Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

We are halfway through the 2025 Major League Baseball season, and as it happens, today I attended what was most likely my last game at Yankee Stadium until after the All-Star break and am especially thankful the Mike Trout home run I witnessed did not spoil the sole win the New York Yankees could muster against the Los Angeles Angels during this four-game series. Catching an Angels game where Trout homers at the halfway point of the year is good enough pretext for me to share photos of this Midland Angels hat. While  the one I posted back in 2014 was size 7 1/4 , this week's hat is actually in a size that I can wear which is a welcome change! Mike Trout was definitely mashing bombs when I last wrote about this hat but the fact that he's still at it despite his nagging injuries is something I wholly welcome.  The size tags are the same as the other cap except this one is actually my size! Just too perfect that there's a red, white and blue batterman this close to the Fourt...

As this blog approaches its 14th anniversary, I cannot help but be amazed that I have been writing about baseball hats almost half as long as I have been regularly wearing them! It is hard to believe that even the caps that were brand new when I first started writing are now as old as I was when I first started collecting. Those older caps in my collection are too small and ragged to wear but I can never part with them as they represent such a big part of my past. Speaking of nostalgia and such, I recognize that I lean extra heavy into such themes in my  Fresh Fitted Friday posts ahead of Father's Day when writing about San Diego Padres "Taco Bell" designs  which has become a  quasi-tradition. Like the 1978  Reno Silver Sox retro I featured for last year's Father's Day post,  hat blog legend Paul Carr  tirelessly worked with Ebbets Field Flannels to release this 1983 Reno Padres reproduction which I chose for this year's post for the holiday.  A...

Today's date is June 6 (aka 6/6), so the theme of this week's post is the Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino. This is my second 66ers post of the year, but the date falling on a Friday seemed like better timing than waiting until it happens again in 2031, although the next time after that would be in 2036, which would have been especially cool because six times six is 36! I am a big fan of all-cap logos featuring any type of character swinging a bat or any object resembling a bat, and this one fits the bill.  I picked this cap up in 2023, so I added that year as a label on this post to help identify the years caps are from in future posts. Glancing upon the colorful MILB batterman here for the "looking back" segment of the post, I should stress how glad I am to have picked up this cap in 2023 as it is now almost impossible to find on most sites. My assumption is it's being phased out, which is a shame! In my Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino "Cherubs...

As I mentioned in last week's 1957 Miami Marlins post, I will be making my first-ever trip this weekend to the ballpark where the current iteration of the Miami Marlins plays. To celebrate the occasion, the theme for this week's post will fast-forward us 60 years from 1957 to the 2017 All-Star Game, which was thus far the only time it was put on in Miami. Looking back in the blog's archive will show that I commemorated that 2017 All-Star Game by showcasing the hat worn by the San Francisco Giants ten years prior when it was held in their ballpark, which objectively speaking has had too many embarrassing corporate names to even recount a single one here now. This week's post closes that loop as I feature an on-field Giants cap from when the event was held at Miami's park, which at the time was innocuously called Marlins Park but unfortunately now itself has an awful name as it is currently known as LoanDepot Park. Sadly, gone are the days where you simply call out a ...

One of my favorite things to do when I find myself waiting for a train or bus is popping through my favorite hat sites to see if any new releases catch my eye. Historically, the most visited ones were Hat Club, eCapacity, MyFitteds, and Ebbets Field Flannels, although the latter has fallen out of rotation due to their recent change of vision and direction. Through Ebbets' Triple-Play" deal, I was able to score three caps for a fair price, and if I picked up an extra one, I would meet the minimum for free shipping, for which I am a sucker! If only they offered a "Grand Slam" option, I would have pounced on that too. The Triple-Play deal no longer exists, so buyers must wait for a sale if they would rather not pay $68 (gasp) for a cap. Out of habit tonight, I browsed to Ebbets' site, and while there were no new caps since the last time I checked, I did notice their Memorial Day offering 25% off sitewide. There were a few logos I never got around to purchasing befor...

The big news in baseball this week was Pete Rose's posthumous removal from Major League Baseball's permanent ineligibility list and while I was just a neophyte fan of the game in 1989 when this lifetime ban was instated on MLB's all-time hits leader, I remember how that ruling left a dark cloud over the game that would not soon be forgotten. Sadly thing things would only get worse a few years later when MLB players went on strike in late summer of 1994. This coincided with a time in my life when my "normal teenager interests" prevailed so my enthusiasm for baseball had waned considerably by the time the following year's strike-shortened season began on April 25, 1995. Time is perceived differently in your younger years. Pete Rose had become a distant memory while the four monster seasons Frank Thomas previously had were recent enough for me to half-heartedly welcome baseball back despite other factors beginning to take more precedent in my life. The Big Hurt w...