Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

After  posting to this blog for over a dozen years, I sometimes ask myself if I have run out of ideas to write about or if I am conveniently revisiting themes to the point of there no longer being a point in continuing on. And then there are moments when I consider the significance of those themes and the importance of continually reminding myself of the values that define me. Earlier this week I realized this coming Sunday was the NYC Pride March and instantly thought it would be fitting to feature a Charleston Rainbows hat for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday post. I wanted to know how long it had been since I had last written about the team so I dug through the archives only find  this post from almost exactly ten years ago , which was the first—and most recent—time I had written about the Rainbows. I felt chills reading my thoughts on the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016, which frankly is a sensation I expect to sense again in ten years when I think back on how the San Fra...

I started writing about my baseball caps on this site in August 2011. Initially, my first few posts focused on the minutiae of some vintage San Francisco Giants caps all featuring the logo used from 1983 to 1992. However, my focus gradually shifted to minor league caps and eventually, some of the first New York Yankees hats I acquired during my early years living here. All these years later, I have more Giants and Yankees hats than I need, but can never seem to get enough minor league caps. Like many collectors in the community, I sometimes experience fatigue with designs that feel formulaic. However, the levels of creativity flowing into minor league logos are only matched by the work of designers creating through The Clink Room. Despite my relentless pursuit of novel and captivating designs, the enduring appeal of logos that initially captivated me prompted me to honor these iconic logos by applying the Favorites tag   to caps that align with their description. While I endeavor t...

In my last post, I mentioned that I'd be spending Thanksgiving with friends in Baltimore, and as always, it was a fantastic opportunity to catch up with them as well as their son, who is a first-year student at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. I enjoyed hearing about his experience during the semester thus far and decided the first Fresh Fitted Friday selection of December should evoke some holiday cheer as well as be one worn by a team that plays in the Palmetto State. Thankfully, Greenville Drive cap just waiting for the occasion! The Boston Red Sox typeface used here is a nod to the Drive being their High-A affiliate in the South Atlantic League since their inaugural year in 2005. Before setting up shop in Greenville, the team was based in Columbia and played as the Capital City Bombers from 1993 to 2004, and before that was known as the Columbia Mets starting in 1981.  In addition to the red in the cap's front logo, the green on the undervisor as well as in the...

Any country worth the dirt their trees are planted in should have a holiday to pay homage to their land's woody perennial plants and those of us in the United States observe National Arbor Day on  the last Friday of April which happens to be  today! The holiday dovetails nicely with Earth Day and I happened to celebrate both in 2023 with retro caps of the  1940 Oakland Oaks  and a  1948 Oakland Oaks   produced by Ebbets Field Flannels . The current state of Ebbets is dreadful but I am so thankful I purchased as many caps as I did because soon enough those caps will become vintage relics themselves!  Moving my focus to current things that are thriving, I am celebrating the trees this year with an Asheville Tourists retro designed by  @djmach716  of the New Era store in Buffalo, NY. M y friend  @yellowsub73   came through once again with a clutch assist for which I am so thankful as this version of the Tourists logo hardly ever gets t...

There hasn't been much noise in the baseball world outside of the massive deal signed by Vlad Guerrero and the Toronto Blue Jays with his first homerun of 2025 being delivered right after the ink was dry on the agreement. It is still too early to pass judgement on what the season holds but I can't help but wonder, does the slow start mean Vladdy's power beginning to fade already? I must admit I am envious of Toronto getting so much production out of their first baseman but despite having a much lower batting average, I am quite content with the output Wilmer Flores has produced for my San Francisco Giants. He went 0 for 4 in the game I saw between the Giants and Yankees last Sunday but what is most important is the  electric Giants series win. I've got my first New York Mets games of the year lined up this weekend as the St. Louis Cardinals make their first and only trip to CitiField and I am looking forward to some lively games. The Pittsburgh Pirates are visiting Quee...

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday finds me once again barely able to contain my composure as my San Francisco Giants have lost their two-horse race with the New York Yankees in the Aaron Judge Sweepstakes. Since last week's post, Jacob DeGrom departed from the New York Mets to join the Texas Rangers while Justin Verlander signed with the Mets to help fill that void. This now leaves Carlos  Rodón as the lone pitching ace without a place to call home in 2023 and at this point, I'm rather disinterested in where he ends up as long as it's not the Los Angeles Dodgers. Luckily, this recent article from MLB Trade Rumors  linking  Rodón with the Texas Rangers has me feeling confident that my rivals in LA are not likely to sign him to a deal.  My voodoo powers were ineffective last week but that didn't stop me from selecting the cap worn by the Rangers' High-A affiliates in Hickory, NC for this week's post! Ever since 2019, the Hickory Crawdads have been known as the...

I'm not sure how this blog has been around for ten years without having done at least one Mother's Day post but that all changes today with this Asheville Yacumamas hat! A  yacumama  is a giant snake-like creature that is believed to inhabit the Amazon Rainforest in Peru and means  "Mother of Water"  i n Quechua,  the indigenous  language spoken in the region. The words  yaku  "water" and mama  "mother" come together to describe what according to the  legend, is responsible for the the creation of all water-based life forms. If you're wondering how a yacumama was chosen as Asheville's identity for the Copa de la Diversion campaign then let me regale you with the Cherokee tale of a giant "leech the size of a house" that resided in the Hiwassee River in Murphy, North Carolina. I mentioned the " Poochie Effect " in last week's Charleston Alley Cats post and  one of the many things I love about the Copa de la Divers...

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...

I've got another snapback for this edition of  Fresh "Fitted" Friday but while last week's Charleston Charlies design is synonymous with a team's departure from town, this time I've got the iconic logo the team wore when baseball returned in 1987 all the way until they rebranded to become the Charleston Alley Cats in 1995. I always thought this logo referenced the smog produced by the coal mines in West Virginia but it turns out that puffy cloud is a representation of the steamboats that chugged along Charleston's Kanawha River starting back in the early 19th century.   I was hoping to find a fitted version of this cap but this snapback will just have to do for now as I've been on the hunt for this logo for years! This sweatband is so white it could pass for a clerical collar so yeah, I'd say this this hat is in pretty good shape considering it's about 30 years old. During my boat ride down Wheelers memory lane, this 1987 ProCards James Hendri...

I took last week off but I'm going to kindly ask you count this week's 1988 Roman Pro Cap Co. Greensboro Hornets post as a March entry because it definitely falls in line with the trend of all the ones from that month featuring some green. It also counts as a Wingure cap…barely. Even though it doesn't show a winged creature doing baseball stuff, I've decided the team name being "Hornets" is enough to consider this a "Wingure" cap.  So much green!!!! There's definitely some "fresh mesh" stuff happening here which makes this a perfect option for the warmer months ahead.  I briefly discussed my desire for a retro release of this cap logo in my Greensboro Grasshoppers post from 2018 and while I'm bummed that never came to fruition for me, I'm absolutely thrilled to have a vintage version. It wouldn't hurt to have a retro release also though, as I'd love to keep this snapback on ice so that it continues to stay fresh for yea...

The Wingure (winged creature) theme continues this week with the Augusta GreenJackets and I started the party early this past Wednesday with a St. Patrick’s Day post on Instagram featuring the Pro-Line cap the team wore from 1994-2005. The reason it's not this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is because I already featured it in a blog post in August, fittingly enough, of 2011 which was a few years before I created my Baseball Milquetoast account on Instagram! I've apparently developed a little biennial St.Patrick's Day tradition with the GreenJackets here as I wrote about my New Era version of the hat to celebrate the holiday back in 2019. This year's honoree is a Diamond Era version of alternate cap logo the GreenJackets wore before their Brandiose rebrand in late 2017. I dig how the “G” integrates a “J” into it as a nod to the GreenJackets name and that the bottom serif on the “J” has a sort of stinger effect. My brother-in-law's initials are "J.G....

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...

Something I enjoy doing with this blog is reflecting on previous posts while working on new ones. This week's Fayetteville Generals cap not only harks back to a  Generals snapback that I wrote about just over two years ago  but it also relates to the  Lakewood BlueClaws  which was the first team featured in this run of South Atlantic League caps. What I appreciate most about the Generals logo is that it pays tribute to a legendary figure of the American Revolutionary War from France named Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, or as he's more commonly known, Marquis de Lafayette.   Not only is the team's name derived from his role as a major general of American forces in the war but the city of Fayetteville, NC is also named in Lafayette's honor. I should have mentioned this information when I wrote about the Generals snapback in 2017 but I'm glad to be able to right this wrong now.  O...