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.

Better Know Your Minor League Mascot

Alabama, long reliably one of the more ass-backward states in our fair union, is having a bit of a moment. (I mean, we'll not reference educational scores, teacher pay, per-capita income - just go with the bit, man.) The Crimson Tide reign supreme as the undisputed apex predator in the jungle of semi-professional American football. Semi, in this case meaning that the coaches and administrators are professional, at least. And the state did manage to send Doug Jones to the Senate, if only because the GOP nominated a literal crazy pedophile to oppose him.

This week, the Heart of Dixie added another tally to the good side of the ledger, minor league mascot category.

The Mobile BayBears of the Double-A Southern League are moving to Madison, AL for the 2020 season. Madison is a suburb of Huntsville, known as a technology center, and the place where the U.S. space program was born. (Lesser known, but not less importantly, as my home from 1978 to 1983.) In a contest to choose the name of the new team, the people of Northern Alabama chose a name that's crying out for the BKYMLM treatment.

Name: Rocket City Trash Pandas
League: Southern (AA)
Affiliation: Los Angeles Angels
Logo: TBD

Self-Absorbed East Coast Elitist Commentary:

The term 'trash panda' as a nickname for the common raccoon is a new invention, first finding life on Reddit in early 2014. Pretty meteoric rise for the fitting moniker for that craft scavenger. I love it on principle, as it's all kinds of whimsical and silly, and while raccoons can be found across the United States, they're identified with a certain strain of redneck usually found in the South.

I've got a bit of a quibble, though, about the nickname in this context. Huntsville is actually a pretty cosmopolitan city, at least by the standards of the deep South. It's got a burgeoning tech economy, a major Army base, the aforementioned space program, and a highly educated workforce. Trash Pandas feels a little like the town is trying too hard to convince its neighbors that it actually hasn't put on airs.

In the end, though, we'll allow it. Whimsy always wins. And given that the alternatives were Space Chimps, Moon Possums, ThunderSharks, and Comet Jockeys, Madison dodged a bullet.

Gheorgheness Quotient: 63/77