The Pecan Park Eagle

Which of these team nicknames scares you the most? The Spud Bakers? The Celery Eaters? Or the Carrot Stalkers?

As far as I know, the Celery Eaters were the only on of the depicted veggies to be so named by a professional baseball team, but I would not be surprised if a little deeper research turned up some moniker twist on potatoes or carrots somewhere. The Celery Eaters, on the other hand, are already in the documentable bin. The City of Kalamazoo, Michigan picked that foreboding image for their little baseball club a few years ago.

SABR buddy Mike McCroskey put me on to this link to a brief story by a fellow named Timothy Sexton on the subject of unusual team names.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1101965/the_strangest_baseball_team_names_in_pg2.html?cat=37

As Sexton shows, team nicknames are not always that fearsome, but they usually have something to do with the community’s identity, major economic investments, or the relative presence or absence of imagination in the nickname decision-making group. The linked article contains a prime example of the latter point on creativity: Was it just a long tiresome afternoon meeting when the Cities of Saginaw-Bay City, Michigan decided to dub their new club the “Hyphens?”

The “Hyphens?” – C’mon, Michigan people! – Is that all you got?

I always liked the Saginaw (again, Michigan) Krazy Kats. As a kid, I always imagined them to be guys who wore “zoot suits” and long gold watch chains when they weren’t dressed out for baseball, although, since I grew up in Houston, I never got to see them play. They simply had the kind of name that stirred imagination.

Imaginative Digression. “I’m a kool krazy kat, dressed in Michigan blue, and I got a sweet gal named Saginaw Sue, and she ain’t like the gals in Kalamazoo, whose days are all done, and they can’t undo, with a ‘hey, bob a ree bop, and a fast tootle loo, all the stuff they could’ve saved for their one love true, but you just never know, who’s thinking of you, till you get dressed up, and you hit a spot or two.”

My least favorite nicknames are the too-long ones that invite abbreviation from the git-go. When the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays came into the big leagues a few years ago, I wondered exactly how long from the very first moment I heard of these choices how long it would take for the media to convert each to “D Backs” and “D Rays?” The answer came back almost immediately as “no time at all.” All we needed was an article headline that wasn’t going to use the mouthful of letters the official names each contained.

Fortunately, over the years, the “Rays” wised to the issue and kept the only part of their name that really mattered, but the “D Backs” simply morphed into the “D Backs and that’s too bad. The Arizona capitol already had the greatest name they could’ve ever put out there from their minor league history. The Phoenix Firebirds would have fitted the major league club perfectly.

Houston’s early professional baseball history was loaded with nickname ambiguity and change, and probably some informal mutation too. We think the first 1888 club started out as the “Babies” because they were the last of eight Texas cities to sign an agreement that made Houston a member of the brand new Texas League. In that same year, word and some documentation has it that player unrest with the “Babies” identity led to the team being renamed during that same first season as the “Red Stockings,” a fairly common nickname of those times, inspired here by the color of the Houston team uniform socks the players already wore more than any affinity for the great Cincinnati bearers of that lofty tag.

The following season, Houston apparently hit the 1889 fields as the Mud Cats. Over the near seasons that followed, Houston carded itself also as the Magnolias too before hitting the field for the first time as the Buffalos in 1903. Without a regular place to play in 1904, the Houstonians called themselves the Wanderers for a season, but the next season, 1905,  the club moved into the new West End Park and renamed itself the Buffaloes. The club would stay the Buffaloes/Buffalos/Buffs for the rest of their minor league playing days (1905-1942, 1946-1961).

Many of us hoped that Houston’s new 1962 MLB club would retain its identity as the Buffaloes, but our wishes were no match for the ego and power of Judge Roy Hofheinz, the managing partner of Houston’s big step up to the big leagues. A last acrimonious purchase of the minor league territorial rights from Marty Marion and his Buffs ownership group was all Hofheinz needed to close the door on Houston minor league history and transfer all of the city’s attention to the new domed stadium “he” was building on OST at Fannin.

Houston spent its first three MLB seasons celebrating the city’s past as the “Colt .45s” (1962-1964). Upon its move into the Astrodome through today (1965-2011), the celebration has shifted for what has been the city’s space-line future as the “Astros.” With the recent budget clamp-down on NASA, the words “Astros” also is now taking on the patina of history. At least, it’s our history too.

As for fitting nicknames, I like the choice made by the bustling little city south of Houston for its new independent league club. Once they get their open air stadium built and start playing ball in 2013, the Sugar Land Skeeters should feel right home down there on Oyster Creek .

Tags: Baseball, History, team nicknames

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