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Showing posts with the label 2004

2004 Richmond Braves - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

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

2004 Montgomery Biscuits Alternate

If you're the kind of person who keeps up with the National Today calendar, you'll notice I forgot to mention in last week's Asheville Yacumamas post that another reason (besides Mother's Day) I decided to write about the Asheville Tourists "Copa" cap  on that date is because "National Tourism Day" has taken place in the US on  May 7 every year since 1983. Hopefully you forgive my oversight in that instance and in the spirt of continuing on with the National Day trend, today is National Buttermilk Biscuit Day so I’ve got a Montgomery Biscuits alternate cap that I estimate to be from 2004.  I've talked about the Poochie Effect lots here lately but this logo is latter day Poochie rather than the 1.0 Era, which I believe began in 1994 with the advent of the Charleston RiverDogs, Brevard County Manatees, Ottawa Lynx, Albany Polecats and to a lesser extent, Augusta GreenJackets. This sweatband tag set is identical to my  2003 Hudson Valley Renegades

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

2004 Tacoma Rainiers - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

Now that the Pacific Coast League discovery session is in full swing, we need to focus on the Tacoma Rainiers, whose PCL membership goes all the way back to 1960, thus making them longest-tenured member of the league. It would be foolish to think that the PCL didn't suffer some sort of atrophy when Major League Baseball began populating the west in 1958 but one benefit was cities in Washington state like Tacoma and Spokane were able to gain entry to the league. Wordmark logos typically don't do it for me but the teal "R" in Rainiers here is incredible.  Ahh, the famed 2004 satin taping commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 59Fifty cap.   Of course, I love the tealism on the MILB batterman as well.  While I certainly appreciate the uniqueness of the 50th anniversary caps looked, I think it should go on the   Trading Block  because I'm sure someone out there is looking for a rarity such as this one and is willing to part  with one of the caps

2004 Brooklyn Cyclones

As a San Francisco Giants fan, I have a distaste for anything Dodger-centric or adjacent which explains why I've always had a hard time getting into the Brooklyn Cyclones cap, which I've begrudgingly decided to write about for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday .  In  one of my earlier, more cringeworthy posts  I ranted on end regarding my dismay at the overt Brooklyn Dodgers nostalgia on display at CitiField but even that is nothing compared to what we see on the cap worn by the New York Mets' New York-Penn League affiliate.  The earliest I've ever seen these New Era brand and size tags are on an MLB All Star Game cap from 2001 but I doubt this cap is from the Cyclones inaugural season which was that year.  The satin taping is typical of caps from 2002-04 but the MILB sweatband tag is from no earlier than  2004 , so that would be the earliest year this cap had likely been worn. I like the powder blue MILB batterman here as well as on the outli

2004 Lakewood BlueClaws - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

The South Atlantic League celebration continues this week with another Lakewood BlueClaws cap but this time we're taking a look at the cap logo that the team wore in its early years, 2004 to be exact.  You might be wondering how I could be so certain that this cap is from 2004 and the answer to that lies in the heart of cap as the gold taping inside the crown commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 59Fifty cap. The only other cap that I've seen with this special taping is the  Ogden Raptors cap that I wrote about in October 2017 . The logo on this week's cap depicts "Pinchy" clutching a baseball that is giant in proportion to itself which is fun but the logo is a little blurry. The team corrected this recently by mildly sprucing up the logo and below is a view of one of its alternate on-field caps which features the updated image. I don't feel a strong connection to this cap so it's going  on the  Trading Block   as I'm sure some

2003 and 2004 "What If?" World Series caps - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

It's official. The Houston Astros are 2017 World Series champions and now that there are no more baseball games until the Spring, it's time to remember  the words that the Starks in Winterfell are known to say: "winter is coming." Question: did you like the Game of Thrones  reference? I was going to go 80's Glam/Hair Metal and say, "In the words of Cinderella, 'it's gonna be a long cold winter' without baseball" but I didn't think many of y'all would get the reference. No matter how you put it, the impending winter solstice without games occupying my mind gives me time for pondering (or ruminating, musing, etc.) new quips for the blog however I'm certain everyone in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization will probably use that time to wonder "what could have been" had they won Game 7. As a San Francisco Giants fan, I'm feeling a toxic level of schadenfreude running through me knowing that although my team suc

2004 Ogden Raptors - Fitted Friday!!!!

Now that the 2017 regular season has ended, my torture endured as a San Francisco Giants fan is over—what's say you? The Los Angeles Dodgers are favorites to win the National League pennant? My bitter rivals!?!? Nooooooo!  I suppose my only defense is to jinx them by showcasing this vintage cap from the Ogden Raptors who are a longtime Dodgers minor league affiliate.  I know my last attempt to mush the Dodgers didn't work however you don't understand the power of a hat from 2004. T he New York Yankees had the best record in the American League that year yet lost in the ALCS to the Red Sox despite having a 3-0 lead in the series. My guess is this upset was spawned by bad juju performed by a Yankees hater. When the Ogden Raptors cap logo debuted in 1994, it fit in well with the other kid-friendly cartoonish logos being used at the time. Fast forward ten years and the team still used a similar logo for this cap. The dark navy seen here has been replaced with the bl

Early 2000's Minnesota Twins Cap - Fresh Fitted Friday!

Welcome back to your regularly scheduled missives of a baseball milquetoast! The last few weeks of summer have been hectic for me but I'm ready for fall even if at this very moment my beloved San Francisco Giants are two games away from being eliminated from a wild card berth. But you know who's in the running for one of those berths in the AL? The Minnesota Twins! I've written about some Twins farm teams on here but never the big club. I figure now is as good a time to do that as any since they're currently playing decent baseball which is something they haven't done since 2010. That's not a fact but the way; it's just an opinion I came up with by looking at their record over the last few years! Coupling that opinion with the 3 World Series the Giants have won since 2010 is comforting but  let's get back to this cap because it intrigues me. The tags and satin taping are consistent with what I've seen on caps from 2002-2004 however I ha