Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

My prayers to the baseball gods for the Dodgers' elimination from the NLCS have been met with smiles as the Atlanta Braves emerged victorious. To show my appreciation for this miraculous event, I dug up a 2004 Richmond Braves hat which I was not planning on writing about until now. I grew up seeing the R-Braves quite often when they came to play my hometown Norfolk (then known as Tidewater) Tides however I associate with the team with the navy crowned version of the cap rather than this red and black version which appeared around 1996 at the earliest. The satin taping in the crown is consistent with hats from 2002-04 as are the New Era and size tags although the MILB tag is something that I have only seen on caps from 2004 so that is my best possible guess of years that this one was worn.  I really like how the black pops on the MILB batterman here but I'm still not crazy about red hats so one day I would love to see a retro feature a reversed colorway of this cap with a bla

As of writing this the Braves lead the Dodgers 3-2 in the NLCS and I am calling on every hopeful ounce of my being to send strength to the Braves to clinch the pennant  in front of their fans at home as the series moves on to Atlanta. A win in one of the next two games will just the cure after Atlanta's pitching fell apart at the seams  during Game 5 in Los Angeles. There are no Braves caps currently in my cache to write about this week but piggybacking off last week's Jacksonville Braves hat, I am happy to share what I refer to as the Jacksonville Expos "1994 What If?" cap  as the team never actually sported the all blue look during their existence from 1985 through 1990. The Jaxpos exclusively wore a pinwheel style cap but I like to imagine that if they had stayed on as a Montreal Expos affiliate through at least 1994, they would have adopted the blue crown and visor combination that their parent team implemented during that season. As much as I prefer the "Mad

Welp my beloved San Francisco Giants took their postseason run all the way to the fifth game of the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers and while there's not really a bigger sting in sports than to lose at the hands of your most bitter rival, the healing has to begin right now. Instead of dwelling on the Giants' missed opportunities tonight and throughout the series in general, what comes next for me is cheering on the Atlanta Braves as they take on the Dodgers in the NLCS. I should also mention my other good reason to root for them is that my wife is originally from Atlanta which means I married into a whole family of Braves fans! I wasn't always big on the Braves for a number of reasons growing up with the first being I did not care much for slogans like "America's Team"  which I always felt sounds as silly as saying "God's Team" or something like that. I also didn't care much for their perpetual winning in the 1990's and because even

MLB's National League Division Series starts tonight and while last year around this time I was hate-watching the Dodgers and hoping they would lose simply for schadenfreude purposes, tonight I'm hoping the Dodgers lose because it would give the Giants a perfect win record against them in the playoffs as this series marks their first ever postseason meeting! I was admittedly very stressed out last week because the Giants had yet to clinch the division yet somehow right now I'm even more unnerved because of the gravitas of this impending series against the Dodgers so I decided the best distraction would be to write about a Copa de la Diversion cap and have tasked this 2019 Lakewood Medusas hat for the job. Medusas  is the Spanish word for jellyfish which makes sense considering Medusozoa is the latin-based term used to refer to any of these closely related species of aquatic animals. And you really have to give Brandiose credit for making this gelatinous menace look even

We are about to enter the final weekend of MLB's regular season and a t the time of writing this, t he National League West is the only division that has not been clinched. My beloved  San Francisco Giants have the best record in MLB but have yet to clinch due to the pesky nature of those bum Dodgers! Nevertheless, I have no doubt that my team will emerge victorious. So to take my mind off this stressful situation I'm putting the focus of this week's Fresh Fitted Friday  on a vintage Tampa Bay Devil Rays cap to celebrate the team that will without a doubt finish the season with the best record in the American League. I remember not being moved by this this logo when it was introduced to the public in late 1995 but now I've come to realize that I was just a very young curmudgeon at that point in my life. The rainbow gradient logo rules.  The Devil Rays played their first game on March 31, 1998 however these sweatband tags are clearly from the 1993-96 era which tells me t

I'm finally taking a break from the "National Day" theme for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection because for the first time in a long while I've got some baseball-related current events that correspond with hats in my collection that I need to tell you good folks about! The Chicago White Sox clinched the American League East on Thursday night ea rlier this week which is exciting as this is their first postseason appearance since they faced the Tampa Bay Rays in the League Division Series in 2008. The White Sox were my AL team growing up and I'm all in on cheering for them as they are set to face the Houston Astros in the LDS. My affection for the White Sox without a doubt began –see what I'm doing here?– when Frank Thomas started putting up big numbers in 1991 which in turn led me to collecting as many baseball cards as possible of my new favorite player. The cards featuring Thomas in his Auburn University uniform were cool but the ones that are tru

Today is September 17 which means it's also "National Fox Day" and I'm not sure that I have any way to celebrate that holiday outside of sharing this Appleton Foxes cap that I estimate to be from 1992. So I guess this means I'm back on my MILB grind, folks! Fans of 1990's MILB caps are no doubt familiar with this one as it was made famous when Alex Rodriguez wore the  teal version of the Appleton Foxes logo during his first assignment as a professional ballplayer in 1994.  I got this cap as part of a haul so please excuse that gnarly sweatband. I'll need to find a way to clean that thing if I ever want to wear this one. The lack of batterman embroidery indicates this cap has some age on it but the MILB tag on it tells me it has to be from 1992. The oldest cap I've come across with any MILB tag is my 1988-92 Colorado Springs Sky Sox cap which is more likely than not to be from 1992 as well.   I have two other caps from 1992 in addition to the aforemen