As I watched the Giants’ victory parade wind through the streets of San Francisco, I peered hard at the TV screen to see what kind of cap Tim Lincecum was wearing. Turns out it was a Red Bull cap, something I could only verify by checking the remarkable string of pictures rolling in over the wire from my old Associated Press colleagues in San Francisco.
While seemingly everyone in the crowd had a Giants cap or jersey on, the members of the ball club mostly wore “civilian” clothing, a madcap array of T-shirts that included a Grateful Dead model worn by backup catcher Eli Whiteside and what I believe was a Beatles tee worn by relief pitcher Sergio Romo. But none of the players, as far as I could tell, wore a Giants cap.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. When the Yankees have had their victory parades through the canyons of lower Manhattan in recent years, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and all the others have been done up in suits.
Way back in 1982, on assignment for AP, I got to cover the parade in Milwaukee saluting the Brewers. That was a chilly day in the Brew City, and the players were bundled up, as I recall, but without their team caps. (On cassette tape I still have the teeth-chattering voicer I did for AP Radio from Wisconsin Avenue, a cut I was thrilled to hear broadcast on WBBM from Chicago. That was a great day!)
At the San Francisco parade Wednesday, there were a few a Giants’ caps in the motorcade. They were worn by two of the greatest Giants ever: Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. It was a wonder to behold.
The Ball Caps Blog 
Weird. This post is supposed to have pictures of Lincecum, Mays and McCovey with it, but WordPress is misbehaving. I’ll try to fix later.
Well, bummer. Not long after this post — my most popular in a long while — went up, I got an e-mail from Picapp explaining that they’re probably not going to extend their agreement with WordPress. Here’s an excerpt from the e-mail:
(W)e regret to inform you that there was not enough interest coming from the bloggers to drive a cross-platform integration and therefore we can not justify the cost on our end to continue and support the shortcode. We are in discussion with the WP.com team, but from the way it looks now the most probable scenario is that we will discontinue to support the WP.com shortcode this week.
So that’s why there are no photos in the post.