Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

The 2026 World Series begins today, and instead of paying my final respect to the Cleveland Guardians on their well-fought ALCS battle against the Tampa Bay Rays, I'm choosing instead to focus on the pennant winners today because I am hoping that by this time next week, I will be congratulating the Milwaukee Brewers for clinching their first championship in franchise history. My prediction—well, wish, rather—of a Brewers win seems bold, but when the teams with the best record in their respective leagues face off in the World Series, I tend to lean toward the one with the best overall record. What affirmed this was my own gut-wrenching and in-person experience of the 98-win Los Angeles Dodgers defeating the 93-win New York Yankees in 2025. The time it happened before that was when the Rays and Dodgers were the two "best" teams of the COVID-shortened 2020 season, and as a San Francisco Giants fan, there should be no doubt that I was all in on Tampa that year. And while I wo...

Before writing about  the retro of the cap worn by the New York Yankees in the 1996 World Series  last week, I was on a consistent streak of sharing some neat minor league logos here. This week is a return to form as I have a South Bend White Sox custom done up  by  Krownz & Kickz  on a vintage blank New Era cap procured by  @yellowsub73  for whom I am so thankful! I am also thankful for the Milwaukee Brewers' NLCS sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium yesterday. As someone who watched the Dodgers clinch the 2024 World Series in person at Yankee Stadium, that experience is one you wish to forget but never truly can. It is a good thing Dodgers fans have some recent wins in their memory banks to think upon this winter! I am a sucker for minor league caps featuring design elements of their parent teams and the cap worn in South Bend from 1991 through 1993 is perfectly timed with the years Frank Thomas was tearing the cover off baseballs a...

The blog needed a cleanse after last week's Dodgers-adjacent post, and while I was hoping for this week's theme to be a celebration of the New York Yankees clinching their ALDS series, their season is now over after being swept by the Tampa Bay Rays.  Five months have passed since the last time I shared a Yankees cap here  and it is hard to believe that their record was 26-13 at that point. A lot can change during the course of a game, let alone over a stretch of a few weeks, months, or years, and yet, the ALDS outcome is fitting considering the Yankees' 93-68 regular season record was second best to the Rays. As a Giants fan, all that matters to me now is that the Los Angeles Dodgers do not advance past the NLCS, so I'm cheering on the Brewers as I hope their National League-leading best record translates into them beating the Dodgers —who had the second-best winning percentage—in this upcoming series just as the Rays took care of the Yankees. The energy in New York Ci...

The League Division Series stage of the MLB postseason begins tomorrow, but my excitement level is lukewarm at best. I have felt detached from this week's Wild Card series due to its inaccessibility as someone who does not subscribe to the league's streamer-du-jour service, which I am choosing not to name at this time, as next year we could have another villain. Instead, I have been revisiting MILB highlights from this past season as well as the Triple-A National Championship Game between the Oklahoma City Comets, who were the champions of the 2026 Pacific Coast League, and the Rochester Red Wings, who claimed the title in the International League and were the topic of last week's Fresh Fitted Friday post. As a staunch Giants fan, my resolve to detest anything Dodgers-adjacent is overshadowed by my respect for the Comets’ logo so I'm choosing to honor their victory in that single-game playoff match-up for this week's post. Despite my attempts to hate on their entire...

I enjoyed writing about a Buffalo-exclusive last week and am keeping the tradition going today with my Rochester Red Wings "Flower City" custom from the flagship shop. This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection plays up the team's former affiliation with the Minnesota Twins and their iconic powder blue uniforms, and the team's name itself propels the "flight" theme forward too. Major kudos are due to Rochester for consistently hosting a team called the Red Wings since 1929 without once considering a rebrand. Even more interesting is if you combine the era they were affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals (1929-1960) with their years with the Baltimore Orioles (1961-2002), that's 74 consecutive years of being a "baby birds" farm team. The interlocking "FC" here is a clear nod to Minnesota's famed "TC" (Twin Cities) logo, and according to sportslogos.net , the Red Wings introduced this "Flower City" alternate...

As I was considering what to cover in this week's post, I thought it might be fun to write about an Air Force-themed cap because today is the anniversary of the signing of the National Security Act of 1947, which marked its establishment as an independent branch of the United States military. While looking through the caps I have not yet written about I noticed the only aviation-related ones have more to do with space travel and I have already earmarked dates for those posts. I did have a Peninsula Pilots retro cap that I've been wanting to highlight for a while and even though they might be named after maritime pilots, I think it's time to let it fly anyway! The New Era flagship store in Buffalo got really close to the original logo here. I will hopefully someday soon get a chance to attend a Coastal Plain League to see the current incarnation of the Peninsula Pilots that plays at War Memorial Stadium in Hampton. No batterman logo here is just fine because the Carolina Lea...