Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

I was thinking of taking this week off due to the holiday but a few days ago I was thinking a lot about the origin story that's usually told of Thanksgiving and  came across an article from Smithsonian Magazine this past Tuesday (November 21, 2021) titled  How to Tell the Thanksgiving Story on Its 400th Anniversary  which offers new insights and perspectives. From a baseball standpoint, I also thought about how Native American cultural depictions have historically figured into baseball as well as some changes I think are appropriate and might happen one day soon. That plus the Friday after Thanksgiving being officially known as Native American Heritage Day was another contributing factor in my desire to post this week. The American Indian imagery the Atlanta Braves continue to disrespectfully incorporate into their branding of a people's culture into a mascot is a practice I believe needs to end. A worthwhile read on the topic is National Congress of American Indians Respond to

Season's greetings, folks! I hope y'all didn't think I'd just leave you high and dry with no post today just because it's Christmas. And in 2020 of all years? I actually considered skipping this week but then I remembered next Friday is New Year's Eve so what would stop me from wanting to take a break then too? Well, luckily for everyone who cares, I just happen to have the perfect caps for this week and the next so here we go! This "Slide Sox" cap is a Hat Club exclusive and it definitely exudes yuletide vibes. The slides are a staple of holiday season loungewear and the stockings evoke fond Christmas memories for so many of us. I like the dark green undervisor here for this cap rather than kelly green. Either shade combines nicely with the red and white on the logo and thus completing the Christmas theme however. This year was a hard one for everyone and I hope what I'm about to say doesn't sound crazy but I'm really thankful for companie

After a few weeks in MLB-appreciation land, I've decided to shift my attention back toward MILB. This week's San Bernardino Spirit retro that I picked up from Hat Club in 2019 is  the perfect cap to segue into yet another caravan of caps from West Coast teams and not just because it  fulfills the "star" theme requirement seen in the previous three posts. The main connection this cap shares with last week's Seattle Mariners cap is that it was one of the first logos worn by the generation of Mariners who were drafted right after the upside down trident drifted off to sea for good in 1987. It me, the guy who bought a 7 1/8 and not a 7 3/8 or 7 1/2 like I normally wear. All good though as my Hat Jack has been working overtime this past year trying to stretch it out to my size. I hope Hat Club decides to retro this cap again one day because I'm not even close to forgiving myself for ordering the wrong size here. Plus, this hat is so tight I'm about to pass out

This week's episode of The Quarantine Road Trip takes us to Denver which is just a few miles away from my alma mater, University of Colorado at Boulder. I showed love to Denver's MILB past back  in one of my earliest posts  but it must be said that  the longest-standing team name associated with the Mile High is the Bears, and not the Zephyrs. According some really low-quality photos I had to squint to decipher, I've determined that the Denver Bears only wore this logo from 1982-84 and  I'm going to go on believing that  until someone proves otherwise! I normally wear 7 3/8 so I'm not really sure why I went with a 7 1/2 here. Either way, it's better to go a size up than a size down, or two sizes down which is also a thing that I accidentally not long ago. The MILB batterman looks a little strange with the green underbrim but it's incredibly difficult to find a Denver Bears hat so I'll take it. The story of why this week's cap is ver

This week's episode of The Quarantine Road Trip still finds us in Alberta however this time we are taken even further north as we are examining this Edmonton Trappers retro that I picked up from Hat Club in August 2019. Like  last week's Calgary hat , I've got a strong connection to this Trappers logo which is ironic considering it was only a few years ago when I finally examined he design up close. That dude is pretty weird looking, isn't he? I've got to take a quick moment to say how much I appreciate Hat Club's commitment to producing high quality caps—and usually Made in U.S.A. taboot—as well as their usual reliability in reproducing logos for lots of these wacky teams from he 1980s and 90's that are now defunct. The combination of the kelly green underbrim with no MILB batterman is old school and I'm very into it. I really hope that Hat Club gets the itch to release more of these retro caps as it seems like it's been a while si

Queue up the "End of the Road" video by Boyz II Men because this week's "San Tan Brewing Company" custom of the Hillsboro Hops cap is the last entry in the Northwest League chapter of the Quarantine Road Trip! I can't believe it's been over five years since I wrote about the on-field cap that the Hops wear ! I suppose that means now is a good time to feature the light blue and gold custom that Hat Club created in 2017. Please accept my apologies for not having the "Made In U.S.A." tag peaking out but the top and bottom of that tag is stitched onto the underside of the New Era tag. Now I'm wondering how many other hats I have where that is the case. The gold and orange MILB batterman is really unique. And now I'm also wondering how many caps I've got that feature gold and orange! I just had to show y'all an image of the inspiration behind this custom colorway from Hat Club. I'm not able to get my hands on t

I mentioned last week that my usual preference for these blog posts is to go vintage over retro but that I was so impressed with Hat Club's recent releases, I had no choice but to showcase their great work here. I spent some time going back through older posts to see if there were any consecutive ones featuring retro caps and I couldn't find any so as far as I know, this week's 1993 Portland Beavers goes back-to-back in that regard as well as on the Beavers tip! At first glance, this logo is pretty busy so you have to appreciate how Hat Club was so faithful to the OG. I especially like that the Beaver is wearing a Beavers hat. Very meta. Hat Club went with a grey underbrim here, however it's worth noting I've seen a green underbrim on the white version of the 1993 cap. The grey works though so I'm good with it. The sweatband tags are rarely of any importance on retro caps but I shared a photo of this one because you can see the Made In U.S.A. is

Welcome back to the post-Thanksgiving/pre-Christmas edition of Fresh Fitted Friday y'all.  You might (or might not!) be wondering where I have been the past few weeks and the answer to that is that I've been traveling to some pretty cool spots. I'd never been to  Charleston, SC before this past weekend and the one before that I visited Providence, RI for the first time in over twenty years so  in honor of that triumphant return, this week's Portland Beavers retro is one whose logo could easily be taken for a Providence cap. HatClub did a more than decent job with this retro but my only complaint would be that the little swoosh under the P should have been less tapered on the right side.  A benefit of the retro caps is that the black sweatband is better for longevity. Also, you can't see underneath the New Era tag but rest assured that it reads "Made in U.S.A." under there.  No batterman here which is historically accurate but I'm sti

Do you ever hear a recording of your voice and think to yourself, "there's no way that's me" even though you are 100% certain that the voice is in fact yours? Well, I just had that feeling when I went back and read my blog post for a Hickory Crawdads cap back in 2011 . It was only the fourth hat that I had written about and I suppose I don't recognize myself because it feels like I've learned so much about the history of MILB caps over the last eight years. Frankly, it was somewhat liberating to just be writing about a newly acquired cap that I appreciated simply because it reminded me of my youth. Even though the photography in that post is very cringeworthy and the text at the end of the post is mysteriously cut off mid-sentence, I remember being happy that I was  reacquainting myself with the Hickory Crawdads and I'm experiencing similar emotions as I'm revisiting an earlier version of that cap for this week's post. One thing I

Continuing with the theme of former Toronto Blue Jays affiliates in the South Atlantic League, I'm obliged to discuss Toronto's presence in South Carolina which began in 1981 with the Florence Blue Jays, who in 1987 became the Myrtle Beach Blue Jays. The team rebranded as the Myrtle Beach Hurricanes in 1991 and after the 1992 season, moved to Hagerstown, MD to become the newest incarnation of the Hagerstown Suns where their affiliation with Toronto continued.  Because the team only existed for two seasons, finding an original hat is an exercise in futility so w hen I learned Hat Club was releasing a retro, I had to pick it up. I had some reservations about pulling the trigger on this cap because the logo is noticeably larger than the OG. Based on how fast the hat sold out, I believe this was a conscious decision by Hat Club as perhaps they felt they'd sell more hats with an aggrandized logo.  For reference, here are  some photos of the more dainty logo on