Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

If you feel the same as me about the two-game "regular season" series last week between the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners in Japan, you recognize today as the true Opening Day of the 2019 baseball season. While I have no qualms with special series overseas, I do feel that having all 30 teams beginning their season on the same day is a sacred rite of passage. While all teams technically did play today, it's strange to think that the Mariners already have a 3-0 record. Hell, I'm just happy baseball is back so I'll stop complaining for now. I'm really excited for this season and for a change I'm actually into the side-patch that will be worn for year's All-Star Game which will be held in Cleveland for the first time since 1997. I'm probably going to pick up the cap that the San Francisco Giants will wear even though I'm still not a fan of the patch being on the right side due to the New Era flag placement on the left. I know it seems ...

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday is going to stay super topical as I'm not only featuring another South Atlantic League team, but one related to the Copa de la Diversion news of this week; MILB is bringing the campaign back after a wildly successful launch in 2018 and today's hat is the "Lexington Leyandas" cap that the Lexington Legends wore last year. At first I had mixed feelings about this hat. Incorporating a Dia de los Muertos sugar skull into an existing logo is kind of entry-level when it comes to creativity and using the Spanish  word for "legend" (leyandas) seemed to me like the team was taking a shortcut in terms of coming up with a unique identity for the promotion until I gave it some thought. If the essence of Dia de los Muertos is to honor your ancestors, is there a better way to describe the respect you have for the generations that have come and left before you than to refer to them as legends? I don't think there is ...

Today's date is March 15 and this day is always a special one for me as it marks the anniversary of my move from the Bay Area to New York City. While it commemorates a major life event for me personally, March 15 is one of the most infamous dates in all of history and it even has an ominous saying to accompany it: "Beware the Ides of March."   As you can imagine, I had difficulties finding a South Atlantic League hat with some kind of connection to Julius Caesar but alas I stumbled upon an Augusta GreenJackets cap that I had not yet written about.  It's common knowledge that the city of Augusta in the US state of Georgia was named for Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha , but the etymology of her given name dates back to  Augustus of Prima Porta , who for those who  need reminding was Julius Caesar's adopted son and thus the eventual and rightful heir to the Roman Empire. Anyway, enough with the super fun history lesson; let's talk about this classic c...

The South Atlantic League celebration continues this week with another Lakewood BlueClaws cap but this time we're taking a look at the cap logo that the team wore in its early years, 2004 to be exact.  You might be wondering how I could be so certain that this cap is from 2004 and the answer to that lies in the heart of cap as the gold taping inside the crown commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 59Fifty cap. The only other cap that I've seen with this special taping is the  Ogden Raptors cap that I wrote about in October 2017 . The logo on this week's cap depicts "Pinchy" clutching a baseball that is giant in proportion to itself which is fun but the logo is a little blurry. The team corrected this recently by mildly sprucing up the logo and below is a view of one of its alternate on-field caps which features the updated image. I don't feel a strong connection to this cap so it's going  on the  Trading Block   as I'm sure some...

So I ran out of Carolina League hats faster than I wanted to but we'll keep the southern flavor going with some South Atlantic League caps that I've had on the back-burner for a while. I haven't written about a Sally League team in almost a year so I dug up some gems to share with y'all over the next few weeks, starting with this Lakewood BlueClaws cap. Based on  the cursory research I've done for this week's post, the  BlueClaws having been wearing this logo at most of their home games since at least 2010. Another tidbit I stumbled across is that the BlueClaws will have a Grateful Dead Night on June 22, 2019. No word on special caps but I caught a glimpse of the trippy uniforms they'll be wearing. Grateful Dead Night announced for Lakewood BlueClaws https://t.co/8ZFK2GWLx6 — Asbury Park Press (@AsburyParkPress) February 6, 2019 I'm glad I saw that tweet because it reminded me that I've had this cap on the shelf for far too long an...

Welp I ran out of Carolina League teams to show y'all but that's not shocking considering it's a small league after all.  Until 2016 there were only eight teams in the Carolina League and I've already written about six (seven including last week's Winston-Salem Spirits cap) of the cities with current teams, as well as the Durham Bulls who are no longer in the league.  As for the other cities (both former and current) in the league, there isn't a hat that I've felt the a strong enough need to obtain about besides, of course, the crown jewel of my Carolina League collection: the Peninsula Pilots. Objectively, the logo is nothing special and could easily be confused with a Detroit Pistons hat. In fact, the only other Pilots hat that I ever found was mislabeled as a Pistons hat in an eBay listing. Unfortunately, the seller removed the item before I had a chance to bid on it and for that reason I feel extra fortunate that I found this beater a few years l...

Ok so before we get started here, I have something to admit: this week's edition of Fresh Fitted Friday features photos of a cap that isn't actually in my possession but it's one that I just had to share as the cap logo  worn by the Winston-Salem Spirits from 1990 through 1995  is a Carolina League classic that evokes warm memories for me when I look at it. As long as I've been into minor league baseball, there have been hats that piqued my interest yet never committed to buying. This Spirits hat is a great example of that because there were so many other logos that drew me in while this one was in its prime that it got lost in the mix but oh, how I pine for it now that I rarely see it for sale anywhere. What's worse is I'm feeling a sort of double regret because I came across one that was too small a while back but the seller wanted $100 which I felt was too much to spend on one hat. I'm sure I would have appreciated this hat as much as four $25 hats ...