Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Welcome to the first blog of the 2020 baseball season! There were many bumps on the road up to this point but I’m hopeful the league and its teams continue to be dynamic in solving the new challenges it faces as they arise. T here's plenty else to talk about besides this rollout but I'll get to all that after we get through some "story time" on this week's cap. Last week's 2007 All- Star Game Los Angeles Dodgers cap was the first––and likely last––time I'll post a LA Dodgers hat on this blog but featuring such an adversity-laden combination of a hat was too strong an urge to resist and now to restore harmony, I feel compelled to  showcase a SF Giants cap. To that point, this week's hat is the 2019 variant worn by Will Smith who, as the sole Giants representative in that game, gave up a home-run to Joey Gallo and then got Francisco Lindor to ground out to end the eighth inning. Just one example why 2019 was a terrible year for the Giants. This hat

Hope everyone has a great "all-star break". See you back here next week!

Lots to discuss this week, y’all. First up: baseball’s back! Well, kinda. Sort of. Not really. I'll get to my take on all that but first I’d like to discuss this week’s Fresh Fitted Friday cap which is just like the one worn by Russell Martin, Brad Penny and Takashi Saito as they represented the Dodgers at the 2007 All-Star Game which was held in San Francisco. You’re probably wondering what in tarnation an SF Giants fan is doing with an LA Dodgers cap in his possession, let alone being so excited to feature it on his blog. Well the quick answer is that this cap is special in that it is a role-reversal of what would have happened had the 2020 season gone as planned. In that scenario, the Dodgers would have hosted the MLB All-Star Game in Los Angeles this coming Tuesday, July 14. As you might have noticed from previous blog posts, I tend to purchase the Giants version of almost every All-Star Game hat. This year however, I would have found myself in an interesting predicam

Editors note: Whoopsie, forgot to publish this last week! Enjoy. This week's Tucson Toros retro from Ebbets Field Flannels is the last vintage/retro style Pacific Coast League hat from my collection that I've got to share with y'all for the time being so I hope you enjoy the nostalgia before it's gone. Sorry, I shouldn't have gone there. Well maybe I should have because my love for baseball was born in the 1980s so of course I mostly remember the Toros as a Houston Astros affiliate who wore a garish red cap like  last week's Albuquerque Dukes cap . I've written about the lurid cap the Toros wore during that era however this week's hat features the design the team wore for the 1977 and 1978 seasons when they were the top farm club for the Texas Rangers. July 4th Weekend is as good a time as any to take a moment to remind everyone how important Ebbets Field Flannels is to baseball fans who appreciate quality caps that are Made in U.S.A.

I'm not sure if this is a record or not but I realized just as I sat down to write this post that it's been exactly two months since I've written about a snapback. Now while that Yakima Bears cap had some serious age on it, this week's Albuquerque Dukes hat is even older. As a San Francisco Giants fan, I'm typically opposed to showing any sort of enthusiasm toward the Los Angeles Dodgers and their affiliates but this Dukes cap is really great even though it's a red hat which I'm not into for obvious reasons. The team wore this cap from 1985 through their final season in Albuquerque which was in 2000. Baseball card photography from the late 80's and early 90's leaves a lot to be desired––as does the photography in the early years of this blog as I'm well aware––so I am not sure which exact year they switched over to grey underbrims. If you clicked on the link in the caption above you'll get to one of my first posts on this blog

This week's episode of The Quarantine Road Trip takes us to Denver which is just a few miles away from my alma mater, University of Colorado at Boulder. I showed love to Denver's MILB past back  in one of my earliest posts  but it must be said that  the longest-standing team name associated with the Mile High is the Bears, and not the Zephyrs. According some really low-quality photos I had to squint to decipher, I've determined that the Denver Bears only wore this logo from 1982-84 and  I'm going to go on believing that  until someone proves otherwise! I normally wear 7 3/8 so I'm not really sure why I went with a 7 1/2 here. Either way, it's better to go a size up than a size down, or two sizes down which is also a thing that I accidentally not long ago. The MILB batterman looks a little strange with the green underbrim but it's incredibly difficult to find a Denver Bears hat so I'll take it. The story of why this week's cap is ver

This week's episode of The Quarantine Road Trip still finds us in Alberta however this time we are taken even further north as we are examining this Edmonton Trappers retro that I picked up from Hat Club in August 2019. Like  last week's Calgary hat , I've got a strong connection to this Trappers logo which is ironic considering it was only a few years ago when I finally examined he design up close. That dude is pretty weird looking, isn't he? I've got to take a quick moment to say how much I appreciate Hat Club's commitment to producing high quality caps—and usually Made in U.S.A. taboot—as well as their usual reliability in reproducing logos for lots of these wacky teams from he 1980s and 90's that are now defunct. The combination of the kelly green underbrim with no MILB batterman is old school and I'm very into it. I really hope that Hat Club gets the itch to release more of these retro caps as it seems like it's been a while si