NCAA Selection Sunday: A curmudgeonly take on “The Dance”

The annual “Selection Sunday” ritual of choosing teams for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is this weekend, and I am officially going on record to say I loathe describing the tournament as the “the dance” or “the big dance.” What a lame cliche. Let’s put a cap on it, so to speak. That objection aside, […]

Party time, excellent! The Wayne’s World cap

It’s a late-winter weekend, and we could all use a little comic relief. To wit, the “Wayne’s World” ball cap sported by Mike Meyers at right. I don’t own one of these, but I do admire it. Maybe not quite as much as Wayne Campbell admired and coveted the white Fender Stratocaster on display in […]

The 2009 New York Yankees cap

The New York Yankees will be sporting a new cap when they take the field at the new Yankee Stadium this year. The team isn’t messing with the classic interlocking “N” and “Y” (thank goodness). The Yanks are adding a commemorative patch on the back to mark the stadium transition. For details, check out this […]

How to survive over the centuries, media division

Over the course of many years as a bureau chief with The Associated Press, I stamped the AP logo on a wide range of coffee mugs, fanny packs, water bottles, golf balls and other trinkets for the staff and newspaper editors. I’m a sucker for advertising specialty products, and I was always on the lookout […]

Ken Griffey Jr. returns to the Seattle Mariners…

… and there was great rejoicing in the land — especially in the Pacific Northwest. When I first heard the rumblings a few days ago that Ken Griffey Jr. might return to the Mariners, I tried to keep from getting too excited about the possibility. In today’s big-money baseball world, team allegiances are more fading […]

The Amgen Tour of California returns

I am spoked stoked! The Amgen Tour of California bicycle race has returned to the Golden State, with Lance Armstrong mounting his comeback in fine style today in Sacramento. I first encountered the Tour of California one year ago, when one of the stages started here in Modesto. It was a thrill to watch the […]

The Ball Caps Blog on wordle.net

For those of us with word fixations, the Web site wordle.net is a lot of fun. Paste some text into a box, and Wordle turns it into a word cloud. You can also paste in an RSS feed for a blog, as I’ve done with mine. If you ignore the huge KENT at the right […]

The Super Bowl: Ode to consumerism

New iPhone in hand, I went to the grocery store with my family the other day to pick up a few provisions for dinner. Near the checkout aisle was row of Super Bowl caps done up in blue and orange in what is either homage to the Denver Broncos, a jab at them or mere […]

Jeff Kent: Hero or villain?

Jeff Kent announced his retirement from professional baseball today, ending an outstanding career as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Kent has always brought out mixed feelings in me, and a lot of memories were dredged up today as I heard the morning guys on KNBR radio in San Francisco talking about him. I […]

Which cap for Rickey in the Hall of Fame?

Players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame no longer get to choose which cap they’ll be depicted wearing in the bronze plaque that enshrines them. There’s no question that Jim Rice, who played his entire career for Boston, will be wearing a Red Sox cap. But what about Rickey Henderson? In a 25-year major […]