Ironic offer from MLB.com: A cold-weather Cubs cap

I’m fighting off the common cold, swine flu or for all I know bubonic plague tonight, so I’ll make this quick. I got an e-mail from mlb.com pointing out that they’re having a post-season sale. Batting practice caps — those ugly variants on regular caps with goofy curved side panels — are just $9.99.

I followed the link and was tickled to see this Chicago Cubs cold-weather cap with ear flaps — the ultimate accessory for the franchise that for a century has rarely played in the post-season chill wafting off Lake Michigan.

Last October, I noted the flap cap worn by the Phillies’ Jimmy Rollins, who will likely pull it out of his locker for home games against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series starting with Game 3 on Sunday. Oddly, I could find no Phillies model like the Cubs version. For northern franchises like Boston, Cleveland and Milwaukee, I’d think they’d be a natural.

They might come in handy for home openers, too.

UPDATE: The earflap caps are made by New Era, and I was able to find the Phillies model at this link. The New Era site also has them for the Red Sox, Indians and Brewers. I’ll bet there are more, too. Good news!

Iconic baseball caps: Boston Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox were eliminated from the American League playoffs today by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, as good an occasion as any to honor the Red Sox cap for its iconic status.

I’ve had occasional flirtations with the BoSox but mostly an uneasy relationship over the years. My first youth baseball team was the Red Sox, and for a while I tried emulating the high-elbow batting stance of Carl Yaztremski (inset). A lot of good that did me.

I saw quite a few games involving the Red Sox and Indians at Cleveland Municipal Stadium in the 1960s. At one, I sat next to a kid a year or two younger than I who said he was a cousin of Rico Petrocelli. He had a notebook with pages full of Rico’s autograph. (Did he offer me one? No — my first lesson in the social charms of New Englanders.)

When I went off to college in New England, I encountered gale-force Red Sox boosterism from the overwhelming majority of my classmates. It was tough being an Indians fan in that environment, and over the four years of my undergraduate studies I eventually talked myself into rooting for the Red Sox as a second-level affiliation.

When I moved to Milwaukee for graduate school, one of the first things I did in my free time was head to County Stadium to see the Brewers play the Red Sox. The ratio of Brewers-to-Sox fans that evening was about 39,000-to-1, and I kept my mouth shut. Fact is, I couldn’t cut it as a Red Sox fan. For one thing, my Great Lakes accent was pretty much an instant barrier into my stepping out onto Yawkey Way. And my heart wasn’t in it.

Nonetheless, I did cheer raucously when the Sox finally broke their streak and won the World Series a couple of years ago. And I must acknowledge the power of the Red Sox cap. It’s been around seemingly forever, or at least since 1933 according to the Dressed to the Nines baseball uniform database. That Red “B” — as in Beaneaters — against the blue field is a classic. It’s no wonder a newspaper publisher friend and Red Sox diehard wears one everywhere he goes.

The Twins win, and we’re stuck with more games in that horrid dome

Twins win

The Minnesota Twins defeated the Detroit Tigers 6-5 in 12 innings Tuesday night to win the American League Central title, and I’m not happy.

Not because the Twins won per se. They’ve been a terrific story this season, charging from behind to tie the Tigers and force the one-game playoff for the division title.

What irritates me is the prospect of at least one more baseball game being played in the  abomination that is the Metrodome. Although I’ve never set foot in it, I’ve loathed that dome for years.

When the Brewers were in the American League and played there, I hated it on general principles.

When Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek and that generation of Twins were in their heyday, I hated it for the homer hankies the fans waved. (I’ve always hated any team whose fans in an act of mass silliness wave hankies or towels or – please, God, no – thundersticks.)

I even hate the dome in football season, as in the past two weeks when the 49ers and Packers lost in succession to the Vikings.

Why do I find the dome so revolting? I don’t begrudge the Twins and Vikings fans a warm place to sit when it’s freezing outside. But the Metrodome is an over-the-top artificial environment, a chamber of Nordic screams designed to rile and rattle the opposing team. The building is a huge advantage for the home squad, and unfairly so.

There are other domes in professional sports. I’ve been in Skydome or whatever it’s now called in Toronto and the old Kingdome in Seattle (inset), for which I had a minimal, grudging tolerance. I’ve also been in Miller Park in Milwaukee, with the roof open and closed. None of those parks approaches the Metrodome in affecting the outcome of a game.

Quirky differences among ballparks parks add to baseball’s appeal — the Green Monster at Fenway Park, the ivy at Wrigley Field, McCovey Cove in San Francisco, the arches at Yankee stadia, old and new. Those features constitute charm and give the home team a bit of a boost. But they don’t loom oppressively over the game as does the Metrodome.

That the Twins are moving to the new Target Field next season is good news. It can’t come soon enough.

For most of us, it’s ‘Wait Until Next Year’

Playoffs notwithstanding, for most baseball fans today is the first day of the long winter. The season is over, the concession stands are empty, the lockerrooms bare as the players have packed up to go fishing or hunting or whatever they do in the off-season.

For followers of the Chicago Cubs, the Cleveland Indians, the Kansas City Royals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the San Francisco Giants, another year has passed without post-season play. We small- and mid-market fans will watch glumly as the Cardinals, Dodgers, Phillies, Rockies, Angels, Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers or Twins stretch their seasons.

For those teams, hope remains for October glory, a pennant, a World Series champagne spray. But for most of us — like this crushed Cubs fan — our refrain is “Wait until next year.”

Spring training can’t come soon enough.

Less than excited about baseball wild card races

We’re in a wild card race. Awesome!!!

Well, hardly. Wild-card races in Major League Baseball have been running for a couple of decades, and I still can’t fully accept them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll take a wild card berth. As I write this post, I’m listening to the Giants and the Dodgers. I want the Giants to sweep LA this weekend as I simultaneously pray for the Colorado Rockies to drop each game in their series with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

But the race for a wild card berth doesn’t nearly get me as excited as someone claiming a league or division title. Way back in the late 60s as baseball contemplated following the NFL into multi-division playoffs, I can remember my father telling me that the playoffs were supposed to be the antidote to the all-too-frequent runaway teams atop the old single-division American and National leagues.

In many years, that vision has come through. But — Yankees and Red Sox fans, don’t hate me — I grow weary of the same teams returning to the playoffs year after year after year. The seemingly endless run of playoff appearances by the Atlanta Braves is a good example. They hoarded playoff appearances, although I must admit my judgment carries the bitter tinge from their only Series victory in recent memory, in 1995 over the Cleveland Indians.

Then there was the ‘97 series, in which the NL wild card team – the Florida Marlins – defeated the Tribe in the series. Where’s the justice in that?

I know I’m fighting the last war by whining about the wild card concept, so let this be my last harangue on the subject. I will now turn my attention back to the Giants, and hope against hope that their stellar pitching and anemic hitting manage to sneak them into the playoffs, on the road to a World Series victory against an AL team that won 20 more games in the regular season.

Pedro’s back in the winning column

It was good to see Pedro Martinez back on the mound today. He got the victory as the Phillies defeated the Cubs at Wrigley Field 12-5. Pedro has worn a lot of caps over the years – Montreal Expos, Boston Red Sox, New York Mets and – I’d forgotten this — Los Angeles Dodgers. Any innings he puts in the for the Phils will be a boost to the defending World Champions, and any more victories will be a bonus.

Popular: Baseball caps are all about popular

I spent the day with my son and two of his friends at the Great America theme park in Santa Clara, Calif. While I joined the guys for several rides, I sat a few out and amused myself by taking inventory of the baseball caps people in the crowd were sporting.

As the San Francisco “Don’t Even Think About Moving Here, Athletics” Giants will unequivocally tell you, Santa Clara County is Giants’ territory. So it wasn’t a surprise that I spotted more orange and black caps than any other.  But it was nothing close to even 10 percent of all the caps on display.

The cap that most got my attention was a green Giants cap not unlike the one depicted, only the crown was spangled with glitter and the word “FRISCO” was emblazoned across the back. If San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen weren’t already dead, this cap surely would have killed him.

There were other colorful variations on Major League Baseball caps, such as a red, white and navy Oakland A’s lid on a guy ahead of me in a roller coaster queue. Another guy had a Yankees cap the color of lima beans with white piping (which actually was kind of cool).

I didn’t count, but the team most represented after the Giants and A’s was the Pittsburgh Pirates. The yellow-on-black “P” cap seems to resonate with young men.

After that, it was a mish-mosh of sox (Red and White), Yankees, Phillies, Nationals, even a Tampa Bay Rays cap. One Cubs cap, too, come to think of it.

Refreshingly, I didn’t see a single Dodgers cap all day.

Rickey Henderson enters the Baseball Hall of Fame

The only question about Rickey Henderson entering the Baseball Hall of Fame is whether the engraver can catch him to record his image on his bronze enshrinement plaque. Henderson was the ultimate leadoff hitter in his brilliant career, stealing more bases than anyone in the history of the game.

I was lucky enough to be at County Stadium in Milwaukee during the summer of 1982 on the night he tied Lou Brock’s single-season stolen base record. I was running film for the Associated Press photo crew that night. Henderson wasn’t able to break the record that evening, and I was all charged up to go back the next night, which happened to be my 26th birthday. But the boss said no, they had enough help. I was crushed, and left the bureau in a foul mood. When I arrived home, I walked into a surprise birthday party that my wife and the bureau chief had arranged. All was forgiven, and it wasn’t long before the stadium darkroom called to tell me that Rickey had swiped another base and broke Brock’s record.

Late in Henderson’s career, I saw him play for the Newark Bears in the Atlantic League. In a game against the Somerset Patriots in Bridgewater, N.J., we were near the Bears’ dugout when an ump threw Henderson out of the game for mouthing off about a call he didn’t like. That competitive fire always burned in Henderson.

I saw Jim Rice play many times against the Indians in the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium and a couple times at Fenway Park in Boston while I was in college nearby. Rice only played for the Sox, so he’ll have a Boston cap on his plaque. I don’t know for certain how Henderson will be depicted, but for me, there’s no question: He goes with an Athletics cap.

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 league career, he played for the Oakland Athletics, New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, San Diego Padres, Anaheim Angels, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Dodgers.

If there’s any debate, it’s between the A’s and the Yankees. He spent several years with each of those teams and only a season or two at most with the others. For me, there’s no question he should be enshrined as a member of the A’s, with whom he spent roughly half his career.

I think if you ask the average baseball fan what team Henderson played for, most fans would say “A’s” first.

I was fortunate to see Henderson tie Lou Brock’s single-season stolen base record at Milwaukee County Stadium in 1982. While I missed the next game, at which he broke the record, I got to cover a news conference he had the next morning.

While he always impressed me with his speed and hustle as a young player, I found him even more impressive in his 40s as he tried to hang on in the big leagues. He was playing Atlantic League ball for the Newark Bears when I last saw him on the field. It was in either 2003 or 2004 when I saw him get tossed out of a game against the Somerset Patriots for mouthing off to an ump.

For all his accomplishments, and his competitive fire, Rickey Henderson truly is a worthy member of the Hall of Fame.

Let’s keep the stinky socks off the cap, please

The Boston Red Sox have revealed new alternate uniforms and, alas, the dreadful “hanging socks” cap at left. Methinks the Beaneaters should stick with the standard “B” that has served the franchise so well over the years. I suppose it’s OK for fans to wear the socks lid — after all, you can’t have too many baseball caps. But I pray fervently that the team never takes the field wearing this cap, either on the road or, heaven forbid, at Fenway Park.