Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday post might be the last for a little while as I'm about to embark on a busy summer that slated to feature some fun travels as well as a big home improvement project. I don't want to share too many details yet but let's just say the background you see on the Instagram posts will be affected in a major way! Every year on the first Saturday in June, National Black Bear Day is celebrated to recognize the most common bear in the United States. Since tomorrow is the first Saturday in June, the theme for this week's post is going to be ursine-focused with my 1948 Knoxville Smokies retro from Ebbets Field Flannels. Ok, so maybe the logo isn't even ursine-adjacent at all but for me, whenever I think of Knoxville, the first thing that comes to mind is the Smoky Mountains and my next thought after that is of the black bears that live in the park.  Ebbets branding and the Made In U.S.A. pride comprise the magnificent duo of tags seen on almos

We're only a week into the 2022 MLB season and can you even believe I'm already pivoting to a cap of a non-baseball team for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday post? Well, at least it's for good reason as  the hat I'm sharing with you good folks is the perfect hat for today as  National Laundry Day is celebrated every year on April 15.  Fun fact: Chef Thomas Keller's Michelin 3-star restaurant in the Napa Valley got its name because the original site on which The French Laundry currently stands was a laundry. For this reason, the clothespin is a touchstone of the restaurant's branding to this day. This collaboration between Ebbets Field Flannels and The French Laundry was produced in 2019  in honor of the famed California restaurant's 25th anniversary . As the name of the restaurant suggests, The French Laundry's cuisine leans toward classical French techniques however the spirit of the dining experience showcases an elegant and personalized style of se

I wouldn’t fault you if you considered me choosing a Virginia team’s cap for last week’s National Maryland Day post to be a sort of preemptive April Fools’ Day gag however I assure you that was not my intention! I stand by last week’s hat actually being on-topic but can still understand if you thought it preposterous. Whether you appreciated the interstate tie-in or not, hopefully you’ll get a kick out of the 1958 Hiroshima Carp retro from Ebbets Field Flannels that I’ve selected for this week’s Fresh Fitted Friday post. I'm not usually too crazy about the felt logos from Ebbets but the serifs combined with the chunky lettering here is very unique so I'm all for it.  The Made in U.S.A. quality from Ebbets is unrivaled. I try to always mention that when . I'm not sure if it's the lighting or what but the satin undervisor here looks extra special here. As one might have come to expect, a bit of backstory will be needed to explain this week’s hat once again! I’m not sure

In the spirit of being transparent from the start, I am compelled to disclose I had to reach a bit for a hat to match today's holiday which is National Maryland Day . I must admit when it comes to Maryland, my cap coffers are rather bereft so I opted for one worn by the Richmond Virginians which was a team in the neighboring state of… you guessed right, Virginia! Researching the history of baseball in Maryland led me down a few potential caps for this post but I was most surprised with Richmond's past being very much intertwined with both of the minor league iterations of the Baltimore Orioles. The first concerted effort between the two cities occurred in 1915 when the International League Orioles temporarily moved from Baltimore to Richmond because despite fielding a club featuring a hometown talent by the name of Babe Ruth, were unable to compete with the popularity of the Baltimore Terrapins of a newly created  outlaw "third major league" called the  Federal League

It feels like it’s been more than a week since my last post but maybe that’s because so much has happened in between now and then in regards to baseball happenings as well as :::gestures broadly::: everything else going on in the world. I'll discuss the developing flurry of baseball activity in future posts but this week I want take a moment to bring attention to the terror Russia is unleashing in Ukraine. I’m not sure if I’ve ever noticed any traffic for this site coming from Ukraine but if I do have any readers either living in or from there, my heart and prayers go out to you. And since I’ve got prayers on the mind, it only seems right to call upon this 1986 San Jose Bees retro cap for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday post as Saint Joseph’s Feast (or, Fallas de San José as it is known in Spanish) is tomorrow, March 19. And on a lighter note, I want to bring up that National Sloppy Joe Day is celebrated on March 18 every year so today is happens to be the perfect time to pedd

I’ll be back on my usual "National Day" celebrations for the next few posts and my focus this week is this 1973 Portland Mavericks retro from Ebbets Field Flannels in recognition of  National Wear Red Day , which is an annual campaign started by the American Heart Association to spread awareness about heart disease in women. I first learned about the Portland Mavericks in a 2014 documentary on Netflix called The Battered Bastards of Baseball . I highly recommend checking out the wild story of this historic ragtag bunch of misfits that played as an unaffiliated team in the Class A Northwest League from 1973-77. The stiff and low profile wool crown on some of the Ebbets retros for 1970s and 1980s designs are top notch for me. Even though the black sweatband might not be historically accurate, not seeing sweat stains makes the cap feel fresher overall. I realize this isn't an all red cap but the color is featured on the front panels enough to work well for National Wear Red

The temperatures are finally starting to drop in New York City but it's still unlikely that we'll have a "White Christmas" here so to bring those winter vibes this week's Fresh Fitted Friday  is a Winnipeg Whips retro from Ebbets Field Flannels. This hat also continues the theme of defunct Montreal Expos farm clubs that were located in Canada in the 1970s! I'm convinced I'll love just about any minor league interpretation of the Montreal Expos pinwheel motif. That's even more likely when the team was only around for a short while as was the case with Winnipeg which only hosted the Whips from June 1970 through the 1971 season. If you buy a cap from Ebbets, you can count on the satin green undervisor and that sturdy wool crown. It's doubtful I'll ever see a vintage Whips cap up close but even if the materials are a mismatch, I doubt the quality on it would be as strong as this cap. The sweatband tags on an Ebbets cap are unrivaled. Seeing that &q

Welp my beloved San Francisco Giants took their postseason run all the way to the fifth game of the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers and while there's not really a bigger sting in sports than to lose at the hands of your most bitter rival, the healing has to begin right now. Instead of dwelling on the Giants' missed opportunities tonight and throughout the series in general, what comes next for me is cheering on the Atlanta Braves as they take on the Dodgers in the NLCS. I should also mention my other good reason to root for them is that my wife is originally from Atlanta which means I married into a whole family of Braves fans! I wasn't always big on the Braves for a number of reasons growing up with the first being I did not care much for slogans like "America's Team"  which I always felt sounds as silly as saying "God's Team" or something like that. I also didn't care much for their perpetual winning in the 1990's and because even

For those of you wondering if the baseball portion of the 2020 Olympics are still happening, I'm here to tell you that the Gold Medal Game between the United States and Japan takes place tomorrow, Saturday August 7, 2021 at 6:00AM EST. I debated about which cap to post this week and while I do have a very cool 1940 Tokyo Kyojin retro from Ebbets Field Flannels, I feel the best way to cheer on my home country is to write about an American team. Luckily I have an 1951 Albuquerque Dukes cap that's also from Ebbets which not only sports a red, white and blue colorway but it's got a beautiful red felt "A" logo stitched onto the crown to remind you that America is "in the house" as it were. The Made in U.S.A. and Ebbets brand sitting proudly alongside each other is a sight that never gets old.  The undervisor looks darker here than it is in fact but after a few wears it will actually get to be that color. No matter the outcome of tomorrow's Gold Medal Game

This is the cap that the All Americans team wore during their 1934 Tour of Japan which I'll provide more details about further below. In the meantime, take a moment to appreciate the subtle elegance of this two-toned interlocking logo.   I've had this hat for at least five years and maybe more but you wouldn't know it by looking at the way this beauty has held up all these years. Ebbets is the best when it comes to quality. Big fan of the green satin under visor which in my opinion looks better an better the more you wear the cap As we are about to enter July Fourth Weekend, I am compelled to take inventory of what it means to me to be an American . This past year has been full of national events and experiences that have given me much to consider especially as it pertains to race relations. There's a lot of work ahead for us as a nation but at this point I feel confident that good will overcome evil and hatred. The pandemic has taught me many things but a big lesson I