1993-94 Elmira Pioneers Cap

It was lots of fun when last week's Fresh Fitted (er, snapback) made its debut at a ballgame but the first ever appearance for this week's cap will my friends' wedding! Well not at the wedding of course because that would be a violation of my household covenant but rest assured, it will be worn before and after the wedding ceremony. 

When it came time to pick this week's cap my preliminary desire was to a feature one with a letter combination of "S" and "C" in the logo as those are the first initials of the bride and groom. It turns out that my only cap that matches that qualification is a Shreveport Captains hat which I've already featured. 

My fruitless search led to frustration. It seemed that I would have to stretch to find a cap relating to my friends when all of a sudden, I recalled that the groom went to SUNY Geneseo. That town doesn't have a professional team but Elmira is 90 miles away and it does: the Elmira Pioneers!

I find it interesting that while the team is called the Pioneers, the cap logo is completely on-brand with the Marlins ballclub and their uniforms read "Marlins" rather than "Pioneers". The Elmira Pioneers are a collegiate summer league now but back then they were a Class A Short Season league team with not much of a budget so the incongruity isn't too surprising. 

This was also the case when the Pioneers were affiliated with the Boston Red Sox and this is evident in this image of a Frank Rodriguez card from 1991. I remember trying to get him to sign that card when he was on the Pawtucket Red Sox and for the record, he was pretty stingy when it came to the time he took to sign autographs for kids.

It's been a while since Tealism has reared its head around here but I like the contrast between the garish crown and the stark black brim.

We are seeing the squarish brim once again. We know by now that this was a very common practice in the mid-1990's.

Just for reference, I wanted to show the classic inside sweatband tag.

While I'm not personally too jazzed about the controversy surrounding the 2016 Rio Olympics, I'm a big fan of things that are produced in the USA. Hats being one of them and tough as nails athletes being another!

Below you'll find a few hats that I don't own but that I came across during my research for this week's post. The all-teal cap seems to have been more prevalent during the years the team was affiliated with the Marlins. I should note the team wasn't photographed much outside of the yearly baseball card sets and it's possible the ownership wanted to showcase the teal caps. 

I love this one. Because the cap is murdered-out, the E is so subtle that someone will have to really look at the cap to notice the logo is different.

The sweatband tags here appear to be similar to this week's featured cap.

The E is more prominent here so this cap will definitely stand out more and so will the letter variation from F to E in the logo.

I copped the photos of this cap and the one above it from a Worthpoint site that claimed: "This hat is so rare that you would by far have an easier time finding a hat that was worn in the Civil War." I concur. 

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