Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday post marks the sixth time that I've written about a cap worn by a minor league team from Nashville,TN. That might seem rather trivial however I assure you it's not as all the other posts were of Nashville Sounds caps while this week's topic is the  Southern League's  Nashville Xpress, who only existed from 1993 through 1994. The first initial in my name is "N" so of course that and the music themed nature of the Sounds logos over the years leads me to appreciate their designs greatly. But in addition to being a big fan of music, I also love traveling by rail which is why I decided to feature this Nashville Xpress cap today in celebration of tomorrow being National Train Day. The inspiration behind the team name Xpress comes from the existence of train tracks just outside Herschel Greer Stadium which was the ballpark the team shared with their more established counterparts, the Sounds.  The New Era brand tag here looks like

Summer is almost in full swing in New York City and outside of the occasional 90º day, I'm happy to welcome it. The two main things I need to remember at all those fun hangs in the park is to stay hydrated and apply sunscreen, with the former being especially apt as "National Don't Fry Day" is recognized today as it is done each year on the  Friday before Memorial Day Weekend. Overexposure to the sun is something that too often goes unnoticed as we spend time relaxing outdoors and this is especially true during the summer months  so this holiday is a perfect opportunity to raise awareness in regards to the risks involved with those otherwise good times. Because of this, the phrase ‘slip, slop, slap and wrap’—which originated in Australia and New Zealand and is now used worldwide—encourages sun enthusiasts to slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen,  slap on a hat, and wrap on sunglasses. To that point, I'm not sure if there is any better way for me to honor the sig

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

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

Regular readers of this blog know that I like to get topical on here and while that can  potentially  lead to posts seeming to be dated down the line, I still enjoy the correlation between hats and certain current events and holidays.  That being said, I am surprised that for last week's post I didn't think to write about a team from a city named Columbus as we were l eading into Columbus Day weekend. Thankfully we aren't too many days removed from the actual holiday so it still feels timely to feature this Columbus Catfish hat for this week's post. It might seem tame compared to today's current MILB caps but this  Mudcats logo —a long with the Durham Bulls cap—helped usher in MILB caps into the mainstream consciousness. This New Era tag is commonly seen on snapbacks from the late 1980's and early 1990's. The lack of the MILB batterman solidifies the theory that this cap is not from the mid-1990's at all. The squarish brim and plain

It was hard for me not to have a proper Southern League hat for last week's Fresh Fitted Friday, so I'm fully energized this week to be able to share this 1999 Knoxville Smokies hat with you this time around. I have to admit when this logo came out in 1993, I didn't think anything was special about it besides the fact that bonafide prospects like Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green wore the cap that season. My best guess is that this cap is from 1999 as that is the year that the New Era flag began appearing on the side of MILB caps as well as the fact that the white taping and sweatband tags are identical to this 1 999 Capital City Bombers cap . Here's a flipped-up view where if you zoom in you'll see the modernized, yet tonal, New Era branding on the adjustable snap itself. Even though this is a snapback, I feel fortunate to have snagged this cap as it's not one that seems to come around as often as one would think. Another reason my guess is that th

Last week I mentioned I was running low on Southern League caps so it's no surprise that I'm stretching a bit for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday . As you probably know, most of my posts are on-field caps, but  this week's Jacksonville Suns cap is a replica of the cap worn in 1968, which to make things worse is when they competed in the International League. I dig how the "J" here looks super laid back, like it could almost be a "G" and the more I think about it, this "J" is just a metaphor for a super laid back Florida guy. The Made In USA tag is proudly on display here and with good reason. Ebbets Field Flannels might not produce all of the cap logos that I wish they would, but the ones they do release are of utmost quality. I don't write about Ebbets hats much but I just want to note how I appreciate how the black sweatband doesn't show signs of wear and the green underbrim slowly gets darker over time which is fun to

I'd love to continue celebrating the Southern League, but it seems that after writing about five of the ten current teams, I've run out of caps to write about! Because of this, I've decided to share some images of a more recent—but still vintage—Birmingham Barons cap than the 1993-94 Barons cap that I wrote about almost two years ago. The Barons have sported an Old English "B" as their cap logo in every image I can find going back to 1981, which is when the Montgomery Rebels franchise was moved to Birmingham to become the Barons. The tags here are the classic 1999-2001 configuration featuring "The Nations Highest Quality Fitted Cap" text along the satin taping and of course, back during those years that statement was true. Nowadays, New Era caps aren't so much the best thing ever but I digress. Nothing but respect for the silver and black batterman here. Sometimes I wonder if the Barons logo is as ubiquitous as I believe it to be. Of

Now that I've apparently run out of Texas League hats, it's time to move on to another theme. Because I always seem to have fun with Double-A teams, I think it makes sense to write about some Southern League caps that I've had waiting in the wings and I'm kicking things off with the Montgomery Biscuits home hat. This is the official "home" cap worn by the Biscuits. Incidentally, I was recently browsing the current cap selection on their site and it seems to be out of stock in most sizes. Does a refresh loom? Sadly, this week's cap is a "Made In China" variant which means I'm not expecting it to have a long life. One of the many things I appreciate about the Biscuits is their team's official colors are listed as "Butter and Blue" so of course I'm loving this colorway on the Butterman logo! Surprisingly enough, I've only recently come around on the Biscuits logo. I suppose that's because it seemed lik

Now that MLB's 2018 regular season is underway, I'm back to dedicating a full seven days a week thinking about baseball as opposed to the one day a week when I posted to this blog. My appreciation for Florida minor league baseball continues this week with a hat I've been seeking out for quite a while: a 1990-91 Orlando Sun Rays hat.   The wordmark logo reads "Orlando Rays" however the team's official moniker was "Sun Rays" or "SunRays" depending on whom you ask. They wore this logo the first two years of their existence and switched to this cap logo for their final two seasons. Featuring an AJD cap two weeks in a row is definitely a record for this blog as I'm typically an unabashed New Era purist. Last week's 1992 AJD Fort Myers Miracle hat didn't have an MILB batterman so there's no way this one would but here's a photo just to be sure Their name changed to  the Orlando Cubs upon their affil