Mid-1990's Charleston RiverDogs cap - Fresh Fitted Friday!!!!

Behold the signature colorway of the 1990's: teal and purple. 

Here we see the same inner sweatband tags as these previously featured caps: Stockton Ports, Midland Angels and Hickory Crawdads

If it wasn't for the MILB batter man logo I'd guess this was a Florida Marlins cap for sure. 

You have to respect a cap that keeps the tags unpopped for so long.

After last week's spotlight on a cap from a South Carolina team, I thought it would be appropriate to continue that theme for this week's Fresh Fitted with a relic from the mid-1990's. 

This cap's garish "Charlotte Hornets style" colorway of teal and purple sums up that era to a T. While I'm less than enthusiastic about the dated colorway, I'm not completely sold on the cap's logo either. 

I get that it's a cute dog biting so hard on a bat that it breaks in half but this logo has been around for almost twenty years and it hasn't evolved very much as far as I can tell. I don't know of any dog that sticks around for that long, let alone one that doesn't age a spot.

The RiverDogs were hardly the first minor league team in the 1990's to abandon their (now) classic logo for some nonexistent animal with a bat. Still though, I can't help but think the Charleston Rainbows lost a big part of their city-specific uniqueness when they became known as the RiverDogs. 

I might be bitter that RiverDogs seems like a meaningless name to me, but the old Charleston Rainbows hat really was the coolest! Sadly though, my fruitless hunt for a vintage Charleston Rainbows cap has lasted years now and at this point I'd probably just be content with a throwback from New Era. 

Fortunately for me this cap search might finally be over because the RiverDogs are sponsoring their second annual Rainbows Pride Night on July 27th. If they have their wits about them, they'll put in a big order of on-field caps with New Era rather than get more of those flimsy 100% cotton twill '47 Brand caps that they are hocking on their site.

Around this time last year, milb.com hosted a poll to determine which team had the best cap logo in all of Minor League Baseball and the RiverDogs finished at number 80. Even though it's not my favorite logo, I am surprised that they didn't fare better.

I suppose I thought the RiverDogs would get more votes because are the Single-A affiliate for the New York Yankees. Then again, the Scranton RailRiders came in 83rd place and they are the Yankees' Triple-A affiliate. The lesson learned here is that Yankees fans show tough love to their farm clubs. To be fair they do shell out big bucks year after year to buy new on-fields with event specific patches. 

Maybe from a marketing perspective, I thought the RiverDogs would have ranked better because the team is owned and operated by the Goldklang Group.  If that name sounds familiar it's because it owns other successful minor league franchises such as the Fort Myers Miracle and the Hudson Valley Renegades. The name might also be familiar to you because actor Bill Murray is a co-owner in the group. That's right, Bill "Groundhog-Day-Ghostbustin'-Ass" Murray.