Better Know Your Minor League Baseball Mascot: It's All Happening, Part I

One of our most beloved recurring features returns, with a twist made necessary by the sheer magnitude of the outpouring of creativity (read: visions of merchandising dollar signs) shown by baseball franchise management across our fair land. There's so much new and amusing (and new and absurd) mascottery happening today that it's impossible to select just one to highlight. 

Here, then, are a few of the mascots and/or team haberdashery that've caught our eyes of late:

The Jamestown (NY) Tarp Skunks kick things off, the newest team in the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League. I don't know what it is, either, but it does offer us more opportunities to enjoy silly mascots. Jamestown is the hometown of former major leaguer Howard Ehmke, who allegedly invented the infield tarp. Which in Jamestown's ballpark is a place where skunks dwell, apparently.

We've featured Florence, Kentucky here before (honestly), so imagine our glee when we learned of the local Frontier League team, the Florence Freedom, was renamed the Florence Y'alls. Legend has it that when the town of Florence put up a water tower in 1974 they were forced to change its message from Florence Mall to Florence, Y'all because the namesake mall hadn't been built yet. Go with it, man. Now, 46 years later, that legal kerfuffle has birthed genius.

The Pacific Coast League has a team in New Orleans, which is like a reverse Utah Jazz kind of thing. The team used to known as the Zephyrs, but in 2016 became the New Orleans Baby Cakes. That name beat out Crawfish, King Cakes, Night Owls, Po'boys, Red Eyes, and Tailgators. 

Things I learned today: Binghamton, Endicott, and Johnson City, New York are collectively known as the Triple Cities, and the Triple Cities are known as the Carousel Capital of the World. Hence the erstwhile Binghamton Mets becoming the Binghamton Rumble Ponies in 2018. Rumble Ponies, it turns out, has something to do with carousels. I didn't learn what.

I also learned that there's a branding company called Brandiose, based in San Diego, that's responsible for a lot of the silliness spreading across logoland. I have applied for a job there. I'll keep you posted. Brandiose came up with the Tarp Skunks, in addition to the Texas League Amarillo Sod Poodles (Soddies, for short). A sod poodle is another name for a prairie dog, dontchaknow. 

Lots, lots, more to come on this topic, but we'll cut it here for now in the name of postcount.