As a general rule of thumb, I tend to keep the theme of these posts topical with current events, anniversaries of historical occurrences and the like however this Burlington Expos hat was selected as tribute to my favorite band, Phish, who originated in Burlington, Vermont.
Tonight is the first of 7 consecutive shows that Phish will play at Madison Square Garden and as you can imagine, I'm thrilled about attending all of them however if you are reading this blog you are perhaps knowledgeable enough about minor league baseball to know that the Burlington where these Expos played is actually in the state of Iowa.
According to my latest tally via Wikipedia, approximately half of the states in the US have a town, city or county named Burlington however the cities in Iowa and Vermont are actually connected in the sense that a native of the latter called John Gray chose the name Burlington for the former as a tribute to his hometown back east.
 |
| I was thrilled to pick this cap up from Hat Club in February 2021 because my obsession with former Montreal Expos affiliates knows no bounds however the same is true of my disdain for red stitching on top of hats with white panels so I had to take care of that. |
 |
| My trusty seam-ripper came in really handy here and I will definitely be employing this method on other hats when the need arises. |
 |
| So far I've only worn the hat a few times but I expect the black sweatband is going to extend its lifespan to a more than reasonable amount of time. |
 |
| I'm not sure what prompted Hat Club to include the "Burlington Expos" text here but I presume it must have been some legality. Either way, looks like that seam-ripper has one more job to do. |
 |
| I did the best I could but it's definitely not perfect and I'm hoping it all sort of works itself out as the hat ages. One thing that's sure is I'm glad I didn't try any funny stuff in trying to remove the red stitching back there. |
 |
| For reference, this is a close up of the original logo which in my opinion, Hat Club did a great job recreating. If they ever feel like doing a "What If" version, my one request would be to simply invert the Jacksonville Expos "J" to make a lowercase "B" reminiscent of this error card of Mike Dull while he was with the Jaxpos. |
 |
| I originally shared that image of Dull's card from the1989 ProCards set in my Jacksonville Expos post from 2017 so I just had to pull up this photo of Dull wearing the Burlington Expos cap from the 1987 set since that is this week's hat. |
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
Comments