Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

I started writing about my baseball caps on this site in August 2011. Initially, my first few posts focused on the minutiae of some vintage San Francisco Giants caps all featuring the logo used from 1983 to 1992. However, my focus gradually shifted to minor league caps and eventually, some of the first New York Yankees hats I acquired during my early years living here. All these years later, I have more Giants and Yankees hats than I need, but can never seem to get enough minor league caps. Like many collectors in the community, I sometimes experience fatigue with designs that feel formulaic. However, the levels of creativity flowing into minor league logos are only matched by the work of designers creating through The Clink Room. Despite my relentless pursuit of novel and captivating designs, the enduring appeal of logos that initially captivated me prompted me to honor these iconic logos by applying the Favorites tag   to caps that align with their description. While I endeavor t...

The 2026 Major League Baseball season is full swing and sadly in their first game of the year, my San Francisco Giants fell to the New York Yankees by a score of 7-0. At least the box score provided a bit of comic relief as it was the first time a reigning MVP gathered four strikeouts on Opening Day so all thanks are due to Aaron Judge for recording this most historic  Golden Sombrero  ever! And as a statistics enthusiast, I appreciate the significance of being in attendance the last time Judge wore the Platinum Sombrero wherein one of those five strike outs he suffered was at the hands of Paul Skenes during his first ever start at Yankee Stadium on September 28, 2024. I was disappointed Skenes got pulled after two innings of scoreless ball but one could witness something far less spectacular in New York!  While I was not at CitiField today to see Skenes make his first start of this season as he took on the New York Mets, those who were saw even less of him because he was...

The World Baseball Classic wrapped up this past Wednesday night without the Team USA victory that I had hoped for but on the bright side, their final game which Venezuela won by a score of 3-2 was watched by 11 million viewers in the States. That's a staggeringly large number for an "exhibition game" and I expect viewership will continue to grow in the coming years. I have never considered baseball to comply with the do-or-die format of tournament play but I admit it was a refreshing change for each game to have meaning as opposed to the drawn out nature of a months long season followed by a succession of best-of playoff series. Still though, if Team USA hopes to win it all ever again some changes need to happen. For starters, we need more starters but credit is due to Paul Skenes and Logan Webb who were both lights-out in their final starts against the Dominican Republic and Canada, respectively. Without the full commitment of another elite starting pitcher like Tarik S...

The last Fresh Fitted Friday post published on Friday the 13th was in October 2023 although that hat actually fell more into the Orange October territory than the spooky zone. That said, I'm happy to offer an eerie entry to the chronicles with this week's selection which is a Clink Room design called "Fantom" that is perfect for a Friday the 13th post as baseball season ramps up. If the timing had worked out differently we could have seen  I am happy this one's got black innards as it'll keep things looking fresher than we would expect in the caps of yore. The white embroidered Clink Kong on a black crown combined with a kelly green undervisor makes this cap a 10/10 in my view. This week's cap is a collaboration between Clinkers Clifton Design Co & Creaturezoid with this being the second design by the former featured here with the first one being the Fan For Life cap I shared here around Opening Day last year. As for Creaturezoid, I was happy to not...

Every team competing in the 2026 World Baseball Classic has played exhibition games earlier this week and some official play already began as of this post with Australia and Korea already gaining official Pool C victories over Taipei and Czechia, respectively. I would love for some sort of rematch between Japan and the United States but I do hope Australia also advances. This week's post will give some room for the WBC participants to breathe a bit as it also allows me to focus on today being National Oreo Cookie Day which is significant because the last time March 6 fell on a Friday was in 2020. In retrospect, that  2003-04 Oneonta Tigers  cap would have definitely been a fine opportunity to highlight the holiday. The following week I posted a  1994-96 Oneonta Yankees  cap, and my corresponding Instagram missive just so happened to feature the hat alongside a "The Most Stuf" Oreo package that my sister had sent to me.  Looking back at that post, ...

Without a doubt, the biggest sports news of the week was the 2026 Winter Olympics gold medal wins by the United States women's national ice hockey team last Friday, followed by the men’s first gold since the "Miracle on Ice" team of 1980—exactly 46 years after that team's historic victory—this past Sunday. After watching those wins I instantly knew I wanted to celebrate each of them so this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is the  "Go USA!" variant of the  Ghost Army design by Efra Sanchez (aka @chamucosstudio  on Instagram) for The Clink Room. This is the third Ghost Army  cap I've featured here but the first time I've featured Clinker Efra's reimagining of the insignia that is now widely associated with the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops years after the story of these masters of wartime deception finally became known to the public. I missed out on the first Ghost Army release at The Clink Room but feel this "Go USA!" colorw...