Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Chances are if you are wearing a black hat with an orange B on it, people will just assume you are a Baltimore Orioles fan which I suppose isn't necessarily a bad thing. That assumption however can become problematic if you are really fan of the San Francisco Giants. I spent many years rooting for the Giants when I lived in the Bay Area of California but now that I live in New York, I need a more subtle way to root for my team. One way that suits me well is wearing caps from the Giants' minor league teams, both past and present. This Bellingham Giants cap is an example of the former and I really connect with this unique logo. A simple design such as the orange B over the silver batter is pure elegance although the baseball diamond in the back reminds me of certain Brooklyn Dodgers retro caps that I've seen.  The combination of the grey underbrim, white sweatband and the Made in U.S.A. tag from the mid-1990's makes me so happy.  The black and orange MILB

This week's  Fresh Fitted Friday  selection is the official on-field home cap of the Great Falls Voyagers of the Rocky Mountain region's Pioneer League.  This big red "V" over the poison-green planet reminds me of both of what happens when it's your first time seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show in a theatre as well as this insanely awesome TV miniseries from the 80's called... V   Made in U.S.A. tag is a must once again although I would like to see what kind of quality can be produced on the other planets of our solar system... How much I would give to have the MILB batterman be red and poison-green? From 2003 to 2007, this minor league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox went by the name of Great Falls White Sox but enlisted the help of a local advertising agency in Montana named Banik Communications to help them rebrand in time for the 2008 season.  Banik's efforts were a great success and a catchy slogan emerged around it: "

I've written about the Spokane Indians only once before  but this week's Fresh Fitted is a cap logo redesign brought to you by - big surprise here - Brandiose. This collaboration was one of their earlier projects and what I appreciate most about this insignia (besides the artwork, of course) is the respectful path the designers followed in the rebranding effort. The Brandiose team (which was known then as Plan B) worked closely with the elders of the official Native American tribe in Spokane when crafting this new look. Their driving force throughout the process was that every design element was executed gracefully and with the sign-off of the tribe's leadership which you can read a bit more about here . The design team wouldn't be able to produce such consistently elegant work if it wasn't for the lengthy amount of research that is done at the onset of the process. Here is a quick retrospect Brandiose performed which covers some of the art that inspire

During the December 4, 2015 write-up of my Vermont Lake Monsters vintage cap, I discussed the wide-range of fan reactions regarding the newly redesigned Norfolk Tides cap logo. Naturally, the old guard was hesitant to swap out the beloved wave-topped T logo that the Tides have employed since 1993 in favor of the trident-wielding seahorse created by Brandiose which for the unfamiliar is a design firm based in San Diego. It turns out that the fans ended up appreciating Brandiose's efforts to the point that the Tides cannot keep the caps in supply enough to match the demand. I've followed Brandiose's output over the past few years and I'm thrilled with this collaboration with the Tides and that my hometown team now has a much-needed fresh new look. If you are browsing this page on a desktop machine, check out the social links on the right and if you are on a mobile device, click these links below: Instagram:  @baseballmilquetoast Twitter:  @FittedFriday F

Howdy Folks! Once again, it has been far too long since my last dispatch so I decided to make a change to the blog's format in hopes of consistently producing weekly "Fresh Fitted Friday" content. The FFF posts will now solely consist of a few photos with captions and when time permits, I will post in-depth analysis of the cap or its team's history. Those will be less frequent and perhaps a Throwback Thursday sort of thing. I'm eager to see how it plays out as well as hearing your feedback! Mobile: Instagram:  @baseballmilquetoast Twitter:  @FittedFriday Facebook:  Baseball Milquetoast If an oyster (or any other bivalve for that matter) did have a head, its eyes would give you a menacing look such as this. If an oyster decides it's going to use the bottom-half of the letter "B" as its bed, let it be. Over the past few years New Era has employed the cost-saving strategy of manufacturing some of its caps i and I

In last week’s Vermont Lake Monsters write-up I discussed how in addition to redesigning the current Vermont Lake Monsters logo, San Diego design-firm  Brandiose  was also recently hired to redesign the logo for the Norfolk Tides.  The news definitely prompted my selection for last week's Fresh Fitted and it definitely has a role in this one’s as well, which - please Hammers, don’t hurt me - is actually a snapback  of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans from the 2002 season. This cap suffers from a mild case of 1990’s Tealism, which is defined (by me) as excessive use of teal in a team’s design colorway. Most of the caps that I’ve obtained from 2003 and after feature New Era/59Fifty branding on the cap’s inside panel lining and its absence here tells me this cap is from 2002 at the latest. The sweatband tags stay doing in that early 2000’s style Y’all can’t be mad at me cos I already announced that this is a snapback; let that dark teal batterman logo soothe the ne

When I wrote about my F t. Myers Miracle cap   a few months ago, I briefly mentioned  Jeffrey Loria ’s  role in moving the Montreal Expos to Washington , D.C. Well, this week's Fresh Fitted is a  Vermont Lake Monsters cap from  2009-2013 that I picked up  a little while back and it ties back to that story...at least partially, but we ’ ll get to that later.  This is a very unique cap design and I appreciate the white front panel here. This close-up shot kind of brings attention to the poor detail in the artwork. Does that even look like a baseball bat? Some standard inside sweatband tags...no big whoop. I definitely dig the green on the batterman patch. This is a nice touch. The reason I chose to bust this  hat out now is because the cap logo reminds me of the newly rebranded logo for the Norfolk Tides, which is my childhood hometown team.  I don’t wish to take the focus too far off the Lake Monsters but I should note that i mmediately after the up