Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

08/27/2023 Update : I'm rather embarrassed that it has taken me this long to update this post with disclaimer that I don't actually own this cap. I've only written about a handful of hats that I don't actually own but at times I feel doing so is necessary as it helps collectors come up with accurage years in which caps were produced. To keep things more organized, I've added a "Disclaimer" logo to this post as well as others in which it would also be applicable. This Fresh Fitted Friday post is for a cap Every once in a while a beauty comes around that is easy to appreciate even though you don't know exactly what it is. Such is the case with this vintage cap that I (have led myself to) believe is a Reading Phillies cap from the 1980s. A little background: other than the Lakeland Tigers of the Florida State League, no other minor league team has consistently held a player development program with the same major league team as long as the Readi

I'm back on the train and I have to admit that it feels pretty darn good to post two weeks in a row after such a long absence. One benefit of the hiatus is that I've got a steady pipeline of hats to write about. This one is from a team whose cap logo  I've admired  for a while now and that team would be none other than the Nashville Sounds: Since 1901, Nashville has enjoyed virtually continuous professional baseball, the only interruption being a 14 year dearth that occurred between the Nashville Volunteers' final season in 1963 and the Nashville Sounds' inaugural season in 1978. Interestingly enough, the earliest images I could find of anyone wearing a Nashville Sounds cap or uniform was from a 1981 team set issued by Arby's. Yes, that Arby's. Here's a card from that set showing Don Mattingly in this iconic get-up.  It looks like that same photo shoot also provided the shot used for a 1982 Nashville Sounds promotional sc

It's not the first time I've said this but here it goes again: it has been too long since I've shared a  Fresh Fitted on here .  I rarely seem to have a good excuse for not posting but I always have a solid reason to come back.  Case in point: this week's edition of Fresh Fitted Friday no doubt includes its namesake Fresh Fitted but as an added bonus to my readership, I'm going to begin this entry by including some imagery of a  snapback brethren of  said fitted . Are you bowing your head in reverence for the stoic fowl emblazoned across the "F" of this cap? I am and so have a great many fans of the Frederick Keys ever since their inception in 1992. You'll notice the sweatband only bears two simple tags: the official New Era brand tag and the Professional Baseball tag. Conventional logic inspires me to rip off loose tags like these but for some reason, I feel compelled to leave them on. I'm probably just afraid that the feathe

Ok now, I know these entries are named "Fresh Fitted Friday" but sometimes it's important not to overlook the virtue of the non-fitted cap. While I am not suggesting the likelihood of entry titles like "Sweet Snapback Saturday" or anything of the sort, I do feel that certain cap logos just seem to look better on snapbacks. When I moved to New York City in 2010, I noticed then that much of the city's cap culture had started paying attention to snapbacks. I tried to stay away from that trend as much as possible but some caps represent your favorite team so well that, when they come your way it's hard to turn them down. Such was the case when I came across this vintage San Jose Giants cap. I've found that I'm not the only San Francisco Giants fan in town as I see plenty of standard SF Giants caps out and about, so I am looking forward to wearing this San Jose Giants snapback. I especially like the way the orange visor sets off with the gree

I spent this past Memorial Day weekend relaxing in my childhood hometown of Virginia Beach, Virginia. The holiday always symbolized the beginning of summer to me and because I can only associate this impending season with baseball, I feel compelled to showcase a hat from the team that entertained me for so many summers: the Norfolk Tides. ....and now for some sad news: This style is one that the Tides only wear on the road and sadly I've never actually seen them wearing this cap as I haven't yet had a chance to see them play anywhere other than Harbor Park in Norfolk. This particular cap is from 2011, but I've been unable to find any photos of Tides wearing the cap in any cards before 2009 and there doesn't seem to be too many recent cards out there where they are wearing it either. On a more positive note, I personally like this logo more than any of the other versions from recent years, though I'm not sure if I could really describe what action is happening

If there's one thing about Ebbets Field Flannels that I appreciate the most, it's that they take great lengths in reproducing what seems like the most obscure caps ever made and that almost all of the caps that they release have the following features: wool broadcloth, a horse hair buckram crown and satin taping. This particular replica is one of the 1969 Clinton Pilots. I don't have any other ballcaps with the "scrambled egg" design on the visor and that's probably because I'm usually not crazy about it being used on non-miltary hats. My childhood hometown had a large population of military personnel so respect for the armed services is inherent with most of the population.  Maybe that's why I feel as though the "scrambled egg" strictly belongs on military headware and as much as I respect the history of the design, I surely welcome it more than the so-to-speak "patriotic" designs that are MLB-approved. Since I'

It seems like lately I haven't been able to come up with an answer to this very simple question: what is it that makes a minor league ballcap interesting? In the past I argued that a minor league team's cap logo is inherently more interesting if it has very little resemblance to that of its parent club.  Yet, I've also recently applauded caps that make an interesting allusion to their parent clubs while maintaining a local sensibility in the logo. The latter is certainly the case with this Stockton Ports cap: An item of note is that the Stockton Ports have long-believed that the  Ernest Thayer poem "Casey at the Bat" was based on their team. While that might or might not be true, I like that they believe it enough to use an image of a Mudville Nine batter-man, who himself is wearing a pillbox cap with an M on it. I love meta-caps! As for the production year on this cap, there is no evidence of it before the 1994 season. It's not often-see