I've been making my best efforts to post every week throughout this current baseball season but last week was simply too hectic for me to get it together to do the Nashville-themed post which I hoped to do as a tribute to June Carter Cash who if still alive would be celebrating her 94th birthday that day. My goal for this week's write-up of this Nashville Stars cap is that it makes up for that lapse!
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| Music City Baseball, LLC (“MCB”) is the name of the collective that aims to bring Major League Baseball to Nashville. The group has selected "Stars" as the eventual team's name in honor of the barnstorming team based in Nashville from the late 1930s through the early 1950s. |
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| MCB partnered with Ebbets Field Flannels (or, "EFF", for those with a penchant for acronyms) in creating caps to drum up excitement for Nashville's chase of their white whale, which for many years now has been to host an MLB team. |
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| There's not a lot of information out there on the Nashville Stars of the Negro National League which to me seems like an opportunity for baseball historians to seek out that knowledge while we wait for this next incarnation to comes to fruition! |
The first MILB team that comes to mind when I think of "Stars" is the former Las Vegas Stars, who used that name while playing in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League from 1983 through 2000. The team was later known as the Las Vegas 51s from 2001 through 2018 until they rebranded as the Las Vegas Aviators ahead of the 2019 season.
If the current ownership of the Oakland Athletics goes through with their plan of moving their team to Las Vegas, I'm uncertain what will happen to the Aviators as well as their home, Las Vegas Ballpark. I imagine there isn't enough baseball fandom to support both a Triple-A team and a big league club but only time will truly tell.
A logical place for the Aviators to land could be in Northern Arizona although Flagstaff and Sedona would likely not welcome the construction of a ballpark in their scenic environs. One geographically feasible possibility would be Bakersfield which hasn't fielded a professional team since the Blaze played its final season in the California League in 2016.
I'll pause on the Las Vegas speculation to now focus on the Huntsville Stars who played in the Southern League from 1985 through 2014. These "other" Stars were also affiliated with the Oakland Athletics from their inaugural season though 1998, after which they became a farm club for the Milwaukee Brewers.
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| The two players who instantly come to mind when I think of the Huntsville Stars are José Canseco and Mark McGwire. Their legacy might be tarnished by their association with performance enhancing drugs but, I'll always consider them to be stars to the fullest. |
And in addition to Huntsville's Oakland/Las Vegas connection, there is also a link to Nashville as the Stars origins trace back to the Double-A Nashville Sounds who actually moved to Huntsville to make room for Triple-A Evansville Triplets of the American Association. That team assumed the Nashville Sounds name which is still being used today.
I have never made a secret of my affinity for the different Nashville Sounds logos over the years and I am proud to say that I have retroactively placed the Favorites tag on all of those previous posts. This week's cap does not yet fall into that category however please feel free to look upon those great Nashville Sounds hats whenever you should feel the need!
Similar to the how I am unsure how the Las Vegas Athletics will co-exist with their Triple-A counterparts being in the same city, if there is no room for the Sounds once the Nashville Stars era begins, I am hereby imploring a Triple-A team to set up shop in New Orleans that will be known as the Sounds.
The New Orleans Sounds is an incredible name plus reparations need to be made for the affront New Orleans committed by calling their MILB team the Baby Cakes for three seasons. To be fair, what's even more offensive is the Utah Jazz continuing to use their current moniker which came along with the New Orleans Jazz when they moved to Salt Lake City in 1979.
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| I often think back on this legendary Twitter beef where the Nashville Sounds tried to grandstand the Memphis Redbirds and how savage Memphis was in dropping the knowledge that the original music-themed sports teams in Tennessee were the Memphis Sounds of the American Basketball Association and the Memphis Blues of the American Association. |
One last item I'd like to mention is that in the spirit of optimizing efficiency, this week’s hat is performing double duty in that in addition to honoring the Nashville legend who celebrated her heavenly birthday last week, the Star component of the logo also happens to be a nod to June 30 being National Asteroid Day. Go Stars!
This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is not going on the Trading Block however please don't hesitate to reach out if you want any other cap from that list and you are willing to part with any of the hats on my Wish List.
As always, thanks for coming back to read about baseball hat geekery. I've got comments disabled here so if you'd like to discuss a trade or simply just chat about hats, please feel free to connect via the following social sites:
Instagram: @baseballmilquetoast
Twitter: @FittedFriday
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