BCB After Dark: Minor League major fashion

It’s another week here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Please come on in and cool off with us. There’s no cover charge. We still have a few tables available. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

The Cubs decimated the Pittsburgh Pirates tonight, 18-8. There were all kinds of records set in this game with the Cubs stealing eight bases and scoring 18 runs. The win moves the Cubs back to .500, which, by my calculations, means that they are sure to lose tomorrow. This Cubs team just loves to keep teasing us this way. But if they do manage to get over .500 tomorrow, I’ll break out some Frances Gumm to celebrate.

Last week, I asked you if you’d rather have Corbin Burnes or Max Fried as a free-agent acquisition this coming winter. By the vote of 54 percent to 19 percent, you preferred Burnes. The rest of you wanted neither one.

Here’s the part where I talk about music and movies. You can skip ahead if you want. You won’t hurt my feelings.

Tonight I’ve got an NPR Tiny Desk concert from 2015 featuring some terrific fusion from trumpeter Terence Blanchard and the E-Collective. Donald Ramsey is on bass, Oscar Seaton plays drums, Fabian Almazan is the pianist and Charles Altura plays guitar.

I don’t have a film to write about this evening. I don’t feel bad about that because I gave you two film essays last week. My day today was absolutely packed with events. Not only did that not give me a chance to write up anything, I didn’t even get to watch tonight’s Cubs game. (“Couldn’t you have written up a film essay over the weekend, Josh?” You can just shut up, voice in my head.)

So I thought I’d throw the floor open to you about your favorite horror pictures to recommend. You probably won’t catch me writing up many horror pictures in this space as it’s not a genre I generally enjoy. I love the old Universal monster films of the thirties and forties. I love Psycho and Night of the Living Dead from the sixties. Carnival of Souls is terrific as well. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is good too, but mostly because Bette Davis just chews every piece of scenery in the film. I guess what all those films have in common is that they’re all black-and-white. I suppose that the lack of color makes the horror more palatable to me.

Get Out is certainly a great horror film. Although it’s in color, the horror is more psychological than physical. I liked Last Night in Soho from 2021, which is another psychological horror film. The psychological horror films don’t tend to turn me off like the blood and gore films do. I really can’t handle most of those. I wrote about The Exorcist one Halloween and while I greatly respect what a masterpiece of filmmaking it is, I found it a thoroughly unpleasant experience that I wouldn’t want to watch again.

But I know a lot of you probably do love horror films. So if you’re the kind of person who loves to watch a good horror picture—it whatever subgenre you prefer—give us your recommendations on ones to check out. Just be aware that I might shy away from your suggestions.

Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.

Tonight I’m going to do something a little different. I’m going to ask you to pick out a cap from the team store of one of the Cubs minor league affiliates. Pretend you get one of these caps for free—tell us which one you want.

I’m going to give you some choices from among the alternate caps of the four affiliates. Why the alternate caps? Because over the past few years, the Iowa Cubs, Tennessee Smokies and South Bend Cubs have all rebranded to make Cubs-themed hats that look awfully similar to each other. I suppose that’s what sells. The Chicago Cubs are popular and having a cap that shows your Cubs pride but is just a little different from what the major leaguers wear—but still clearly a Cubs cap—has some appeal.

But man, the Iowa Cubs bear on the cap looks almost exactly identical to the Tennessee Smokies bear. And the South Bend Cubs bear isn’t much different either. Only the Pelicans have stuck to their own branding on the caps.

So I’ve picked out my favorites from the alternate caps. The Smokies don’t really have any alternate caps at the moment. Their “alternate cap” is just the home cap in blue with a red circle. So I’ll offer their red road cap instead.

So here are your choices. And yes, all of these are for sale at the team’s online store.

Show your political pride with the official Iowa Caucuses cap!

The Copa de la Diversión caps are all pretty great, and here’s the Des Moines Demonios cap!

Yes, they’ll be the Knoxville Smokies next year, but this script TS is pretty classic. It won’t go out of style.

Another Copa cap, this one for the South Bend Cabritos Maldichos, or “cursed goats.” I shouldn’t have to explain that one to you.

Confession. This “Myrtle Beach Pirate Pelicans” cap is the one that I currently own and wear.

Show your Palmetto State pride with this palmetto cap! Or just wear it because it looks cool.

Finally, we have this colorful Copa cap of the Myrtle Beach Pelicanos.

Thank you all for stopping by this evening. I hope we kept the party going. Please clean up your table. Get home safely. Tell your friends about us. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow for more BCB After Dark.