in a different direction this time around. Just for some background, the TinCaps logo features an angry apple wearing a cooking pot as a reference to Johnny Appleseed who for some reason wore one on his head as well. I’ve always thought the design was fun but held out on acquiring one for the collection because I was hoping there would one day be a version that incorporated a baseball or bat into the motif. Well, here we are all these years later on Johnny Appleseed Day and I don’t have the one cap that was inspired by this great American nurseryman pioneer! Nevertheless, I won’t let that sink my spirits because I recently got my hands on an Elmira Pioneers cap from the Boston Red Sox era th...

Pro-Line Chattanooga Lookouts - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

Ok, that's it. I don't have any more Southern League teams to write about (for now) and that's probably a good thing because I'm feeling some mild accomplishment that with this week's Chattanooga Lookouts cap, I have now written about eight of the ten teams in the league! From 1988 through 2008, the Cincinnati Reds had their Double-A affiliate in Chattanooga and after a ten year absence is back in Nooga as of the 2019 season. Once thing about Lookouts fans is they have to be good spellers as there are some real some doozies: Chattanooga, Cincinnati, Tennessee. Thank godnes for spelcheck. I haven't featured a Pro-Line cap here for a while so it's good to have one again for this week's post. Unfortunately, sweatband tags for this producer did not vary much throughout the 1990's so it's next to impossible for me to determine which year this cap is from. Ah, the parent team embroidered on the back of the cap. I remember thinking that wa...

1992-95 Prince William Cannons Cap

I've probably mentioned this more than a few times already but my life-long love for baseball truly is something that's shaped the person I am today. F lipping through baseball cards as a child helped developed my knack for matching names with faces while poring over stats on the backs of those cards led to my o bsession with analyzing data.  As far as the subject matter in this blog, my appreciation for visual aesthetics in design is rooted in hours spent staring at logos on caps and uniforms of ballplayers while organizing my cards and watching games on television. My penchant for nostalgia is so blatant, it should't surprise you that my first hats are ones that resonate the deepest with me. My first MLB caps were the caps worn by the Chicago White Sox and Florida Marlins in the early 1990's and my first MILB caps were the New Haven Ravens, Greensboro Hornets and Prince William Cannons. Because the current theme here is the Carolina League, I've got not one, b...

Early 1990's Asheville Tourists Cap - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

How does that one saying go? " Another week on Baseball Milquetoast, another cap from a South Atlantic League team" ?  Who is that jolly bear carrying a suitcase and a wooden bat? Why that's none other than "Ted E. Tourist" of course. Bonus points because even though he's not a local,  he's at least trying to fit in by wearing a ballcap with an "A" for Asheville rather than some shooby dime-store fedora. It's difficult to pinpoint a year of origin for most Pro-Line caps as they weren't known for varying their sweatband tags from year to year. Still, the placement of these tags looks similar to this Kauai Emeralds cap  that was worn from 1993-1994 as well as this Greensboro Bats cap and this Tucson Toros cap , both from 1996. It's mind-boggling to me that this cap still has the original tags attached to it yet, it is basically old enough to buy itself one of the many different and delicious craft beers brewed in Ashe...

1996 Greensboro Bats - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

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...

1996 Tucson Toros - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

This Tucson Toros cap logo is not the most iconic, but it's not without symbolistic importance. You might be asking yourself, "how is ripping off the Chicago Bulls logo symbolic?"and to that I can only reply with, can you not tell that there are no red tips on this Bull's  (oops!) Toro's horns? It seems like Pro-line went with the extra-round varietal of brims this particular season. Good ol' sweatband tags doing their jobs! I'm writing about about one final cap from a team based in a Spring Training state to close out the theme of the past few weeks. I chose to focus on this Tucson Toros cap in light of the Arizona Wildcats' elimination from the NCAA Championship. I always thought it was so handy that there was a Triple-A baseball team in the same town as a big school like the University of Arizona.  So after many years of baseball prosperity in Tucson, the death rattle began to shake when the Arizona Diamondbacks were born. It truly is sad ...

Frederick Keys - Fresh Fitted (and Snapback) Friday!!!!

It's not the first time I've said this but here it goes again: it has been too long since I've shared a  Fresh Fitted on here .  I rarely seem to have a good excuse for not posting but I always have a solid reason to come back.  Case in point: this week's edition of Fresh Fitted Friday no doubt includes its namesake Fresh Fitted but as an added bonus to my readership, I'm going to begin this entry by including some imagery of a  snapback brethren of  said fitted . Are you bowing your head in reverence for the stoic fowl emblazoned across the "F" of this cap? I am and so have a great many fans of the Frederick Keys ever since their inception in 1992. You'll notice the sweatband only bears two simple tags: the official New Era brand tag and the Professional Baseball tag. Conventional logic inspires me to rip off loose tags like these but for some reason, I feel compelled to leave them on. I'm probably just afraid that the feathe...

Augusta GreenJackets vintage ballcap

Next up is an Augusta GreenJackets cap made by Pro-Line. Again, this one has no minor league baseball patch on the rear of the cap and that is something that I enjoy about caps from that era. While they are currently a minor league affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, most people largely remember them as a farm team for the Pittsburgh Pirates. They have also been affiliates of the Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers.