MilSox

As I said in the other thread, the Milkmen name feels out of place for Milwaukee. Granted, this might be a best case scenario considering many of the other names. This was botched from day one. At least the logo isn't terrible.

I have very mixed feelings about this. I'm glad they branded as Milwaukee, but the dairy industry has always been a more Northern WI thing. It'd be like a Phily team naming itself after the steel industry or a NYC team naming itself in reference to Niagara Falls.

I swear, every one of these lists I've seen lately makes me wonder if these teams have nothing but contempt for their players and fans.

I know Fort Wayne is exclusively part of the Purdue system now, but how does the blue even fit in? Also, I hate hyphenated names. Its been 50 years since most teachers colleges were joined to a flagship school by state sponsored shotgun weddings. Can't they stand on their own names by now?

George Blanda played NFL games against Sammy Baugh and Walter Payton.

Make it stop...

It's been an incredibly contentious issue locally. The Bullfrogs essentially leveraged GB and Ashwaubenon against one another to get the best deal. And there's the perception (right or wrong) is that Ashwaubenon has been undermining development in the rest of Brown County for years. I don't think it's entirely a coincidence that the team has decided to at least flirt with the idea of renaming the club now. They never hinted that would be the case when a new Green Bay facility was still on the table.

I just submitted "Fox River Foxes" as the new name. The Timber Rattlers have one of the best selling brands in MiLB and won't be reviving the Foxes identity anytime soon. Since the Bulldogs are moving out of Green Bay proper, but to another town on the river; they may as well use this as an opportunity to tie the entire region's baseball history together. And Foxes has the added bonus of being a very Northwoods-y animal.

They're moving to Ashwaubenon, a GB suburb known for its proximity to Lambeau (literally across the street). Fox Valley Foxes, maybe? Ever since the original Foxes became the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, I've been waiting for the Foxes to return.

I thought they were keeping the Sky Sox name! By what standards are any of these names even remotely as good? I hope baseball fans in Colorado Springs raise hell about this until they agree to keep the Sky Sox.

?

Eye stitches that suspiciously make it look like he got into some good catnip, AND the team is called the "Hi" Toms? This can't be a coincidence.....

ULL has one of my favorite collegiate brands and this logo is a huge reason why.

Oh I get it. In Wisconsin, the traditional garbage meat is braunschweiger.

Isn't scrapple just the Mid-Atlantic's version of Spam?

Might that have had to do with the ballpark being brand spankin' new? A lot of Midwest League teams got new facilities in the 90s and experienced explosions of interest because of it.

The J on the bat script is wonky as hell.

I kinda suspected Grand Rapids/West Michigan had little motivation to move up, and now it's confirmed. At the AAA level, they most likely wouldn't be a Tigers affiliate, which is probably their biggest selling point right now.

Admittedly, my experience of West Michigan is limited to Kalamazoo, Muskegon, and Benton Harbor. So I'll have to take your word on that. But if the park really is that close to the central city of Grand Rapids, they really hurt themselves in naming the team regionally. Most people have no idea that the Whitecaps are from a Top 40 media market. If Grand Rapids has enough cache for the AAA level of hockey, certainly it could stand for itself in the Midwest League. But no city will ever match the sheer influence on not only the art of brewing, but tavern culture in general that Milwaukee has had dating back to the 19th century. I'm not saying that to take away from Founders or any of the other quality craft breweries that have emerged in placed like Grand Rapids, or Denver, or Portland. But there's only so much influence they can exert being smaller and (for the most part) regionally distributed. I would also argue that Milwaukee's lack of well-known craft breweries is because Lakefront (31 years old, which is ancient in the world of craft brewing) and New Glarus are so entrenched here. It's like how the Yankees have only won one World Series since 2000. But love them or hate them, they're still the gold standard by which every other major pro sports enterprise is measured.

Toledo is less than an hour's drive from Detroit, and they've been affiliated since 1987. Not sure I see them ending that affiliation even if it is for another Michigan city. The Indians just affiliated with Columbus a few years ago. Not sure they'd end a relationship with a team in their own backyard to affiliate somewhere further away where the fans like their divisional rivals. The White Sox could definitely work. New Comiskey is the closest MLB park to Grand Rapids. But I really feel like Indianapolis would be a better fit for them. If they have to play little brother everywhere in Chicagoland that's not the city's southside, why not try to drum up a fanbase in Indiana? The ideal home for a Brewers AAA club is Madison or the Fox Valley, though I'm not sure I see either building a new park anytime soon. But because they're an NL club, the fans in Grand Rapids wouldn't have too feel conflicted about their loyalty to the Tigers. Besides, if they really want to go all in on this "Beer City" stuff, who better to affiliate with?

As an outsider, I'm really not seeing what makes Grand Rapids so different from any different from all the other cities of consequential size that all have their own assortment of craft breweries and brewpubs. Besides, with the real Brew City right across Lake Michigan, it just comes off as poor taste. Milwaukee never tried to step on Detroit's toes and call itself something like "Engine City" despite being home to Harley Davidson and AMC. Technically, the Whitecaps are in a suburb a good 10 miles outside of Grand Rapids, but that was news to me fairly recently too. I wonder who a Grand Rapids/West Michigan AAA club would affiliate with though since I doubt the Tigers would ever leave Toledo. Selfishly, it'd be nice to have Brewers prospects within driving distance again.

Beer City... seriously?

I could tolerate those colors for the Wizards. It was the name I didn't care for. The Caps always felt like change for the sake of change, though. I prefer what they wear now.

Found this at my local Five Below. Couldn't resist picking it up. There's better quality pinball-style baseball games if you're willing to spend some money on one, but this is incredibly good for $5. The swing mechanic is even better than some of the more expensive versions I've played.

Fun fact. This is based on an arcade game manufactured by Service Games (Sega) in the 1960s.