Since UncleBeer has decided that I can be mundane and pointless with the best of them, here’s a thread for what you consider the funniest/wittiest minor league baseball team. Or even your local boring team.
I’d always had a special warm place in my heart for the Toledo MudHens, and Unc certainly has helped that along. But I recently discovered that California now has a “Mudville Nine” – with a picture of good ol’ Casey on their caps! (Shades of the NHL’s Anaheim Mighty Ducks!)
Also in the running are the Batavia (NY) MuckDogs. Anybody got other contributions?
Underwhelmed? Yeah, I was too when they used that name as a blatant butt-lick to the all powerful combo of GM/UAW here in town.
Of course, I feel for the players. Who wants to be called a “lugnut” - as in “you stupid lugnut”. For the uninitiated, lugnut like the thing on your car’s wheel.
On the bright side, Oldsmobile Park is a beauty and the games are always well attended. Has helped the downtonw area where the park is at revitalize a little.
One of the Arizona Diamondbacks farm teams is unofficially known as the babybacks.
I’ve never liked the Diamondback name. What other major sports team is named for a venomous reptile? Doesn’t lend itself to a warm fuzzy mastcot costume. What’s he going to do? Slither along the dugout roof?
Some of my faves from the list are Columbus RedStixx, Piedmont Boll Weevils, Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, and the Savannah Sand Gnats
Voted Rookie of the Year in MPSIMs and the Pit, along with Best One-liners.
And I don’t plan on keeping this as my sig for long, just until the winning buzz wears off.
No no no. The BEST minor league hockey team name is the Lubbock Cotton Kings. And I’m sure Max will be along eventually to share the link for their logo. Scariest cotton ball I’VE ever seen…
Winner, SDMB’s Biggest Chat Addict
“Only two things that’ll soothe my soul - cold beer and remote control.”
I see my local favorite, the Everett Aquasox made the list on Mullinator’s site.
What were they thinking?
i think he/is the kind/of person who might if
he worked his way up/in the world/for several
years eventually/get to be/a sneak thief
“king nicky”, archyology
Don Marquis
I always thought that there needed to be a team called the “Schenectady Dots”.
An infinite number of rednecks in an infinite number of pickup trucks shooting an infinite number of shotguns at an infinite number of road signs will eventually produce all the world’s great works of literature in Braille.
The Lugnuts are cool, too. My friend used to go to the games all the time. Their battle cry was “Go Nuts!”
Here’s a funny thing … The Houston Astros have their spring training at the home of one of their minor league teams in Kissimee, Fla.
I can’t recall the name of their minor league team, but they chose not to follow tradition and name it the same as the parent club. Because then they would have, of course, been the
Kissimee Astros
(I swear this is true.)
“You should tell the truth, expose the lies and live in the moment.” - Bill Hicks
For those who want to get directly to a great picture of the Lubbock Cotton Kings logo, without going through the site rigamarole, go here. I think it’s the coolest logo and mascot around.
Unfortunately, they’ve fallen in the rankings recently; earlier in the season, they had a 90%-plus winning rate and finished regularly in the #1-#2 position of all teams in all regional minor leagues as ranked by In The Crease. But, lately they’ve slipped, and they’re no longer in the top 20.
Still, they’re great fun to watch, and a mighty good team, with stupendous local support. As I recall, the game Falcon attended down here was a sellout, with over 7,200 fans in attendance. Pretty darn good for a city of around 200,000. Falc had so much fun at the game that she got addicted to hockey; she watches it on ESPN now. hehehe
Now, since the thread is about baseball: we used to have a local baseball team called the Lubbock Crickets. In case you don’t know, Buddy Holly is from Lubbock, and Buddy Holly and the Crickets got their start here. The team was pretty good, and the games were fun. Lubbock, though, is a fairly uptight Baptist town, and someone decided that beer should no longer be sold at Crickets games. Fans stopped coming, and the team folded soon after. I managed to find a link to a cap with the Lubbock Crickets logo on it here."]http://www.minorleagues.com/903211.html]here.
Finally, a thread on one of my all-time favorite topics – minor league baseball.
Minor league team names have definitely taken a turn for the creative as team owners have figured out there’s a lot more money to be made from merchandising something interesting and unique, with some local connection, than from the same name and logo as the parent club. But it’s actually a return to roots; especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were lots of interesting names, such as:
[ul][li]Kalamazoo Celery Pickers[/li][li]Kalamazoo Kazoos[/li][li]Schenectady Frog Alley Bunch[/li][li]Freeport (NC) Comeons[/li][li]Decatur Commies (shortened from “Commodores”, but amazingly, this was the official nickname from 1952-1955 – the height of the Cold War)[/li][li]Portland Lucky Beavers[/li][li]Bonham (TX) Boogers[/li][li]Ottumwa (IA) Coal Palace Kings[/li][li]Green Bay Duck Wallopers[/li][li]Corsicana Gumbo Busters[/li][li]Racine Malted Milks[/li][li]Findlay (OH) Natural Gassers[/li][li]Des Moines Prohibitionists[/li][li]Lebanon (PA) Pretzel Eaters[/li][li]Butte Smoke Eaters[/li][li]Sweetwater (TX) Swatters[/li][li]Wilson (NC) Tobacconists[/ul][/li]
[quote]
Gotta say the Asheville Tourists are a noble mascot. Anyone ever planned a trip to Asheville? Wishville thinking maybe?{/quote]
Well, the night before my wedding, after what served for a rehearsal dinner, we took all of the guests who were interested (and several who weren’t, for that matter) to a Tourists game. I try to catch 4-5 games a year at McCormick Field while in Asheville visiting my wife’s family. And Ted E. Tourist is kind of cute (a bear, tricked out in Hawaiian print shirt, with sunglasses, a camera around his neck, and a suitcase in one hand, a bat in the other – get it, Ted E. Bear, get it), definitely moreso than some of the focus-group-begotten mongrels unleashed the last few years in other places.
Milo:
Close. They did in fact use the Astros nickname for a number of years (at least 1985-1992). However, during those years, they referred to themselves as the . . .
Osceola Astros.
They’re now the Kissimee Cobras.
And returning to the OP …
Polycarp:
Until recently known as the Stockton Ports. The common belief, supported to some degree by the evidence, is that Stockton was indeed the “Mudville” referred to in “Casey at the Bat”
Personally, I’ve always thought there should be a team called the Idaho Potatoes.
However, there was one not too far off of that. In the Pioneer League, in the 50’s, there was a team called the Idaho Falls Russets. The official name of the breed (Is that the right word when referring to plants?) of potato known as Idaho potatoes is “Russet Burbank.”
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
