Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

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

The second half of the 2019 MLB season is under way and I've decided I need to start going to some more games before the season's end.  I started this year off strong but the only time I got to the ballpark last month was on June 4th when the Giants tallied up six runs in the top of the 10th inning  against the Mets at CitiField.  I left after the top of the 9th because I was certain the Mets would walk it off—which they did not—and I'm glad I was wrong!  My most recent attempt to get to a game was for the  Rays-Yankees matchup this past Wednesday, which I learned was postponed due to "severe inclement weather" as I was riding the  subway up to the Bronx.  Maybe this most recent misadventure is a sign that I need to switch it up a little. I'm thinking I should catch some Staten Island Yankees games where I can proudly sport this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection, which I believe is the primary cap the team will be wearing on their  Pizza Rats-them

Welcome back folks! I hope everyone had a relaxing All-Star Break and for those of you in the US — which I know is pretty much everyone reading this blog, however I still need to be inclusive —a joyous Fourth of July.  I spent the holiday weekend in Boston seeing Phish play at Fenway Park which was an amazing experience as I was able to see my favorite band play music in a ballpark! Even though there were rain delays on both nights, T he Boys from Vermont delivered the goods. In honor of this momentous occasion, I've decided to finally feature a proper Boston Red Sox cap on the blog. While this week's cap is not one that I personally own, the timing is just too perfect not to share considering my recent trip to Boston and that tomorrow, July 13, 2019 marks the 20th anniversary of when the Red Sox hosted the game in 1999.  The embroidery's design isn't what anyone would call intricate but I do have an appreciation for the logo's green ba

Be back next week!

Even though the Midwest League festivities officially wrapped up with last week's Beloit Snappers post, I feel compelled to share one more cap from a team that plays in Wisconsin who is not a member of the league.  The Fond du Lac Dock Spiders play in a   collegiate summer baseball league  called the Northwoods League alongside the Rockford Rivets, Kenosha Kingfish and Battle Creek Bombers.  If those cities sound familiar to you, it's because each of them hosted Midwest League clubs within the last thirty years.  There are a handful of other teams in the Northwoods League with former ties to the Midwest League towns but a big one that comes to mind is the  Waterloo Bucks, whose city I can proudly represent with  my Waterloo Diamonds hat, which as you might recall, kicked off this whole Midwest League party  just over a month ago! This week's Dock Spiders cap was an in-stadium pick-up from a good friend who is a big fan of the blog so there's no way a gif

This week's post is the final installment of my Midwest League extravaganza and we're capping it off with a logo that hasn't changed much since the Beloit Snappers team identity was born in 1995. It's incredible to think that the  surly, possibly constipated, turtle on the  current home cap has not been refreshed much over the past 25 years. By now I should have a label for posts that feature a cartoonish logo that was created in the mid-1990's to appeal to kids but then that tag would apply to half the hats I write about so what's the point in making the effort to point it out, right?  Sorry got off-topic there.  I actually do like this hat for a number of reasons. First, it's green and green is my favorite color. Also, the team's name and logo pays tribute to turtles and I've always felt a strong connection to Testudines order of the Reptilia class. In short, I like turtles! An even cooler part of the story is that apparently t

Until now, I've only written about half of the sixteen cities who currently host a team in the Midwest League and this week's South Bend Silver Hawks cap takes it to the tipping point. For the first three seasons of its existence, the Silver Hawks had an austere cap logo which definitely bucked the trend of the zany animals that many teams started using for their logos in the mid-1990's. In 1997, they finally bit the bullet on that aesthetic and I believe that this week's cap is from that very year. The New Era flag debuted in 1997 so its absence on the sweatband tags tells me that New Era simply used whatever leftover tags they had for that season's Silver Hawks caps. The earliest photos I can find of players wearing this cap is from 1997 but that doesn't mean it didn't appear in 1996. Either scenario is possible, but I'm sticking with the former. I also believe most fans of Minor League Baseball enjoy learning about tea