Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Even though this is only my sixth post in the last 14 weeks, this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection breaks a consecutive streak of hats featuring orange and/or green. While this is not a significant piece of information for you to know, I like keeping track of tidbits like that so that I do not place undue emphasis on any one particular color or theme. One area where I do enjoy being consistent is using this blog to connect my hats with current events as well as my own personal experiences. I also enjoy relating fun holidays to caps I own such as this Lowell Spinners on-field in tribute to "National Flannel Day" by  weaving in its connection to the rich history of textile production of Lowell, Massachusetts.  I love how the baseball is incorporated into this logo so much it might actually be my all-time favorite cap worn by a Red Sox farm club. The New Era "Flag" design came about in 1997 which is the year I would say the other sweatband tags here were used.

Looking back at the past few posts made me realize that all of these recent caps have featured either green, yellow or orange hues which are ones that some might consider garish. So continuing on in that tradition, this week's Fresh Fitted Friday  selection is the "Trident" variation of the Norfolk Tides logo which falls within that loud category that tend to gravitate towards. I took the seam ripper to work here and I'm pleased with the results. Also, I'm not sure exactly when the Tides wear the "Trident" logo but this and the road cap are easily my two favorites. No knock on the home hat but it is going into its eighth year and I wish the team would play around with the colorblocking by at least featuring black panels on the front. Standard issue sweatband tags here. All good. I like the "Gatorade" vibes on the batterman here enough to add a new label for it on the this post and am committed to tagging future and past posts with featuring b

January 19 is National Popcorn Day so of course I am currently regretting not picking up one of the sweet Cracker Jack inspired caps from the "Ballpark Snacks" collection released by Hat Club x Yote City in 2022. Because I am hesitant to pay resell prices for newer caps, I had to quickly find an alternate solution for a popcorn-related cap for this week's  Fresh Fitted Friday post. Whilst researching my options I learned there are two different kinds of corn used to make popcorn:  butterfly and  mushroom. The former is what you are enjoying after it is loaded with butter and salt at the movie theatre whereas   the latter — which  coincidentally enough, also resembles a  baseball— is the kind that is coated in caramel to make  Cracker Jack. Because a brown hat that also features red, white and blue was sadly not at my disposal, a pivot toward the butterfly varietal of popcorn brings us to the Monarcas de Eugene cap which the Eugene Emeralds debuted in 2019 as their inaug

Throughout this blog's history, my pettiness as a San Francisco Giants fan has led me to systematically avoiding write-ups of caps worn by my team's rivals. While there have been less than a handful of Los Angeles Dodgers posts over the years, this week’s post is my first time ever featuring an Oakland Athletics cap as a Fresh Fitted Friday selection. In my defense, the previously featured Dodgers caps were (objectively speaking) absolute bangers that I mostly posted in hopes of finding a trade partner. And today my justification for breaking the A’s streak is January 12 being “Kiss a Ginger Day” which left me choice but to pay tribute to Mark McGwire who is indisputably the All-Time Mack Daddy of Baseball Gingers. Owning an item commemorating 1989’s “Battle of the Bay” is obviously not something I would ever own personally but that did not stop me from scooping up this beauty as a gift to a friend who is an A’s fan. The 1989 World Series patch brings about some mixed emotion

It has been almost two full months since my last post and while the holidays kept me occupied, things have been slow in regards to picking up new caps that I have been excited about. Luckily, I went home to visit my folks in Virginia and brought back some old hats to spice up the rotation such as this 1993 Baltimore Orioles cap in celebration of January 5 being National Bird Day. In 1993, the Orioles were in the midst of a renaissance with Cal Ripken inching closer to breaking Lou Gehrig's record of consecutive games played as well as Oriole Park at Camden Yards hosting that year's All-Star Game just one season after its opening.  Over the years writing this blog, I have made more than a few mentions of the New York Yankees being one of the last teams to switch over to caps with grey undervisors in 1994 but this week's Fresh Fitted Friday shows that the Orioles were also holding onto the green til the very end. I am not sure how much longer I will be able to resist popping

In all the years posting on this blog, I have never done any sort of Veterans Day post which I think is somewhat of a shame considering my hometown Virginia Beach is mere minutes away from  Naval Station Norfolk which is  the world's largest naval base.  Whether I was seeing the Tidewater Tides play or just out and about in town, uniforms were a regular sight growing up! Perhaps the reason for not having done a dedicated post is that I do not own any of the "Armed Forces Day" hats so while I do not have a military uniform themed cap, what I do have is a sort of meta-uniform cap by way of Paul Lukas's Uni Watch Blog which if we are being honest is a big reason why my blog exists. Obsessing over the nuances of uniforms is a tale as old as time. Lukas worked with Ebbets Field Flanels to create this cap featuring the design prowess of Bryan Molloy in this now-iconic cap logo of winged stirrups. Even though this week's cap is not a military-themed cap, the pride of o

The 2023 MLB season concluded with the Texas Rangers defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks to clinch the franchise's first World Series championship this past Wednesday, November 1. As a San Francisco Giants fan, I am thrilled Bruce Bochy led the Rangers to win it all during his first year managing since coming out of his brief retirement which began ahead of the 2020 season. Another point of elation—albeit on a more petty level— is that the Diamondbacks suffered the loss at home in front of their fans although the crowd reaction in Arizona when the Rangers scored made me forget which team was on the road. Nevertheless, the 2024 season will be here soon enough and I have high hopes for Bob Melvin's first year managing the Giants. My ideal scenario would be Melvin and Bochy squaring off in the World Series but those are the types of ambitions one can really only have a few days into the offseason during that time when every team has a shot. Once the chips start falling in the free