The Oilers were formed in 1960. I can reasonably assume George Blanda and Billy Cannon weren’t working an oil derrick with the leathernecks in the off-season.
No, I’m just fiddling with my cockatiel.
Teams named after notable local professions are certainly not unusual; there used to be two Oilers teams, of course, but there’s now just one, plus you have the Milwaukee Brewers, Texas Rangers, Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers, and I’m sure a few others. All were generally named though, not specifically named after a company, like the Packers.
What @Colibri said – the Packers were, in fact, originally sponsored by a meat packing company. When they joined the NFL in 1921 (after playing independently in 1919 and 1920), they were known as the Acme Packers, as, by that point, Indian Packing had been taken over by another company, Acme Packing. This is why, when the Packers wear throwback uniforms, you’ll see “Acme Packers” on some of the hats and sweatshirts worn on the sidelines.
(signed) kenobi_65, Packer shareholder
A nit: I think you mean roughnecks. Leathernecks are U.S. Marines.
Certainly. But Chronos was suggesting the players themselves held those jobs in the off-season. That was probably true for the 1933 Steelers, extremely unlikely for the 1960 Oilers.
Yes, thank you.
The Oilers might not have been literal oilers, but they were named in the tradition of teams named after the local blue-collar industry.
Hartford played in Hartford for only one season, 1876. In 1877, the team moved to Brooklyn, but it kept its Hartford name. In most tables these days, they are called the “Hartford Dark Blues” in 1876 and the “Brooklyn Hartfords” in 1877, but really they were just “Hartford” or “Hartfords” for both seasons.
Indeed sock color became such an important part of club identity that in 1882, the National League mandated sock colors for the teams:
Boston - red
Buffalo - grey
Chicago- white
Cleveland - navy blue
Detroit - old gold
Providence - light blue
Troy - green
Worcester - brown
BUT in 1881 and 1882, cap and jersey colors were designated by player position!! So all shortstops, for example, wore the same caps and jerseys—only the socks designated which teams they played for. That’s how important sock color is to baseball, which is why it burns me up so much that so many players today cover up their socks. Baseball is about the socks!!*
If you want to win a baseball trivia bet with someone, ask them what the St. Louis MLB team is named after. Not just what the nickname is; where the got it.
No, they’re not named after the bird. They’re named after the color of the trim of their socks. They didn’t start using birds in their logos for over twenty yeas after adopting the name.
Just to make a point about how poor sports references/histories have traditionally been, when I was a kid, and for several decades afterwards, I thought that the National League’s original teams were:
Boston Braves
Brooklyn Dodgers
Chicago Cubs
Cincinnati Reds
New York Giants
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh Pirates
Saint Louis Cardinals
This lineup of clubs wasn’t correct until 1900, and only about half the nicknames were in common use then, and the notion of “official” nicknames wouldn’t dominate for a few more decades.
Also, trivia: Two of those 1876 clubs are still in existence today: Chicago (White Stockings) exists as the Chicago Cubs and Boston (Red Stockings) exists as the Atlanta Braves. Today’s Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox swiped their names from the National League teams.
Here’s an odd connection. The name of the color is derived from the robes of the prelates of the Catholic Church. The Cardinals were originally called the Brown Stockings. The team that currently wears brown stockings is the Padres, also named after Catholic priests.
Seattle Mariners are also named after a common local profession.
And before them the Seattle Pilots, now the Brewers.
Sadly, today the pirate industry has largely disappeared from the Pittsburgh area.
I think the legend is that they picked up that nickname when the “pirated” players from another team.
Which reminds me: For years, the Kansas City Athletics were owned by a guy who was a New York Yankees fan, and he routinely let the Yankees have his best players for cheap (Mantle and Maris might have been among them?).
I also recall reading about a similar situation in Japan, in which one of the other team owners was a Yomiuri Giants fan, and he would root for the Giants against his own team.
Yes, I’ve heard that one.
Early team nicknames were often strange. Thankfully the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, now the Dodgers, didn’t keep that name, bestowed after several team members got married around the same time (although Dodgers, from Trolley Dodgers, is weird enough itself).
They’re still there; they’re just all online.
Mantle came up to the Yankees in 1951, before the A’s were sold to a friend of Yankee owner Dan Topping in 1954. But yes, there were several lopsided trades in the years after that, including Maris. Many people complained that the A’s were virtually a Yankees farm team.
How about the New England Patriots?
With Pirates, Buccaneers, Raiders, and Vikings, the profession represented by the most team names is evidently thievery.