The Pecan Park Eagle

Works as a soft drink. As a baseball team plural nickname ~ not so much.

Baseball team mascot nicknames have been a long-time interest and amusement here since my childhood day trip journeys viv-a-vis The Sporting News during the post-WWII era. That’s where I began to get the lesson that small town American baseball teams used the nickname aspect of their clubs to advertise everything from their own notions  of tenacity to getting the word out about their smaller community’s commercial interests.

The Mayfield (KY) Clothiers were an excellent example. They manufactured everyday clothes for people and wanted the world to know where they could do their wholesale shopping. The same state Hopkinsville (KY) Hoppers may have been so-named to communicate their energy for movement, but maybe they also manufactured those clothes hopper receptacles that could hold those dirty Clothier products once they had been through the sweat and dirt grill of actual game play.

The Terre Haute (IN) Tots and the Hancock (MI) Infants may have been trying to tell us that they were new to this game of organized baseball, but maybe ~ just maybe ~ they could have joined with the Houston Babies ~ and all of the other small towns that began in the game with that “Babies” sobriquet to form something colorful like the Delivery Room League.

Orange, Texas and Alexandria, Louisiana  both fielded clubs in the early 20th century called the “You Hoos”, but we don’t know if this had been two separate franchises or one that moved elsewhere in a vain effort to elude failure. Either way, on the surface of things, the idea seems more laughable than it does funny.

In 1905, the Paris (TX)/Hope (AR) Parasites failed after one season played out in two small towns. Folks should avoid naming their baseball teams “Parasites.” It’s a little hard to build anything that wins on the backs of people who, by their shared name, are all simply a bunch of hangers-on.

Muncie (IN) Fruit Jars? ~ They had to be kidding! ~ Just as you can’t go swimming in a baseball pool, you can’t find a pennant in an old fruit jar!

The Iola (KS) Gasbags, the Garden City (KS) Wind and the South Georgia (GA) Waves are a good start on building a league in which everyone else gets blown away by the strongest member. Among these three first members, the Garden City Wind has the early money as pennant favorites, but we all know too that there may be other stronger nicknamed winds out there that could come along and win in a greater frenzy of breeze.

Bottom Line. Seventy years ago, when I was ten. I spent a lot of musing time with stuff like this bizarre baseball team nickname business when the weekly Sporting News came in ~ and what do you know? ~ Here I am ~ still mind-doodling away with it today.

Have a nice weekend, everybody! ~ And please forgive us for an occasional meandering column on a laid back Saturday that just happened to fall at the end of a very busy and joyous week of family commitment beyond baseball.

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle