In praise of minor league baseball

If there’s anything more American than baseball, it’s minor league baseball. I grew up knowing only the big-league variety, although one could argue that the Cleveland Indians of the 1960s and 70s were anything but major league. Over the past decade I’ve become a fan of minor league ball, which has enjoyed a resurgence across […]

The newspaper cap and a changing industry

This post is a tough one. As a journalist, I’ve accumulated several newspaper caps from hundreds of visits to newsrooms and industry conventions. Collectively, they are among my favorites because they represent the vitality and pride of my profession. But the newspaper industry is in decline, severely so in towns deep in the clenches of […]

Loose on the Palouse with a WSU ball cap

As my wife heads to Portland, Ore., my thoughts turn to: What am I going to eat for the next five days? Hey, I bought a ballcap near Portland a couple of years ago! Not just any ballcap. This was a genuine Washington State Cougars cap, an early 21st Century Nike model with stretch-to-fit elastic […]

A salute to amateur golfers (and their caps)

The U.S. Amateur golf tournament will be played next week at Pinehurst Resort and Country Club. I am not entered. Not that I wouldn’t play given the chance. It’s just that after roughly 40 years of golf, I am grudgingly coming to the realization that there will be no tour, no green jacket, no claret […]

Pretty cool Canadian Olympic cap, eh?

As the whole world watches the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, I couldn’t help but trot out one of my most unusual caps. This is a Canadian Olympic team cap from the 2000 summer games in Sidney. The photo hardly does justice to the cap, one of the most unusual and stylish in my collection. […]

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 […]

Ivy League tigers

While I’ve concentrated on baseball caps to date, it’s time to switch things up a bit and venture into other types of caps. At left is a Princeton University cap I was given earlier this year by a friend who joined the university staff. A little bit of New Jersey, the cap has quickly become […]

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 […]