Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

With Opening Week of the 2025 MLB regular season in the books, I am thrilled to report I have  gorged on as much baseball as I possibly could. I am also happy with my  San Francisco Giants' 5-1 record although it is a shame that is only good enough for third place in the NL West as the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers hold records of of 7-0 and 8-0, respectively. Sadly the Atlanta Braves were unable to hand the Dodgers their first loss this past Wednesday night and are now 0-7 to start the season giving them the worst record in baseball. The Braves have 155 more games to play so this slow start does not necessarily negate the preseason prognosticators who predicted expected their season totals finishing second only to the Dodgers. I am amused how the "0" in their win column aligns with 404 Day which is an unofficial holiday in Atlanta celebrating the city's first area code while a  404 error is a HTTP status code when a webpage or resource cannot be found....

I clung to a faint hope that posting a Buffalo-exclusive from New Era’s flagship in last week's post ahead of the AFC Championship game might bring good luck to the Buffalo Bills against the Kansas City Chiefs.  Unfortunately, my celebratory run of sharing Buffalo-related caps will have to wait for another time. And just like this year’s remaining unsigned MLB free agents who are frustrated with their previous and prospective teams alike, I had to find an alternative route for this week’s post. The main difference between me and players like Pete Alonso or Alex Bregman is that I don’t anticipate receiving a lucrative contract between now and the start of Spring Training. Nevertheless, that mere fact won’t deter me from daydreaming about the sun-soaked games that are about to unfold in Arizona and   Florida in particular as I’ve chosen to focus on the Kissimmee Cobras for this week’s post. In addition to celebrating the “Year of the Snake” during the current Lunar New Yea...

I have been saving this 1994 Appleton Foxes retro on deck for a long while in anticipation of Ichiro Suzuki's inevitable inclusion in the 2025 Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) Hall of Fame announcement which occurred earlier this week. That bit of good news was certainly a welcome reprieve from the grief brought on by the passing of Bob Uecker. And even though Suzuki never had a single at-bat in the minor leagues, I chose this cap worn by the former Seattle Mariners affiliate in the Midwest League because it represents the big league club's Tealism years, which comprise the era many of us associate with him. The only year the Foxes featured the Mariners colorway in their caps and uniforms was 1994 however this retro has a colorflip effect by featuring a metallic silver fill on the logo lettering rather than teal which you can see in the last photo at the bottom. The shine of the metallic silver here seems like a lot to handle but I am interested in seeing h...

In honor December 6 being National Miners Day, this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is an Ebbets Field Flannels retro inspired by the cap the Joplin Miners wore in 1950. I have had this day earmarked on my calendar for a few years now as I wanted to make sure the post was published on the day itself so cheers to that! And most importantly, thank you to the miners! My preference is to have an embroidered logo on my Ebbets hats but every once in a while I grin and bear it when I have to pick one up with this sort of stitched felt letter. The "Ebbets" and "Made in USA" tag combo is classic. I am thrilled to pop the tag on this one and bring it into the rotation! This is a great team shot featuring Mickey Mantle front and center where he belongs! This commemorative minor league card of Miner Mantle was part of a special and limited 5 card set Topps released in 2012 using the 1952 style.   Mantle's card is fantastic but I am a Giants fan first and foremost ...

Welcome back to another fun week on the Quarantine Road Trip which is basically just me going "back-to-back" with showcasing Ebbets Field Flannels retro cap and this week's Spokane Indians cap is a replica of the style the team wore in 1979. That is actually pretty significant to me as that was the year I was born. Ain't that swell? This cap combines the "Taco Bell" aesthetic employed by the San Diego Padres in the 1970s along with the blue and yellow of Spokane's parent team at the time which was the Seattle Mariners. In my mind, to call this anything but the "Long John Silver's" style would be criminal. Besides death and taxes, the one sure thing in life is that if you order from Ebbets Field Flannels, you're going to get a top-quality cap that was Made in America and is built to last. As I've mentioned before, I'm not crazy about the satin underbrim on caps that are based on ones from the 1970s and 1980s but ...

Walla, Walla Welcome back to Week Two of the Quarantine Road Trip, folks! Since this whole "Shelter In Place" thing is a new experience for all of us, I decided to break from my usual habit of posting vintage hats in order to focus on retro caps for the next few weeks. In fact, it was last week's Yakima Bears hat which inspired me to select this Walla Walla Padres retro cap from Ebbets Field Flannels as this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection because like Yakima, Walla Walla Walla is a former Northwest League (NWL) city which currently hosts a collegiate West Coast League (WCL) team called the Walla Walla Sweets. This "Brown and Yellow" colorblocking is instantly recognizable to OG baseball fans as being distinctively Padres in nature. As an SF Giants fan, it's hard for me to wear a cap with these colors out in public but since we are all under quarantine, all rules have gone bye-bye. A lot of noise has been made about New Era closing down ...

MLB’s 2018 season is just a month in however it didn’t truly begin for me until I got to attend my first game of the year this past Wednesday. I’m thankful that technology allows me to watch multiple games in split screen mode on my TV but it can’t compare to the sensation I felt when I made my maiden voyage through the turnstiles at Yankee Stadium. I was fortunate to enjoy the game among the company of three friends who are all hardcore baseball fans and each attending their first game of the season as well. Of course, it was lots of fun and the cherry on top was that I christened a retro Prince William Yankees cap! This custom retro cap of the cap worn by the former Yankees Carolina League affiliate was spearheaded by a friend of mine with whom I jaws about hats a lot on Twitter ( @TerryT804) and Instagram ( @djtdawg) Like the OG cap, this one has a green underbrim but features a black sweatband and but the cap is made of the more modern polyester material, which I pref...

The time is nigh for any final preparations for next week's MLB All-Star Game so for San Francisco Giants fans like me, that means lamenting the fact that Boston and Chicago fans gamed the voting system better than we did. Who knows? Maybe it's not so bad that more of our guys aren't making the trip to  San Diego while Dexter Fowler and Ben Zobrist will be. Fine, let them enjoy Addison Russell at shortstop rather than benefit from a defensive wizard like Brandon Crawford. Since Wil Myers is the host city's lone representative this year, I do however understand selecting him over Brandon Belt as a backup at first base. While it does annoy me that there will be so much team homogeny at the All-Star Game, I'm more annoyed with myself because for the first time in as long as I can remember, I forgot to submit even a single ballot this year. Simply put, I have no right to complain about the selections so I'm just hoping the National League wins this year. ...