A Labor Day salute to the American Rust Belt

As a tribute to working men and women this Labor Day weekend, I offer this tableau featuring a lunch pail and a U.S. Steel cap. The cap was a gift from my daughter, an engineer with the big Pittsburgh-based steelmaker.

This post is also a salute to the Rust Belt, that swath of mostly Midwestern cities that through much of the 20th Century belched toxic fumes into the air and dumped foul sludge into the the region’s rivers and the Great Lakes.

To me, Rust Belt roots are a badge of honor. These are not the “little soft cities” that Carl Sandburg mocked in his famous poem about Chicago, city of broad shoulders. These are hard-working urban cores: Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Erie, Akron, Toledo, Cincinnati, Detroit, Flint, Gary, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago and Joliet.

The Rust Belt’s capital city? My hometown, Cleveland, Ohio, the Mistake on the Lake, the place favorably compared with the Titanic only by virtue of its orchestra.

As tough and proud as all those other cities are, none had a river (the Cuyahoga) so polluted that it burst into flames. None had a mayor (Ralph J. Perk) who turned down dinner at the White House because it was his wife’s bowling night. None, as far as I know, defaulted on its loans.

Most Rust Belt cities declined precipitously in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Some — Cleveland, Indy and Pittsburgh — have clawed their way back to respectability. That didn’t happen without the hard work we recognize and honor on Labor Day weekend.

Wisconsin Badgers throwback cap

College football season kicks off Saturday, and to celebrate the annual rites of fall I present this late 1970s banded mesh-back cap. In the late 70s and early 1980s, this was the predominant college cap style.

In fact, I’m hard pressed to remember any college caps from that era that didn’t look like this one. As a graduate student at Marquette University in Milwaukee, I had a Warriors cap in yellow and white. I picked up this red and white beauty on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison in 1979.

My girlfriend and I drove over to Camp Randall stadium on a Saturday to watch the Badgers play Indiana. Becky (now my wife of 28 years) took this picture before the game, and I got photos of her wearing a Wisconsin cowboy hat and Badger mittens.

The game was a snoozer — a 6-0 Wisconsin victory — and most of the action was in the stands. This was the “Mad City” era of the Portage Plumber and the Pail & Shovel Party, the guys in student government who wanted to replace the parking meters on campus with bubble gum machines. The student section of the stands was big on “body passing,” a sort of movable mosh pit where students were hoisted on the upraised arms of others and passed up or down row after row.

UW Athletic Director Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch had recently banned the activity, and the ushers were quick to squelch any attempt. At one point, the message crawler on the scoreboard said, “Elroy thanks you … for not doing … you know what.”

I absolutely loved this hat. I kept wearing it for years, even when the plastic insert in the brim had cracked into a hundred pieces. I can’t remember in what closet purge I reluctantly tossed the hat out. If I had it today, I’d tip it to Bucky and the Badgers.

These baseball caps freak me out

When I have some time to kill, I’ll often head over to the Major League Baseball or Minor League Baseball Web sites to salivate and dream over the ballcaps and other merchandise they offer. This morning, I decided to broaden my search and entered a Google search for baseball caps. The major cap-making companies popped right up, but I was not ready for the visual assault I received from a couple of them.

I decided to go straight to the New Era site and – POW!!! – I came face to face with an ersatz Milwaukee Brewers cap with an old-style ball-and-mitt logo in Apple Jacks green. I’d show it to you here, but 1.) it’s in a Flash module that I can’t import and 2.) I wouldn’t want to frighten you. I’ll instead show you these tiny thumbnails of other caps available from the Cooperstown Pop Colors collection.

Actually, these caps for the Cleveland Indians, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Mets look kind of cute here. But imagine them at life size. It’s as if Andy Warhol designed them after a bad acid trip.

I realize these caps are aimed at a younger, hipper (and you know I’m not hip if I use the term) crowd than a baseball traditionalist like me. Same goes for these Red Sox, Yankees and LA Dodgers caps from the Lids’ “Double Up” Major League Baseball collection:

While they’re not for me, I won’t complain if others wear them. They’re still ball caps, and showing your support for your favorite team leaves us all lots of stylistic latitude.

McCain or Obama: Who looks better in a ball cap?

Ready or not, the Democratic National Convention begins in Denver on Monday, to be followed a week later by the Republican convention. There’s no doubt about the nominees: Barack Obama for the Democrats, John McCain for the GOP. Which leaves us with one serious question: which president will look better in a baseball cap?

Making their pitch to America: Obama and McCain

This is a serious issue. Whichever candidate America chooses this November will earn not only the right to govern the country, he will also have the high privilege of throwing out the first pitch when the 2009 baseball season begins.

Most likely, the president will throw out the ceremonial ball at a Washington Nationals game. While this blog is politically neutral, it’s fair to pose the question of whether McCain or Obama would look better sporting a Nationals’ cap like the one above.

Presumably, the next president will have the funds available for an authentic fitted wool cap, rather than the bargain model shown here. I bought the cap at a Wal-Mart in 2005 when the National League expanded to include the Nats.

I was delighted that the franchise brought back the classic script “W” on a red cap, identical to the model worn by the Washington Senators of my youth. Those were the hapless Senators 2.0, the franchise that became the Texas Rangers. The original Senators bolted the District of Columbia long before and became the Minnesota Twins.

I’ve searched the Internet diligently for photos of McCain and Obama wearing baseball caps, and I was surprised to find relatively few. I found shots of Obama wearing a Chicago White Sox cap and jersey, but not much else. The New York Times reports that John McCain often wears caps to protect his skin from the sun, although the photo with the story showed him wearing what appears to a cap with an American flag.

So who’s the better man to take the mound at Nationals Park for the first pitch? Let the people decide. Leave a comment with your choice – McCain or Obama.

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 nation. That’s not hard to understand. Games in the minors are more accessible. Tickets are cheap, and concession food is reasonably priced. There’s not a bad seat in most stadiums, and many franchises go all out to entertain you before the game and between innngs.

I went to John Thurman Field in Modesto last night and unexpectedly found myself among the largest crowd ever to attend a minor league ballgame there. The Modesto Nuts, the cheekily named Class A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies, hosted the Stockton Ports. The stadium was swarming with families as scores of kids took part in pre-game karate and cheerleading demonstrations. Even better, as the second half of the California League season nears a close, the Nuts put much of their merchandise on sale outside the team store.

I couldn’t resist buying a Nuts cap. I had intended to buy the black home cap featuring team mascot Al the Almond, but these were fitted caps (only $15!) and my size was puzzlingly missing. So instead I chose the snazzy Wally the Walnut road cap shown above on the roof of the Nuts’ dugout. The cap goes nicely with the black Nuts T-shirt I received as a birthday present last summer from my in-laws.

While the crowd was alternately watching the game and being distracted by the steady stream of nachos, churros and hot dogs being brought up into the stands, the Nuts managed to defeat the Ports 4-3. Fireworks followed the game.

It doesn’t get any more American than that.

The newspaper cap and a changing industry

San Jose Mercury News cap, circa 2002

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 economic recession and stagnation. The handsome black cap above, which I picked up at a California Society of Newspaper Editors convention, is from a happier era at the San Jose Mercury News.

During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, the Merc was rolling in money — and spending it like crazy. In that decade, the most vexing question for newspeople was whether they should follow some of their colleagues to Internet operations that flowered in the spray of venture capital in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jerry Ceppos, executive editor at the Merc for many of those high-rolling years, would slyly refer to the Merc as a “poor suburban daily.” At the time, the paper had the highest classified ad lineage in the nation.

Today? The Merc and so many other dailies have watched their classified revenue crater under the two-sided siege of a severe economic downturn and the proliferation of online advertising ventures.

I photographed my cap against a backdrop of the July 21, 1969, San Jose Mercury that loudly proclaimed man had landed on the moon. The industry was vastly different then, as most big cities had two or more dailies. In the two decades ahead, many papers would fold and many would combine as the Mercury eventually did with the San Jose News.

The industry is contracting again, and it’s distressing to see so many dedicated and talented colleagues losing their jobs, bolting for other industries or succumbing to despair.

For centuries, newspapers have charted the ups and downs of industries and institutions. We newspaper folk are not immune to those cycles, and I think many journalists lose sight of that. No industry is immune to change. Nothing — no business, no job — is permanent.

We journalists are most energized pursuing the hot story, a time of rapid change and even danger. We’re unwittingly in the midst of such a story in our own industry. We need to draw deeply from the well of principles and ideals that got us into this business so we can re-invent and perpetuate it, no matter what form it takes.

Loose on the Palouse with a WSU ball cap

As my wife heads to Portland, Ore., my thoughts turn to:

1. What am I going to eat for the next five days?
2. 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 in the back.

I bought this cap when I joined my wife at a conference she was running at a resort — The Resort, in fact — on Mount Hood. Having lived in Seattle for four years, I should have known to pack a hat for the rainy Pacific Northwest. But no.

Which made for a great opportunity to buy a new cap at the shiny new Fred Meyer department store we passed on our way up the mountain. Freddy’s had lots of choices if you were an Oregon or Oregon State fan. There were several Washington Huskies caps, too, but just one lone Wazzu lid.

In my cap calculus, you score extra points for buying against the grain. So donning a Cougar cap smack in the middle of Duck and Beaver territory made perfect sense. Washington State probably has the smallest fan base of all the Pac-10 schools, and that’s all the more reason to root for the Cougs.

The overwhelming number of U-Dub grads and students in Seattle was often hard to bear during my Seattle years, and I enjoyed my annual visits to the WSU campus immensely. Driving through the hills of the Palouse was always a thrill, so backing the Cougs seems right.

Although this cap is sport-agnostic, I bought it in September and thus consider it a football cap. This post makes three consecutive red caps, and I promise to insert some contrast in the next post.

In the meantime, what the heck am I going to make for dinner?

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 jug for me. The high point of my career may just have been that glorious Saturday two decades ago when, at a charity scramble, I won a thermometer as a door prize.

My love-hate relationship with golf began in about seventh grade, when my dad coaxed me onto the course. I caddied for six summers at Oakwood Club in my hometown of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. There, I am convinced, I picked up every bad golf habit known to man.

A couple of years back, my brother sent me the Oakwood cap above. Curiously, the cap is incorrectly inscribed as “Oakwood CC.” This is not the first mislabeled artifact I’ve encountered from the Heights. At a high school debate tournament, the Heights High shop class adorned the trophies they made with footballs. They thought NFL stood for National Football League instead of National Forensics League.

But back to golf. I posed my Oakwood cap this afternoon by the edge of a sand trap. I am drawn to sand traps naturally and effortlessly. I employ different adjectives to describe my efforts to get out.

Life would be all the poorer without golf. I salute all the amateurs entered in the Open.

Go ahead and tee off without me, gents. I’m still tinkering with my swing. Maybe one of these days I’ll join you.

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. The crown is shallow, and the bill is so tightly wrapped that its underside is springy to the touch. The Olympic logo is on the right side, and on the left is the brand mark for the Canadian fashion house Roots.

So why am I displaying this Canadian cap on an American flag? This cap was given to me by my good friend Scott White of The Canadian Press. The photo honors our cross-border friendship — and that’s right in keeping with the Olympic spirit.

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 get is way out of proportion to what most fans in most places want.

At right is my Florida Marlins cap, which I was given by the coach of my son’s ball team a few years back in thanks for the photos of the players that I took and distributed to the team families. How often do the Florida Marlins appear on network TV? I cannot recall seeing them even once this season.

Every time I turn on ESPN, I see Tony Larussa contemplating his next move from the Cardinals’ dugout. Or there’s A-Rod and the gang in pinstripes. Or it’s the hulking Green Monster at Fenway Park, sheltering the BoSox.

I admit, a mid-season tilt between the Padres and Pirates doesn’t exactly bring fans en masse to the TV. But I would occasionally like to get a look at Jody Gerut or Ryan Doumit or some other new talent who at present is only a name in a box score.

Would I like to see the Marlins? Sure. They’re hanging in there in the NL East this season, and I’d like a look.

This Marlins cap has a fun little side story. A friend from Miami was in New York for a visit during the 2003 World Series between the Yankees and Marlins. We went into Midtown Manhattan on a Saturday afternoon, and I wasn’t even aware that the cap I had chosen was that of the opposition Marlins. A few New Yorkers good-naturedly got after me because of it, and I said, “Hey, it’s from my son’s Little League team.” My friend had asked to borrow a cap, so I lent him — naturally — my Yankees cap.