Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

I'm switching things up in a major way this week as this 2018 Brooklyn Nets "City Edition" cap marks the first time this blog's ever featured an NBA team and the reason being May 21 is Notorious B.I.G. Day in Brooklyn  and Biggie's affinity for Coogi sweaters is what inspires this design. The Coogi pattern on the bill here makes this cap a must have for any fan of hip-hop, even (self-hating) Knicks fans such as myself :::ducks::: Spreading Coogi love all the way to the sweatband. Thats the Brooklyn way. The silhouette on the NBA logo doesn't have a cool name like "MLB Batterman" and until the design switches to Kobe Bryant, which his hopefully one day soon, I think that's fine. The backstory on the silhouette is actually more interesting than the logo itself so if you want to read more on that, here's a great write-up from 2017 by The Undefeated . This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is not going on the  Trading Block  however please

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

I'm not sure how this blog has been around for ten years without having done at least one Mother's Day post but that all changes today with this Asheville Yacumamas hat! A  yacumama  is a giant snake-like creature that is believed to inhabit the Amazon Rainforest in Peru and means  "Mother of Water"  i n Quechua,  the indigenous  language spoken in the region. The words  yaku  "water" and mama  "mother" come together to describe what according to the  legend, is responsible for the the creation of all water-based life forms. If you're wondering how a yacumama was chosen as Asheville's identity for the Copa de la Diversion campaign then let me regale you with the Cherokee tale of a giant "leech the size of a house" that resided in the Hiwassee River in Murphy, North Carolina. I mentioned the " Poochie Effect " in last week's Charleston Alley Cats post and  one of the many things I love about the Copa de la Diversion

After two straight weeks of lacking "fitted" content on the blog, this week's motto is S naps Ain't Back !!!! Like most collectors in the cap enthusiast community, my preference is to own a fitted version of a cap but there are times when the retro fitted is not a better option than a true vintage snapback.The caps I've featured the previous two posts are perfect examples of this. The 1983 Charleston Charlies retro from Ebbets Field Flannels released a few years ago has a logo that is a bit more squat than the one on my cap but more importantly, I would have preferred a nylon material over their standard wool offering in that case. I'm also not even sure if the Charlies had a fitted version of that cap since it was only worn for a year. The next instance is the  immediately noticeable   minified Charleston Wheelers logo on Hat Club's retro. This also happened with one of their Portland Rockies releases but then again, these are all such a rare logos tha

I've got another snapback for this edition of  Fresh "Fitted" Friday but while last week's Charleston Charlies design is synonymous with a team's departure from town, this time I've got the iconic logo the team wore when baseball returned in 1987 all the way until they rebranded to become the Charleston Alley Cats in 1995. I always thought this logo referenced the smog produced by the coal mines in West Virginia but it turns out that puffy cloud is a representation of the steamboats that chugged along Charleston's Kanawha River starting back in the early 19th century.   I was hoping to find a fitted version of this cap but this snapback will just have to do for now as I've been on the hunt for this logo for years! This sweatband is so white it could pass for a clerical collar so yeah, I'd say this this hat is in pretty good shape considering it's about 30 years old. During my boat ride down Wheelers memory lane, this 1987 ProCards James Hendri

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is unique in that it's actually of the Fresh Foam variety!  This is the second ever foam pillbox cap that I've written about with the first being a  Tidewater Tides snapback  with nearly identical construction as this week's Charleston Charlies hat. The Charlies were a Cleveland affiliate from 1981 through 1983 and this logo takes the block "C" logo their parent team wore from 1979-86 and adds white piping around the crown. That is a touchstone of cap styles in 1983 which was the only year this cap was worn as well as their last season in Charleston, WV. Because this hat was only worn for one season I doubt if a fitted version was even made at the time. Also, I'm not usually a fan of the visor being the same color on both sides but this cap is very rare and sometimes you've got to take what you can get, folks!  The Tides cap I mentioned earlier has a Twins (Enterprise Products) tag on the sweatband while this

I've already mentioned this before but can't help reiterating 2021 is a milestone year for this blog as it celebrates its 10th anniversary. Having the opportunity to do something I truly enjoy for a decade is a strong reminder of how very fortunate I have been during that time. When I published my first post in August 2011, my passion for ballcap collecting had just been reignited after spending my first full year in New York City. Of course, I  wore ballcaps when I was in the Bay Area but it wasn't an everyday thing like it is for me now. My move here during the Giants historic postseason run in 2010 must have amplified my desire to flaunt my love for the Bay as well as connect with people from home. Thankfully, there was an East Village bar called Finnerty's where Bay Area ex-pats congregated and wearing a Giants hat was an easy way to spot each other as we enjoyed the spoils of New York while far from home. Wearing my fresh Giants cap with the 2010 World Series patch