Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Ahead of the Modesto Nuts final homestand, I have finally procured my first ever Nuts cap as I stated that I hoped I would do this year back in my  San Bernardino Spirit post   from December 20, 2024. As I mentioned in that post, Modesto has fielded a team for almost 80 years so closing out the California League's season with this cap seems like a fitting tribute. This logo is not the first one that comes to mind when minor league fans first think of the team but it has made its fair share of appearances over the past 20 years of their existence and it plays a fine straight man to the wild embroidery design of the side patch. I had a hard time trying to decide if I wanted a cap featuring Al Almond or Wally Walnut so thankfully Topperzstoreusa came through in the clutch by featuring both on the embroidery. It is done up in a metallic style that is not easy to read however if you are familiar with the team's designs it's fairly obvious. The embroidery is so massive the hat is...

The big conversation topic in the baseball world this week was spawned by comments made by Commissioner Rob Manfred in an interview during the fourth inning of the 2025 MLB Little League Classic this past Sunday. In that segment he discussed his support for expansion and a geographic realignment which has not happened since the strike-shortened 1994 season . The last time MLB introduced new teams was in 1998 when the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays (now Tampa Bay Rays) joined the National and American Leagues, respectively. The next expansion clubs, however, might not even be part of either "league" in the current sense if the realignment reorganizes each circuit into geographical conferences. The first thing to sort is which cities get teams and I am glad Portland has finally emerged as a frontrunner for one on the West Coast. Their presence brings us closer to my favorite period in baseball history: the heyday of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), which effective...

I might have just written about a Seattle Mariners affiliate just a few weeks ago but I had no choice but to feature yet another link to the M's this time as earlier this week some good friends recently shared photos of the whole family enjoying an Everett AquaSox game and a video of birthday girl throwing out the first pitch that night!  In addition to celebrating my friends' Northwest journey, this post joins that recent Riverside Pilots hat  with last week's San Jose Giants cap  as I' ve  written about the AquaSox before  but also shown love to that city in other posts  as the  Everett Giants  played in the Northwest League from 1984-94. Lastly , the Bellingham Giants ( 1995–1996)  and Bellingham Mariners ( 1977–1994) are another Northwest League link between the Giants and Mariners, respectively. Earlier I mentioned my other AquaSox hat with this being the third and final on-field logo left to feature here. The zaniness of this batting...

This post marks the second week in a row that I have brought out an Ebbets Field Flannels retro but the wool serge fabric and a stiff crown on this retro of the hat logo the San Jose Giants wore for one year only in 1989 is far less common than the wool broadcloth found on the majority of the Ebbets caps. Something this esoteric and awe-inspiring could only have come from ballcap aficionado Paul Carr of The Ballcap Blog who is a native of San Jose and is the force behind the 1986 San Jose Bees retro  that I have wrote about here just a few years ago. I met Paul many years ago and other than our shared love of hats, I was glad to hear we are both really into music as well. We're both into a variety of music and last I checked his favorite band is Green Day who hail from the East Bay. I have been a big fan of theirs since I was a teenager in the mid-1990s but the Bay Area band that I dig the most is the Grateful Dead which I have a sneaking suspicion is not a band that most Green Da...

I am writing this post after just coming home from a Norfolk Tides game where my hometown team turned back the clock to their 1989-92 era for the very first time. It would be an understatement to say I was ecstatic to relive so many fond memories of players like  Tim Bogar, Steve Springer and Kevin Baez who wore the  uniform from my favorite era in Tides history. It's hard to believe 12 years have passed since my 1992 Tidewater Tides post  which accounts for Baez handing me my first ever player-worn onfield cap that is the most prized cap in my collection. My love for that cap was only reignited in 2024 when  @yellowsub73  broke the news that a retro of that cap was coming thanks to  @djmach716  of the New Era store in Buffalo, NY. I've already featured that particular retro so this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection focuses on the  Memphis Redbirds which was the team the  Tides faced in the turn-back-the-clock game I attended. Since I ha...

While last week's theme focused on David Wright's induction into the Mets Hall of Fame, the ceremony for the National Baseball Hall of Fame takes place this Saturday so this week's hat closes the loop on my  1994 Appleton Foxes retro  from this past January when it was announced that Ichiro Suzuki would be the first Japanese-born player to receive a plaque in Cooperstown.   This "What If?" or "Reimagined" retro of the Riverside Pilots is another banger from the New Era Buffalo flagship store and this colorblocking cleverly inverts the navy and teal placement on the cap the team wore during their brief tenure. Truth be told the crown features a brighter hue than the original teal but it's a fun cap nonetheless. The absence of the MILB batterman is a welcome touch here as the suspension of disbelief needed for this one has us imagining this cap to be from 1993.  As I mentioned in that Foxes post, Ichiro did not have to toil on any MILB teams on his w...