Collecting Game-used: A colorful Copa de la Diversión cap

Second verse, same as the first -- well this time with a little less Lava.

It's apparently National Hat Day today, so I figured I'd get this Collecting Game-used series back on track (I missed doing one last month) with another game-used cap from down on the farm and this time it's from a specialty game and a player who actually did play in a pair of big-league games last year after spending the summer for the Columbus Clippers. If you don't recognize the logo, this one's from a game where they were the Veleros de Columbus during MiLB's Copa de la Diversión games.

As I noted last time, sometimes, unraveling the mystery is part of the fun with gamers ... and that mystery part doesn't happen as often with MLB stuff where it's as if everything that's used can get an MLB Authentication sticker and have a place in a database forever before it hits a collection or gets chopped up to live inside a baseball card. But down on the farm? It can be a different story. Sure, stuff gets documented and sold with a team letter or certificate often -- especially at the end of a season when the players are gone (and might not come back) -- but not everything.

Most of my items in this series are MLB or other things that are ironclad in their documentation or I have been able to photo-match the item exactly to a photo, video or event. This time? Not so much (though I admittedly ran out of time to really dig), but it did have some features and some mystery that worked out for a bargain price and it turned out to be another player who got a taste of the major leagues this past season and has played in The Show for a few years.

Keep reading to see the details this time.

Via @CLBClippers ... the team donned these specialty jerseys for nine games last season.

THE BASICS ...
Game-used cap (purchased via team): Columbus Clippers 2023 Copa de la Diversión game (home) cap
Watch it in action: N/A ... not this time but these unis were only worn for games with this player in the lineup on April 6, May 4, May 18, May 25, June 29, July 27 and Sept. 7.

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The Player: Catcher/DH Zack Collins -- hit .251 with 16 HRs and 76 RBI in 116 games for Columbus in 2023 with two appearances for the Cleveland Guardians in August where he hit .500 (2-for-4) with a pair of walks and strikeouts.

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What's Buzz-worthy: Like my last cap, this was a blind-buy on the cheap -- the team sells game-used caps where you can pick them out based on the style (they have worn a bunch) and the size but not players. I grabbed two because a sale knocked the price down to just under $14 each and that was worth the shot to tell some stories here. (Regular price $20, by the way, over on the team's site.) I liked the multi-color look of these Copa caps (not so much the logo) but still took the shot and this one was a bit cleaner than last time with a simple "32" written inside. I did some social media digging and found the first Copa lineup of the year where Collins is noted as 32 and cross-checked him to my team set I bought with my caps, but that one shows players in their standard uniforms so there's no kind of match. Collins was the 10th overall pick in the 2016 MLB Draft by the White Sox out of the University of Miami and has played in 152 MLB games over five seasons with a .188 average, 11 homers and 49 RBI for the Sox, Blue Jays, Pirates and Guardians. Not the most-spectacular numbers, of course, but odds are they're better than yours and he's appeared on a lot more baseball cards than all of us, too. He played in seven of the team's Copa games, so there's where I might do some more digging to see this cap in action but that's not as likely as he's a catcher. (Though that was a surprise with my cap last time.) It's also quite clean, so there's also a chance it might have been worn for the two specialty games where he wasn't in the lineup, too.

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>> See all past Collecting Game-used stories from Buzz here

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