The Ballcap Blog

While I am waiting to finish my current Ballcap Blog projects, I will be featuring collectors and their collections. I'm sure some of you are curious about my collection, so I will go first. Name / Age / Occupation: Paul Carr, 23. Teacher’s Aide, Student, and Drummer (www.undergonelive.com) How I began collecting: When I was a kid I in the mid-90s, I loved baseball. I always wanted to wear the caps the pros wore, my first pro cap was a Chicago Cubs road cap I got when I was 9 years-old in 1995. Around that time, I received a bunch of 70s baseball cards from my grandparents as a gift. I was fascinated by all the bright-colored caps and odd-looking logos I had never seen before. I went to a local flea market and someone was selling a few old caps. For some reason I ended up with an 80s Angels cap made by New Era which I still have in mint condition today. I also had some kind of sports magazine that advertised the remakes made by Roman and I had my parents order me a few of those. I

The “Taco Bell” cap saga continues. After my blog about the Padres 70s & 80s "taco bell" caps I received several emails regarding versions of the caps I never knew existed. There have also been some recent happenings regarding the Padres this season and the bell caps. Let’s discuss. At some point, the 70s-style bell caps had overlapped “SD” logos instead of interlocked ones. I’m guessing it was the earlier ones. I thought I had noticed one before, but a Ballcap Blog reader sent me pictures of several examples. Here is one below. It turns out that Roman did make a 70s-style bell cap, but it appears to have been under Mitchell & Ness. I received an email with a picture and I was told that they were made for a “Turn Back the Clock Game” about eight or so years ago. There is no manufacturers tag and the cap was leftover from the lot sent to the team. After some research, I found that Mitchell & Ness did indeed sell these in retail, which I confused with American Needl

The history of the New Era Cap Company has been well-documented. New Era has been the dominant cap supplier for Major League Baseball and anything baseball-related for decades but their dominance grew slowly, starting in the 1930s. Eventually they steam-rolled the competition, providing the majority of on-field caps to MLB teams by the 1970s. They have been the exclusive cap supplier for Major League Baseball since the 1994 season. New Era's MLB on-field cap interior tags evolved very slowly from the 1930s through the mid 80s. Since then they have changed rapidly, usually about every two years. Since 1982 there have been three tags inside of the cap; the MLB license tag (left side), New Era band tag (middle) and size tag (right). Let's take a look at the evolution of New Era’s MLB on-field cap tags from as early as possible to the present day. Keep in mind that this guide is not 100% perfect. MLB game used and team issued caps were all used as references for this gu