Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Considering one of the earliest minor league baseball caps I ever owned was a Greensboro Hornets one, it's hard to believe it's taken me this long to write about this team's hat. Well, I suppose that's only partially true as I once posted a 1996 Greensboro Bats cap but I'm really glad to finally show some love to this iconic gem. Greensboro only had this cap logo from 1990 through 1993, but it was glorious while it lasted A red hornet is not one you want to tangle up with, especially not one wielding a bat The sweatband tags here are identical to those found on my post of this Everett Giants cap Grey underbrim, white sweatband and the absence of the New Era and MILB  batterman logos is the best combination  When I first started going to Norfolk (then-Tidewater) Tides games as a youth in the early 1990's, I'm not sure if I knew there was any difference between the players I was watching on the field and the ones from televised games

This week’s Fresh Fitted is special for a number of reasons but it also has the distinction of being the first cap I’ve featured of a team has yet to play a single game! A buddy of mine  — who also happens to be an avid reader of the site — recently visited his old hometown of Columbia, SC and was kind enough to pick up a special gift for me: the official on-field cap that the Columbia Fireflies will wear during the majority of home games in their upcoming inaugural season.  It's a refreshing change to find unique logo that does not feature any stale font lettering nor a cartoonish animal It’s no secret that I’ve got a special place in my heart for teams of the South Atlantic League, which is also affectionately known as the Sally League. As an aside, it’s also no secret that I enjoy using the phrase “it’s no secret” in these write-ups and to prove this point, simply open a new browser tab and query “it’s no secret baseball milquetoast” in your favorite search engine. You

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

Behold the signature colorway of the 1990's: teal and purple.  Here we see the same inner sweatband tags as these previously featured caps: Stockton Ports , Midland Angels and Hickory Crawdads If it wasn't for the MILB batter man logo I'd guess this was a Florida Marlins cap for sure.  You have to respect a cap that keeps the tags unpopped for so long. After last week's spotlight on a cap from a South Carolina team, I thought it would be appropriate to continue that theme for this week's Fresh Fitted  with a relic from the mid-1990's.  This cap's garish "Charlotte Hornets style" colorway of teal and purple sums up that era to a T.   While I'm less than enthusiastic about the dated colorway, I'm not completely sold on the cap's logo either.  I get that it's a cute dog biting so hard on a bat that it breaks in half but this logo has been around for almost twenty years and it hasn't evolved v

This version of the Capital City Bombers cap differs from others that the Bombers wore in the 1990's as it has a black brim rather than the more commonly used red brim.    This logo definitely fits the bill of "zany minor league design from the early 1990's.  The sweatband is clearly showing signs of age more than other caps that I've collected from this era but they can't all be so crisp and pristine.  I was revisiting an episode of House of Cards recently and I noticed for the first time that there was a brief mention of the Greenville Drive. For those who are unaware, the Greenville Drive happens to be a (real-life) minor league team based in South Carolina, which is the home-state of (fictional character) Frank Underwood. During their first year as a member of the South Atlantic League in 2005, the team was known as the Greenville Bombers. I suppose they hung on to the name that they had used in their former home-city of Columbia to see if

In 1993, an instant classic was born for minor league ballcaps. While many might think that Conrad the Crawdad is a hokey mascot, I'm a complete supporter of this cap. Upon the team's relocation to Hickory from Gastonia, they changed their name from the Rangers to the Crawdads and thusly switched from being an affiliate of the Texas Rangers to the Chicago White Sox. The mid-1990's was a new golden era for the White Sox from a marketing perspective when you consider the wild success of this cap as well as the oft-photographed Michael Jordan during his stint with their Double-A affiliate, the Birmingham Barons. I can't say with any certainty that the Nashville Sounds or Vancouver Canadians made as much of a splash as the other two aforementioned teams but I wouldn't mind owning a cap from either one of those clubs. These days, the Crawdads are back to being an affiliate of the Texas Rangers but I'll always remember them as an affiliate of the White Sox. I'm

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.