Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday finds me barely able to contain my composure as my  San Francisco Giants are in a two-horse race with the New York Yankees in the Aaron Judge Sweepstakes. For anyone who needs a reminder, the Giants haven't made a splash this big in the free agent realm since signing Barry Bonds to a 7 year deal on December 8, 1992. When Bonds signed that deal I became even more steadfast in preferring the Giants over the Oakland Athletics whose popularity across the Bay extended all the way to the east coast where I was just a lad firmly obsessed with baseball and learning everything I could about the game. The player who had my full attention though was Frank Thomas of the Chicago White Sox. I was lucky to be living in the Bay Area when Thomas had stints on the A's especially during his brief "return to greatness" season in 2006. In retrospect, I was probably more focused on catching Bonds' at-bats as he marched toward breaking the career hom

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday entry is a Utica Blue Sox retro from Hat Club and in the spirit of being completely forthcoming, my main inspiration in selecting it for this week's post is National Sock Day being tomorrow, Saturday, December 4, 2021.  Utica wore this logo during its tenure as the Short-Season A affiliate of the Florida Marlins in the New York-Penn League from 1997 through 2001, which sadly was its last season in the league. I've always found it interesting that the socks were not teal to match Florida's colorway but perhaps they had exhausted that theme with the Elmira Pioneers who were their previous affiliate in the league.  Over the past few years, Hat Club has slowed down its production of MILB cap retros in favor of releasing brightly colored variants of MLB logos, usually with some sort of commemorative patch embroidered on the side. I'm glad I was able to pick up this "Made in U.S.A." cap before that transition happened. That bab