a.k.a. V.J.

Ever since I found that 1990s Orioles jacket a few days back, I started wondering where some of my old Baltimore caps were stashed away. I looked in the most obvious places and came up empty-handed. Tonight, on a whim, I decided to check the basement. Bingo!

I found the cap I wore a lot throughout most of the 1990s and early 2000s. This design isn’t my favorite incarnation of the team cap throughout franchise history (that honor goes to the one they wore back in the late ’60s and early ’70s) but it’s still a pretty solid MLB hat.

I have fond memories of this particular cap as I wore it defiantly a few times to games at Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park. During one visit to the Bronx around ’98 or ’99, the sight of this hat inspired a few dozen drunk bleacher-creature Yankee fans in the next section over to point at me menacingly and chant in unison, “Baltimore sucks! Go home!!” After a few choruses of that, I tipped my cap at them, and they got bored with me and turned their aggression to some other unlucky fan wearing an opposing team’s colors. Good times.

The hat is a little weather-beaten, which isn’t surprising given that it’s probably 30 years old and has spent about half that time stuffed in a box in a damp basement. The visor is cracked and there are a lot of loose threads sticking out of it, but all things considered, it cleaned up pretty well. It will have a place in my hat rotation for the duration of baseball season.