Early look at the 2010 Pebble Beach U.S. Open golf caps

The U.S. Golf Association is offering early sales on 2010 U.S. Open merchandise, including a number of caps trumpeting the tournament at fabled Pebble Beach Golf Links.

The major tournaments for 2009 are behind us, but it’s not too early to think about the great drama that awaits next year. For any golfer or golf fan, a visit to Pebble Beach is on the “must” list. I’ve been to the course a couple of times, stopping in the pro shop and ambling around the grounds on a few brief visits. I also attended the AT&T Pro Am there for the third round of the tournament  in 1997, and it was a memorable day.

Pebble’s ocean-side setting is even more dramatic in person than it is on those sweeping panoramas shown on television. If you can arrange a trip for the ‘10 Open running from June 14-20, book it. But even if you can’t make the tournament, a trip to Pebble on the spectacular Monterey Peninsula at any time is advised and encouraged.

Cooperstown Ball Cap’s awesome collection

As one might expect of someone who blogs about baseball caps, I spend a little bit of time every now and then scouting the Internet for information on the subject. In a serendipitous search last night, I wound up on ballcap.com, which is the site for the Cooperstown Ball Cap Co. The company is in Cherry Valley, N.Y., not far from Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The firm makes authentic replicas of old-time ballcaps. I was familiar with their major league and Federal League caps, having ogled them in many a catalog and Web site. But I had no idea of the depth of caps the company recreates. There are caps from Negro Leagues teams, railroad teams, military schools, Native American tribes, even night clubs!

The caps come in a variety of styles, including those 19th Century ones with the band-like crowns and short brims. With only a few photograph exceptions, the Cooperstown site offers only artist renderings of its caps, such as the 1910 model above from the Alameda, Calif., professional team. Having lived on that wonderful San Francisco Bay island town for several years, I’ve put that cap on my wish list along with a few others. (Hint to any relatives with $48 to spend – the 1920 Cleveland Indians cap looks mighty fine.)

A baseball fan could spend a lot of time — and probably money — on the site. I recommend it.

The Amgen Tour of California returns

I am spoked stoked! The Amgen Tour of California bicycle race has returned to the Golden State, with Lance Armstrong mounting his comeback in fine style today in Sacramento.

I first encountered the Tour of California one year ago, when one of the stages started here in Modesto. It was a thrill to watch the racers take off on a 100-mile-plus ride to San Jose over Mt. Hamilton. The 2009 tour started today with a prologue of time trials in the capitol city. For the next week or so, Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer, Floyd Landis and several dozen other of the best cyclists in the world will be wheeling through California. It’s a privilege to have them here (and I’m very happy to report having scored an Amgen cap to complement the cow bell I picked up last year).

Juxtaposition: New Jersey and Yosemite National Park

What possessed me to take my “Weird N.J.” cap to Yosemite National Park? I guess my subconscious mind was trying to make a statement about the breadth of the American natural experience. Whatever the motivation, I wore the cap yesterday on an absolutely gorgeous fall day. This was my third trip to Yosemite, and the weather finally was clear. That made for some great photos. I shot this one of my cap on a snag in the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees near the south entrance to the park.

The cap is a souvenir of my New Jersey days, from a story I did on the two Jersey guys who publish the “Weird N.J.” magazine and Web site. They had just come out with a book by the same name, and they’ve since branched out into writing about all things weird across the United States.

The “Weird” book on New Jersey playfully reports on all the wacky sites in the Garden State, which once you get away from the refineries hard by Newark airport turns out to be a varied and charming place. I’ve visited 46 of the 50 states, and New Jersey must be the most unfairly lambasted of them all.

Yosemite, on the other hand, is one of the most praised locations in the United States, if not the world. After a warm day there in the November sunshine, I can state unequivocally that the park’s reputation is in no way overrated.

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.