Field and souvenir ball caps

I have a small collection of ball caps that include mostly souvenir caps from our trips abroad. Among these are baseball caps I myself bought including the Atlanta Braves cap I wrote about recently. I also have a San Francisco Giants cap I got in San Francisco during their successful run about a decade ago when they were winning the World Series every other year. And then there's the San Diego Padres cap I got while visiting the city in 2015. Two are field caps, meaning they are the types players actually used in games. One is an official souvenir cap.

This is my 25-year old Atlanta Braves cap, which is a field cap or one typically worn by players and coaches in the field of play.

This is my San Diego Padres cap, which I bought at the team shop at Petco Park in 2015. This is also an official on-field cap.

My San Francisco Giants cap, which I got in 2011, is an official souvenir cap (yes, there are many non-official caps out there).

I did have other caps that I bought when I visited the US including a couple I got as souvenirs aboard the USS Midway museum in San Diego. One went to Tatay and another to my father-in-law. I also got one from the USS Independence when I visited Yokosuka Naval Base in 2001, which I gave to my father. Unfortunately, I think that cap got lost with the floods of Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) in 2009 - another casualty of that disaster.

More on caps later...

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Braves baseball then and now

The reason I suddenly posted about baseball was my learning that the Atlanta Braves finally won the World Series after 26 years. That's a pretty long spell for a team that consistently won in the 1990s until the mid 2000s. I watch a resurgence in the last 5 years but always thought their teams weren't good enough to get past the National League given the competition. Pundits sure didn't expect them to win it all this year being team with the least wins (88) in the playoffs and just getting in because of a poor NL East Division. The San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers both won more than 100 games in the regular season and featured superior pitching and hitting all season. And yet, here were the Braves to win it all, beating a 95-win Houston Astros in the World Series.

I first became a fan of the team back in the early 1990s when they battled and lost a couple of finals to the Minnesota Twins and the Toronto Blue Jays. They won in 1995 against the Cleveland Indians before heartbreaking losses in the next so many years at the National League (they were the top team so many times but were upset in the NLCS) and twice to the New York Yankees, which, to be fair had superior teams back then. I admired their pitching and who couldn't with the trio of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz practically beating most teams every night they start for the Braves. I recall they pitched deep into the game with a complete game not far off when they're on. Nowadays, they seem to be pitching by committee with the starting pitchers lasting only a few innings. In the recently series, it was rare for a Braves starter to last 4 innings. While I admire the relief pitchers and the closer, I think they should some really good starters if they want to sustain their winnings. Or is the time of the dominant pitcher already gone?

My first baseball cap was an Atlanta Braves cap I got in 1996. I got it for what I recall was 5,000 yen from a vendor in Harajuku, Tokyo.

The ball cap is basically in great shape considering its 25 years with me.

Back of the cap

This is a New Era field cap, which means this is a cap the players use in games.

Politics aside (and there are many controversies about the Braves out there), I do hope they continue their winning ways and perhaps be champions again in the near future, if not back to back.

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On baseball

I realized that I have not written about another sport that I enjoy watching and had an opportunity to play (very little) when I was studying in Japan. Aside from basketball, football, tennis and badminton, I also enjoy watching baseball. While I played basketball, football and volleyball in Physical Education classes during grade school and high school, I never got to play baseball until my time in Japan. I enjoyed baseball as a fan. And I learned about the rules from my father. Tatay played some baseball and softball when he was in high school in the province at a time the sports were still popular in the country. Fortunately, there was some Major League Baseball games that I got to watch on TV in the late 1980s. So I was able to watch the LA Dodgers win in 1988, when that city's team also won the NBA Championship.

There was an 8-university tournament among the transportation engineering and planning laboratories in the Kanto area. What was an annual tournament was held at the Tokyo Science University or Science University of Tokyo (Rikadai) spacious campus grounds in Noda, Chiba. Among the universities participating were the University of Tokyo, Tokyo Institute of Technology (where I was Visiting Scientist in 1996), Saitama University (where I was visiting Scientist there in 2001 and 2008), and my school, Yokohama National University. I don't recall us winning many games but it was all for fellowship among the students, research associates, and some of the faculty (mostly the young ones) who chose to participate.

This was held in the summers and I recall labmates practicing at the field near our building as well as during our summer seminar. I could catch the ball but I couldn't throw it like my Japanese friends. They played baseball when they were young and a couple played the equivalent of varsity when they were in high school. We had a really good pitcher and a few good hitters during my second year in Japan. I think that team was good enough to win the tournament but another lab had a better game. I sat out that one, content to watch the game with the other foreign students who also attended for the fellowship (read: after tournament party) part.

I have a few baseball caps in my cap collection. These I purchased myself and were not pasalubong.

More on baseball in future posts!

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