Network TV baseball choices play it safe

If there’s a network TV baseball game on the tube, chances are it involves the Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals, or some combination thereof. I know that New York rules the media world — I worked in Manhattan for a certain worldwide wire service for five years — but the air and cable time the Yankees […]

Manny being Manny in the City of Angels

Manny Ramirez is switching caps, donning Dodger blue after getting traded by the Red Sox. I had my hands on a Dodger cap once, a giveaway in a swag bag at a convention in Los Angeles. From an aesthetic viewpoint, the Dodger cap is appealing, the crisp white LA standing out on the blue background. […]

The Yankees as Evil Empire

For days I’ve been putting off this post, but with news of the Tigers trading Pudge Rodriguez to the New York Yankees, I can hold out no longer. The Yankees are the Evil Empire of baseball, an eternal force against which all others must contend. The Yanks are the archetype of the invincible. If they […]

The Cubs in ’08: It could be, it might be…

Is this the year for the Chicago Cubs? As the all-star break wraps up, one of the big questions in baseball is whether the Cubs can end their 100-year drought and win the World Series. To add atmosphere to the frenzied speculation, I present a relic from a quarter century ago. I bought this mesh-back […]

A salute to Yankee Stadium

In honor of the 2008 All-Star game that ended early this morning — the last to be played in the House that Ruth Built — I offer this old-style Yankees cap as tribute. I picked up the cap in New York Chinatown in roughly 2002. It’s one of scores of variations on the classic Yankees […]

Safe at home: The Milwaukee Brewers batting helmet

Batting helmet. Talisman. Object of veneration. This plastic replica Milwaukee Brewers batting helmet holds a special place in our family. As we’ve moved about the country, the helmet has come with us as a sort of cornerstone, which bears some explanation. Silly as it may seem, I was elated to get this helmet at age […]

Your (well, mine, actually) San Francisco Giants cap

This orange and black beauty was a freebie I picked up on moving to San Francisco and the Bay Area in 1993. Of all places, I got it at the tony Nordstrom department store in downtown San Francisco, just for trying on a pair of Bostonian dress shoes. I was not shopping for shoes that […]

The Tris Speaker Baseball League cap

For those of us who grew up in Cleveland Heights and University Heights, Ohio, the intertwined “T” and “S” logo of the Tris Speaker Baseball League is a powerful icon. Everyone who played wore the same red and black wool cap. Here, my Adam’s apple jutting prominently and skinny belt sagging, I’m wearing my first […]

My first cap

MLB replica caps were scarce when I was a kid in the 60’s. They weren’t mass-produced as they are today. I’ll have to comb through the hundreds of slides my father took to find the earliest evidence I can of my wearing a ballcap. I’m guessing I probably had a small-billed cap with a “little […]

Phillies cap

One of the great things about parenting is getting to coach your kids’ baseball teams. As a result, I picked up an assortment of big-league replica caps over the years. I got this Phillies cap when coaching my youngest’s team in Alameda, Calif., in the mid-1990s. Despite the occasional crushing in the closet, this cap […]