Contents - Index

The Rhetoric of Nostalgia Baseball Nomenclature

Or, How To Pick A Name For Your New Franchise and Not Sound Like an Imbecile

by Keith Waddle

If you're a new owner in the Nostalgia Baseball League, one of your first tasks is naming your team. Your team name establishes your identity with other owners; it says something about who you are and creates an initial impression of your team. So here are some suggestions on how to find the perfect baseball moniker-a critical responsibility, just like naming your own children.  

First, don't stick with your original impulse.  Get out a sheet of paper and jot down as many possibilities as you can.  You might brainstorm a few ideas in some of the general categories of current & past Nostalgia Baseball teams:

Baseball Allusions        

Baseball Objects & Activities  

Current & Former Sports Teams  

Occupations & Hobbies  

Animals & Creatures  

Groups  

Things  

Expressions & Actions  

Possible sources for ideas include baseball reference books, the Internet, Nostalgia Baseball team lists, but almost anything might inspire you (a picture in one of my kid's library books prompted the idea for one of my teams).  

Second, once you have your list, rank your potential team names based on the following criteria:

• Does it have anything to do with Baseball? Some of the best team names have been those showing an owner's knowledge and appreciation of baseball history, such as the Brotherhood, Spiders, Superbas, Highlanders, and Trolley Dodgers.  We've had the obscure, such as the Antlers (a baseball team made up of California Native Americans), and the literary, such as Jeff Casey's Mudville Nine and the Whippets (from Prairie Home Companion's mythical town of Lake Woebegone).     
• What are the connotations of the word, the emotional or visual images that come to mind when you hear the term?  When you hear Badgers, you think of a team that's tough and tenacious, like woodland creatures from Wisconsin.  When you hear Hamsters, you think of a diminutive and delicate team…eaten by badgers.  
• Does it have panache, that is, is there something clever or humorous or interesting about the word (or phrase)?  My fellow rhetorician, Professor Koncz, picked a winner with the Wrath, as in "The Wrath of Koncz." Much better than a snoozer like BookGuys.    
• Does it make any sense?  The league has had teams like the Cunoct.  Huh?  Or SlapSockers.  What's a socker and why should I slap one?  Or Pure Bone, fine for a punk rock band, but for a baseball team? Yecch!

Of course, your prospective team name may not apply to all these criteria. Ultimately, the most important criterion is whether you like the name, since you'll be living with it for the rest of your days in Nostalgia Baseball.  But woe to the careless new owner lest he settle for something that sounds, quite frankly, really stupid.  Other points to consider:

• You're limited to 21 characters, including spaces, which unfortunately excludes historical barnstormers like the House of Alexander's Whiskered Wonders.  But 21 allows for Splendid Splinters.  In the olden times we had only 8 characters to work with, but some of the best nostalgia baseball monikers have been short and sweet, such as 1918ers, Homers, and Diamonds.  
• Just some personal preferences-I'm not fond of using "the" as part of the team name.  The definite article "the" is already implied.  Whoever heard of The "The Yankees"? Only the DaBears have successfully managed to get away with such grammatical redundancy, and only because other owners starting pronouncing it "DAAHbears," not "duh BEARS."    
• Nor am I fond of geographic labels as part of the name, such as Minnesota Hobbits.  First, like "the" above, the geographic identification is already implied.  Second, the name becomes absurd if you choose to move to a stadium located in a different state or city.  Third, I've never understood the connection between Minnesota and Hobbits, most Hobbits preferring the gentler climes of Oregon or Hawaii. 
• A team name should be able to function as a noun, and names ending with an exclamation mark create needless punctuation problems.  For example, Hoosiers Rule! annoys the cork out of one's computer grammar checker, as opposed to "Hoosier Rulers" or "Ruling Hoosiers." Or better yet, just "Hoosiers," for as any sensible Hoosier knows, "Rule!" is superfluous.  
• Finally, racist or potentially offensive names are unacceptable. Bandfags mercifully lasted only one season.

So, happy name hunting.  Whichever 3rd rate poet wrote, "a rose by any other name is still a rose," didn't know squat about Baseball.  The ability to name is the only thing that distinguishes humans from dolphins, parrots, chimpanzees, barnacles, and reality show contestants.  The Name Is the Game! 

Current and Past Nostalgia Baseball Team Names

1918ers

Antlers

Badgers

Bandfags

Bashers

Ben Thumpers

Big Red Machine

Bombers

Bombers II

BookGuys

Breeze

Brooklyn Firebolts

Brotherhood

Browns

Bronx Bombers

Canucks

Cavemen

Cruisers

Cunoct

Czars

DaBears

Defibrillators

Diamonds

Dingers

Dirt

Dirt Dog Central

Enigmas

Express

Friendly Confines

Gotmeds

Hamsters

Hickory Sticks

HickStix

Highlanders

Homers

Hoosiers Rule

House of Onan Mules

Integers

Jackalopes

Jurassics

Kyojin

Lemons

Leonards

Lexicons

Loonies

Maniacs

MedTechs

Meteors

Mighty Ducks

Minnesota Hobbits

Mudville Nine

Mustang Mavericks

My Tribe

Orioles

Parsons

Picts

Pioneers

Platecrossers

Plutonics

Psychobabbles

Pure Bone

QuePadre

Random Attack

Rednecks

Rhetors

Saints

SlapSockers

Splendid Splinters

Spiders

SS Killebrewers

St. Francis Boys

Superbas

Thumpers

Trolley Dodgers

Vice Presidents

VP's

Walloping Argyles

Wanna Be's

Waves

Whippets

WhiteCaps

Wonder Boys

Wrath

Yellow Peril