Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

The 2026 MLB season ended just over a week ago, and it already feels like so long ago that it is hard to imagine there being 20 more weeks before I watch a big league game again. Luckily, the MLB app offers plenty of content like highlights and full-game options from  the Liga Mexicana del Pacífico (LMP) , Dominican Professional Baseball League (LIDOM) and Arizona Fall League . Sadly, my hat collection is lacking in the Latin American department, and my Arizona Fall League quota needs attention as well. While I considered pivoting to a Buffalo Bills hat or perhaps one from The Clink Room, today being National Basketball Day seems like the right opportunity to showcase a rather neglected NBA cap of mine for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday post. For some background, the holiday's date commemorates the birth of Dr. James Naismith (born November 6, 1861), who invented the game of basketball after completing his YMCA physical director training program in Springfield, Massachusetts....

The 2026 World Series has now concluded, and just as I had hoped (and predicted) in last week's post , the Milwaukee Brewers have emerged as champions. And as it happens, their first-ever championship parade and rally are scheduled to begin in downtown Milwaukee this morning at 10 am CT. I hope the team and staff relish every moment of today's celebrations up through the 146 days between now and Thursday, March 25, 2027 which is Opening Day of the 2027 Major League Baseball season. As a self-described purist, I am only begrudgingly giving the slightest credence to the ridiculous "Opening Night" happening the night before the traditional Opening Day! The Brewers will no doubt have a target on their backs next season, but I prefer to look at it as a spotlight because for too long they have not been shown the respect deserved by a team that has won its division five times in the last six years. Righting wrongs aside, people are paying attention to the Brew Crew now, and ...

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...