Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is unique in that it's actually of the Fresh Foam variety!  This is the second ever foam pillbox cap that I've written about with the first being a  Tidewater Tides snapback  with nearly identical construction as this week's Charleston Charlies hat. The Charlies were a Cleveland affiliate from 1981 through 1983 and this logo takes the block "C" logo their parent team wore from 1979-86 and adds white piping around the crown. That is a touchstone of cap styles in 1983 which was the only year this cap was worn as well as their last season in Charleston, WV. Because this hat was only worn for one season I doubt if a fitted version was even made at the time. Also, I'm not usually a fan of the visor being the same color on both sides but this cap is very rare and sometimes you've got to take what you can get, folks!  The Tides cap I mentioned earlier has a Twins (Enterprise Products) tag on the sweatband while this

I've already mentioned this before but can't help reiterating 2021 is a milestone year for this blog as it celebrates its 10th anniversary. Having the opportunity to do something I truly enjoy for a decade is a strong reminder of how very fortunate I have been during that time. When I published my first post in August 2011, my passion for ballcap collecting had just been reignited after spending my first full year in New York City. Of course, I  wore ballcaps when I was in the Bay Area but it wasn't an everyday thing like it is for me now. My move here during the Giants historic postseason run in 2010 must have amplified my desire to flaunt my love for the Bay as well as connect with people from home. Thankfully, there was an East Village bar called Finnerty's where Bay Area ex-pats congregated and wearing a Giants hat was an easy way to spot each other as we enjoyed the spoils of New York while far from home. Wearing my fresh Giants cap with the 2010 World Series patch

I took last week off but I'm going to kindly ask you count this week's 1988 Roman Pro Cap Co. Greensboro Hornets post as a March entry because it definitely falls in line with the trend of all the ones from that month featuring some green. It also counts as a Wingure cap…barely. Even though it doesn't show a winged creature doing baseball stuff, I've decided the team name being "Hornets" is enough to consider this a "Wingure" cap.  So much green!!!! There's definitely some "fresh mesh" stuff happening here which makes this a perfect option for the warmer months ahead.  I briefly discussed my desire for a retro release of this cap logo in my Greensboro Grasshoppers post from 2018 and while I'm bummed that never came to fruition for me, I'm absolutely thrilled to have a vintage version. It wouldn't hurt to have a retro release also though, as I'd love to keep this snapback on ice so that it continues to stay fresh for yea

The Wingure (winged creature) theme continues this week with the Augusta GreenJackets and I started the party early this past Wednesday with a St. Patrick’s Day post on Instagram featuring the Pro-Line cap the team wore from 1994-2005. The reason it's not this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is because I already featured it in a blog post in August, fittingly enough, of 2011 which was a few years before I created my Baseball Milquetoast account on Instagram! I've apparently developed a little biennial St.Patrick's Day tradition with the GreenJackets here as I wrote about my New Era version of the hat to celebrate the holiday back in 2019. This year's honoree is a Diamond Era version of alternate cap logo the GreenJackets wore before their Brandiose rebrand in late 2017. I dig how the “G” integrates a “J” into it as a nod to the GreenJackets name and that the bottom serif on the “J” has a sort of stinger effect. My brother-in-law's initials are "J.G.&q

In this week's episode of Did You Know…? , I've got a fun little fact to share about today's date that I just recently learned which is March 12 is National Girl Scout Day! For those of us who were not in a troop, the most immediate association commonly had when discussing Girl Scouts is the cookies and to be honest, I was guilty of this before I did a little research. As I dug deeper in reading up on this incredible organization, I learned how it provides an inclusive, all-female environment that nurtures   leadership development skills to all the girls! You're now probably wondering how this ties into a blog about baseball hats. The connection there is through my exploration I learned that  Juliette Gordon Low (founder of the  Girl Scouts of the USA ) is from Savannah, GA which reminded me of my Savannah Sand Gnats cap that has been sitting in my closet for far too long. The Savannah Cardinals rebranded as the Sand Gnats in 1996 which as we know was during the early y

Last week I promised that the landing gear was going down on the recent theme of caps with the letter "B" and I'd say it was a success… B-sides  not coming up with a catchy name for the run ! Fun puns notwithstanding,  this week's Boise Hawks hat will be the last of these "B" caps and like all the previous ones, it features a logo that has been decommissioned for a while now. This cap logo variant was first unveiled in November 2006 by Brandiose, which back then was known as Plan B Branding. Should "Plan B" have been the name of this theme all along?!?! Made in USA! As an aside, Boise enlisted  Brandiose to tweak their identity some more again in 2013 , which was right around the time I procured this cap. This was great timing because sadly soon after that year is when New Era ramped up the production of foreign-made MILB caps. This is a very distinctive colorway for the MILB batterman and eyelets and I'm really into it! I mentioned earlier tha

I've got plenty of caps left to write about featuring the letter "B" in the logo however I'm looking to wind down this current theme so that I can move onto other subject matters that I've been meaning to cover. Until then though, I must fall back on one of my favorite parlor tricks which is featuring yet another obsolete team identity from the mid-1990's! This week's Binghamton Mets snapback is one I estimate to be from 1995-96. Binghamton sported this exact logo design from 1995 all up until 2017 which was the year they rebranded as the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, which is the team's name currently. I have no idea how the bee in the logo is connected to the city however the reason for the team's new name stems from Binghamton being known as "The Carousel Capital of the World". The lack of New Era flag branding on the sweatband tags hints this is a pre-1997 cap. Because this logo only first appeared in 1995, I'd say this cap is from th