Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

After tending to other responsibilities the past few weeks, I'm happy to come back to this blog with the League Championship Series in full-swing. I'm sad the Mets were eliminated as I was hoping for my first Subway Series as a New Yorker but at least the Yankees are in there competing, especially against a team as divisive as the Houston Astros. I had some fun "underdog" hats lined-up in the event of a Seattle-Cleveland series but unlike the NLDS upsets that occurred last week to determine who would compete in the NLCS, the two AL teams with the best records are facing off to determine the winner of their pennant. I'll save my NL underdog hat for next week but I'm going according to plan this time around as today's date is October 21 which means it's Back to the Future Day  and thus the perfect opportunity to highlight the "All-Star Futures" hat worn during the premier showcase event played in conjunction with the 2019 All-Star Game that was

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is unique in that it's actually of the Fresh Foam variety!  This is the second ever foam pillbox cap that I've written about with the first being a  Tidewater Tides snapback  with nearly identical construction as this week's Charleston Charlies hat. The Charlies were a Cleveland affiliate from 1981 through 1983 and this logo takes the block "C" logo their parent team wore from 1979-86 and adds white piping around the crown. That is a touchstone of cap styles in 1983 which was the only year this cap was worn as well as their last season in Charleston, WV. Because this hat was only worn for one season I doubt if a fitted version was even made at the time. Also, I'm not usually a fan of the visor being the same color on both sides but this cap is very rare and sometimes you've got to take what you can get, folks!  The Tides cap I mentioned earlier has a Twins (Enterprise Products) tag on the sweatband while this

Something I had not considered before the Erie write-ups over the past few weeks was while the city is undoubtedly located in Pennsylvania, it is less than a half hour drive from the Ohio border. I then realized a good number of folks in that town might have as much reason to root for Cleveland teams as they would ones in Pennsylvania such as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. That duality is  eerily (I'm so sorry that I can't help myself sometimes!) reminiscent to Toledo's situation where it is essentially part of Michigan however is  technically in Ohio. Something similar can be said of Cincinnati's teetering on the border of Kentucky but I really fell down the rabbit hold when I read this article about how the Ohio River defines the borders of five states . So I guess if you couldn't tell by now, I've really got Ohio on the brain so it's really handy that this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is an Akron Aeros hat. Shout out to the good people of Akro

Seeing as how this is the last missive of the year, it only seems right to expect a blow-out post although I fear only I will see it as such. Then again, I'm the one writing this dang blog every week so cut me some slack, Jack! I often refer to my baseball fandom reaching its fever pitch in the late 1980's and early 1990's but just in case you need a reminder, some of the hat logos that are specific to that era are my all-time favorites as is the case with this week's Colorado Springs Sky Sox cap. The interlocking "C" and "S" on this cap are something that I will always associate with Colorado Springs although it would be foolish to assume it hasn't been used elsewhere beforehand. The one instance that jumps to mind as a possibility is with the USC Trojans . The tags here are fairly straightfoward considering this cap could be from anywhere between 1988 and 1992. The only reason I'd say it's from the later side is because the MIL

Y'all know how much I love these little "mini-series within a series" things so brace yourselves for the second part of the Columbus RedStixx celebration within the greater South Atlantic League jubilee! To celebrate this meta-gala proper, I'll be popping the tags on a cap that is about 25 years old! This week's cap is special because it's the logo I remember most from my time as a minor league baseball fanatic in the mid-1990's. The RedStixx wore this one from their inaugural season in 1992 through 1994 but possibly up until 1997. For some reason MILB cards from seemed to become more scarce as the decade progressed. The sweatband tags here are standard issue for the mid-1990's but the white satin taping has inspired me to create a new label that I'll be applying to previous posts as needed. The MILB batterman on the back of the cap here tells me this one's from 1994 at the earliest and the last year it could be from is 1996 

If you feel the same as me about the two-game "regular season" series last week between the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners in Japan, you recognize today as the true Opening Day of the 2019 baseball season. While I have no qualms with special series overseas, I do feel that having all 30 teams beginning their season on the same day is a sacred rite of passage. While all teams technically did play today, it's strange to think that the Mariners already have a 3-0 record. Hell, I'm just happy baseball is back so I'll stop complaining for now. I'm really excited for this season and for a change I'm actually into the side-patch that will be worn for year's All-Star Game which will be held in Cleveland for the first time since 1997. I'm probably going to pick up the cap that the San Francisco Giants will wear even though I'm still not a fan of the patch being on the right side due to the New Era flag placement on the left. I know it seems

Fall doesn't officially end for another month but we had our first snow in New York yesterday so I've decided to put myself in a winter mindset starting now. Another wintry experience I had this week was attending the Buffalo Bills-New York Jets game at MetLife Stadium and in the eight years that I've lived in New York, i t was my first time seeing a game there  which isn't surprising as I'm not much of a football fan. Even though I'm not that big into football, I've always made it a point to half-heartedly adopt a team from any city in which I've resided.  I latched onto the Denver Broncos when  I was at the University of Colorado and in the following years when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I took to the 49ers but when I moved to New York in 2010, I just couldn't decide between the Jets and the Giants. There wasn't anything about either one that attracted or repelled me in any way so I decided to expand my definition of a "loc