I lost all faith in caps-on-plaques last year when my favorite baseball player of all time decided that he’d rather have a blank cap than wear a Braves cap on his plaque as God and Ted Turner intended. But it’s still a thing people talk about, so let’s talk about what the current crop of inductees should wear. Obviously, a couple of these are no-brainers.
John Smoltz. I eagerly await tomorrow’s New York papers to see which of them refer to “Former Yankee” Randy Johnson and “Former Met” Pedro Martinez in their headlines, but New York isn’t the only provincial sports town around. Indeed, this is one of the best tweets I’ve seen today:Congratulations to the newest Cardinals Hall of Famer, John Smoltz! pic.twitter.com/dCsLTAX1Ye
— Baseball and More (@Baseball_More) January 6, 2015
I am going to assume that this is tongue-in-cheek. If it is not, please don’t tell me because I don’t want to hate the world any more than I already do. BRAVES.
Craig Biggio: Dude only played for one team, but that team wore multiple caps during his tenure. For his first six seasons, Biggio wore the classic star-H, but those weren’t his best seasons, even if they featured his best cap. His best years actually came in their worst cap, the no-color flying star cap. I feel like most of us remember him in his late-period cap, however, and if I had to guess, that’s the cap he wears. Not that it’s all that different from the previous one. SOME ASTROS CAP.
Sorry, Dodgers fans. You’re getting a bit uppity lately. Have to remind you that your team didn’t always have a smart front office.
Pedro Martinez: There is some Expos-love for Martinez and, with apologies to my friend Jonah Keri, Expos love can be a pretty irrational thing. We give Expos people a pass on that, though, because they had their team taken away and, well, they’re entitled to be a bit neurotic about things. That stuff aside, however, Pedro’s best seasons were clearly in Boston, as were his most memorable moments. RED SOX.
Randy Johnson: I figured this one would not be controversial, but for whatever reason I have a LOT of people on my Twitter feed today telling me that The Big Unit should wear a Mariners cap on his plaque. Which is ridiculous. He won four straight Cy Youngs and a World Series in his first four season in Arizona. He had only two fewer seasons there than he had in Seattle, but his overall numbers were better in Arizona, and that’s even including two years in his second, decline-era stint there. Maybe we first heard of Randy Johnson as a Mariner and maybe that’s where he truly became The Big Unit, but he became a Hall of Famer in the desert. If he chooses to go in blank like Greg Maddux did (sob) so be it, but if he lets the Hall choose, they had best choose the Dbacks’ ugly-ass early 2000s cap.
Or, heck, maybe the crazy Expos people will take over again:
