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Showing posts with the label 2000's

Pre-2004 Everett AquaSox - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!

I hope everyone appreciated the temporary break from vintage caps over the last few weeks but I have to give you fair warning: this week's Everett AquaSox cap has plenty of aging on it as I have good reasons to believe this particular one was produced before 2004. Just looking at the logo is of no help in estimating this cap's age since the primary design has not been altered since the team's inception back in 1995, which of course was prime-time for tealism which we see prominently on the brim and cap button. The sweatband tags and satin taping on the inside are definitely from no year earlier than 2002 but I'd say this hat is either from that year or 2003, which was the last year this MILB tag appeared on most caps. I like the teal and poison-green on the MILB batterman here. Definitely spices things up! As you're well aware, I'm a huge fan of backstories when it comes to MILB teams and Everett is no exception. I've previously featured the A

2004 Indianapolis Indians - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

Instead of counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training facilities as we normally would around this time of year, the baseball world has been consumed by the repercussions of the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal  and I've been doing my best to abstain from painting broad strokes with my judgement brush. But as a San Francisco Giants fan it's hard to stay silent, especially when the team I loathe most is mentioned as the potential beneficiary of an L.A. City Council plot to request the recall the of the 2017 and 2018 World Series trophie s. At first it made my blood boil but the more I think about how it would play out, the more hilarious that outcome seems. The "Total Recall" outcome is something that I'm not going to actively back or root against but if it ends up happening, trolling the Dodgers would almost become too easy as Giants fans would have more material to work with than we ever had before. As I mentioned earli

2004 Iowa Cubs - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

Hello and Happy New Year to anyone reading today's post! And if you're reading this entry in March, I suppose it would be rude of me not to offer you the same courtesy.  I want to start the year off with a bang but also want to honor my 2019 mission of chronicling the Pacific Coast League hats in my collection that I felt were ready for the spotlight. So instead of coming out guns blazing, I'm going to kind of just kill y'all softly with a few caps from teams in the American conference of the PCL, starting with this Iowa Cubs hat from 2004. This cap logo has been in steady use since it was introduced in 1988 however it's used more sparingly these days since it was designated as the team's road cap in 2006, which is also when the "I-Cubs" home cap debuted. The first clue that this cap is from 2004 is this MILB tag came about that year (ok,  maybe 2003) and was only in use for a brief time afterwards. Because the sweatband tags are of th

2005-07 Round Rock Express - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

You know it's the end of the baseball season when I'm trying to cram as many games in as possible. Last week's Staten Island Yankees game was loads of fun so this week I ventured to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to watch the big league club take on the Texas Rangers. That matchup reminded me that I hadn't featured a Texas-related hat in far too long and in fact, it's been over two years since the 1991-92 Jackson Generals  post so this week's 2005-07 Round Rock Express cap has a connection to not only that cap but the Rangers as well.  The Express wore this cap throughout the entirety of their first stint as an Astros affiliate which was from 2000-2010 The MILB tag and "Originators of the True Fitted" text on the satin taping as well as the "blue box special" New Era and size tags are something we've seen on caps from 2005-2007 such as the Portland SeaDogs and the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx . As we saw in the SeaDogs and D

2003 Hudson Valley Renegades - Fresh Fitted Friday

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday  selection from the New York-Penn League takes us north of New York City metropolitan area to Duchess County which is where the Hudson Valley Renegades have played since their inaugural season in 1994. This cap logo was worn by the Renegades from 1994 up through 2003, which was their final season with the burgundy and green colorway.  In addition to the colorway switch-up in 2004, the MILB sweatband tag is from no later than 2003 which tells me that would be  the final year this cap could have been worn. For as long as this team has existed, it has relied on Studio Simon in Louisville Kentucky to design its entire brand identity. For an in-depth account of the team's rebrand in 2017, check out this  this excellent write-up   by Paul Caputo for SportsLogos.net. It takes a good amount of effort and desire to leave the city for fun day trips up to the Hudson Valley and while I definitely don't get up there enough, just writing ab

2002 Toledo Mud Hens

The International League festivities continue this week with a cap from a team whose city has a history of hosting professional baseball that goes as far back as the origin of the league itself which was founded in 1884 while a year earlier, the Toledo Blue Stockings was an inaugural member of the Northwestern League which was all teams from the midwest.  They later became the Toledo Mud Hens in 1902 when they joined the American Association, which was an independent league that later jumped up to Double-A in 1912. The team then got another promotion when  the American Association became a Triple-A league in 1946 and stayed at that level when they joined the International League in 1965. To me this cap is synonymous with my appreciation of the International League as it was the cap the Mud Hens wore when I started going to games almost 30 years ago. The fact that the team still wears this cap is a testament to its longevity. The satin taping is typical of caps from

2002 West Michigan Whitecaps

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is a  West Michigan Whitecaps hat because the state of Michigan made some waves (I'm so, so sorry for this terrible pun) this week as they became the 10th state in the U.S. to legalize recreational marijuana. This is no doubt going to do wonders in continuing to grow their economy and decrease overcrowding in prisons, which to be fair has dropped some in recent years. It's now dawning on me that I've never been to Michigan but I have some friends in Kalamazoo that I can visit and Bells Brewery is also located there so I think I might need to make the trip at some point. I should try to check out a Whitecaps game and maybe the Great Lakes Loons or Lansing Lugnuts too. The Whitecaps stuck with this logo from their inaugural season in 1994 through 2002 which is a really long time considering this logo is nondescript when compared to the zany logo trend that many teams jumped on during that time.  T he satin taping

2005-2007 Portland Seadogs - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

I made it to my first and only game in the month of June last Saturday and while I considered posting the new hats I picked up at the stadium that night, this week's Portland Sea Dogs hat is even more special as I am choosing to feature it in honor of my friends getting married in Maine this weekend.  You have to respect this logo's longevity as the design has been with the club since the inaugural season in 1994. There's no chatter of it going away although there are a few weekend specific caps being worn this year. As we've seen on other hats, the blue box sweatband tags came about sometime in 2005 as did the "Originators of the True Fitted" text on the satin taping, both of which are featured here. I don't usually have much to say about the MILB batterman but one thing of note on this cap is that it's a thicker patch similar to the 2006 West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx hat I wrote about in June 2017. As I mentioned earlier, there a

2008-12 St. Lucie Mets Cap - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

Even though my stock of caps from the Sunshine State isn't quite depleted, I've few other themes in mind for the coming weeks so this one is now winding down. In the meantime, I hope you dig this week's cap: a St. Lucie Mets cap featuring the "Big Fly" logo! I've seen this version of the cap logo on caps as far back as 2001 although it was usually on ones with black crowns until about 2008 MILB switched over to polyester caps with black underbrims in 2008 so that's the earliest this cap could be from which makes sense considering the writing on the satin taping. I like the amount of orange on the MILB batterman here. I'm definitely not a New York Mets fan but you better believe I'll wear this hat to a game at CitiField at least once this season! I'm really digging the 30th Anniversary cap that Justin Dunn is wearing here and that the St. Lucie Mets will be wearing throughout this season. Speaking of anniversary caps, I re