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 […]

The modern-era Brewers cap

This is one of my absolute favorites, on a sentimental level. I bought this cap at Miller Park in Milwaukee while on a business trip with my boss, who was to die unexpectedly some months later. Both of us bought caps that night and roamed the new stadium, checking out the Gorman Thomas barbeque counter […]

Let’s start with the Tribe

Let’s start formally with a Cleveland Indians cap, representing the team I’ve followed my whole life. This shot was taken between innings at an Indians-Athletics game in Oakland early in the 2008 season. The cap belongs to my friend Joe, a fellow Clevelander who surprised me with the offer of front-row seats that Sunday morning. […]

Hello, world!

I’m kicking off a blog about ballcaps, concentrating primarily on baseball and golf with a dash of hockey, but unafraid to venture into other hatiana.