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 […]

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 […]