Walk-Off

@Jamesizzo, if you want an NBA with four divisions of eight teams apiece and you want to revive the Seattle SuperSonics, then I can think of two better ways to make that happen. Let all existing clubs stay where they are, forgo an NBA version of the Kentucky Colonels and thus enable the Memphis Grizzlies to play in the Central Division, and grant expansion franchises to both Seattle and another locale in the Pacific Time Zone; or force a reversal of the ethically questionable relocation that created the Oklahoma City Thunder and thus give the original SuperSonics franchise back to Seattle, have the Memphis Grizzlies play in the Midwest Division, and put expansion teams in both Louisville and someplace in the Pacific Time Zone. The NBA's new team out west could be in Las Vegas, a third chance taken on San Diego (a former home of the Clippers and, before that, the original home of the Rockets), a third team in the Greater Los Angeles region (The Vancouver Grizzlies' last owner, Michael Heisley, gave some thought to bringing that team to Anaheim before he chose Memphis as the Grizz' new home in 2001, and the Sacramento Kings came close to becoming the Anaheim Royals nearly a decade ago.), a second team in the San Francisco Bay Area (Around the same time that Sacramento was on the brink of losing the Kings, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison tried to buy the current New Orleans NBA club and, despite his public denial of a desire to relocate that team, was heavily rumored at the time to have wanted to shift that franchise to San José.), or a brand-new franchise for Vancouver.

As the home of Sunday night NFL games since 2006, NBC is also "an official partner" of the NFL, yet the NBC-owned Pro Football Talk website has gotten away with making the bare minimum of mentions of the Washington team's nickname for many years now. These days, pretty much the only places in which one will find that nickname mentioned within PFT are in tags for articles and in comments by some readers of the site.

If, in this alternate timeline, (a) Clark Griffith died at more or less the same moment in time as in our history and still left the Washington Senators to his nephew, Calvin Griffith, and (b) Calvin still retained ownership of that team for at least two decades, then I think that the younger Griffith would have been very unwilling either to relocate the Senators to Atlanta at any point in his ownership or to wait until 1966 to move the team anywhere far away from Washington, D.C. Among the things that we have come to learn about Calvin Griffith is that, on at least one occasion, he accused black people -- the predominant residents of the neighborhoods surrounding the Washington Senators' ballpark and, historically, a large percentage of the population of the whole District of Columbia -- of being generally unwilling to attend baseball games regularly, and admitted that he was thrilled that the whole state of Minnesota had presumably only a few thousand black inhabitants when the Senators became the Twins in 1961. Thus, in a world where the Minneapolis-St. Paul area somehow gained an MLB club before the Senators could move to that region, I think that Calvin Griffith would have passed up a city as heavily black as Atlanta -- especially if, just as in our world, the federal government had banned racial discrimination in both employment and public accommodations by the time that Atlanta had an MLB-ready stadium -- in favor of a comparably populous MLB-free area in the United States (or even in Canada) with a much higher ratio of white residents to black residents. Specifically, Buffalo (one of the cities proposed for a team in pro baseball's stillborn Continental League, and a decidedly larger city in the late 1950s and early 1960s than today), Denver (the tentative home of another Continental League club), Toronto (where a third CL team would have played), Montréal (Calvin Griffith's hometown), and even Indianapolis and Seattle all strike me as being far more likely destinations for a Washington Senators team under his particular ownership than Atlanta. Finally, I cannot help but suspect that Calvin Griffith was a hardened enough racist that he would have sought to move the Senators out of Washington, D.C. as soon as possible after he inherited the team, even if Baltimore still did not have its own MLB franchise and even if neither the AL nor the NL had expanded yet. In that case, I think that, in the early 1960s in this parallel universe, each league still adds two teams, the NL still grants a franchise to New York City to fill the void left jointly by the Giants and the Dodgers, and the AL still bestows a franchise upon Houston. However, the NL would have had trouble deciding whether its other planned expansion club for the early Sixties would compete with the Browns for fans in Los Angeles or exploit and avenge the AL's departure from D.C. Meanwhile, the AL would have felt a lot of pressure in the earliest part of the 60s to say no to any bid from Baltimore and instead put a new team in the District before the NL could do so.

The International Hockey League, during more or less its last decade of existence, had many clubs that lacked affiliations with NHL teams. Is the AHL of today just as willing to let the Wolves or any of its other teams play without a tie-up with an NHL club?

https://ballparkdigest.com/2020/02/07/rob-manfred-backs-rays-pursuit-of-split-season-plan/ Commissioner Manfred, have you no shame? I am sorry, but I cannot think of much else to say about the person presumably in charge of the whole of MLB granting an official, public blessing to Sternberg's complexity-inducing, greed-laden, hubris-laden, almost certainly fan-alienating plan for the future of the Rays.

Did you mean to type "less detrimental" instead of "more deteimental," @mr.nascar13? It seems rather obvious to me that the Cobras' refusal to play the rest of that game infuriated the NAL's leadership more than did the security being presumably weak enough to enable the theft of things belonging to various Cobras personnel.

The irony is that while most New Englanders seem to pronounce "Worcester" in a way that has the first syllable's vowel matching the "short 'oo'" found in "good" or "wood," the announcer in the video revealing the WooSox's identity seems to pronounce the vowel in the first syllable of "WooSox" as the "long 'oo'" that is heard in "food" or "mood."

Ruby Legs might help to distinguish the Worcester team from the Boston Red Sox, but that nickname is similar enough to Red Sox that the Worcester club would be an awkward position should the team's ties to the Bosox ever disintegrate. Wicked Worms makes for a definitely independent identity and also employs a distinctly New England slang word, but also seems to be far too tailor-made for the Brandiose formula.

Ever since the PawSox announced their move to Worcester, I have been under the impression that they would become simply the Worcester Red Sox, or "WooSox" for short. Not only is the team relocating from one area that is close to Boston and has a large Boston Red Sox fanbase to another community with those two attributes, but the AAA team's principal owner also is or was a holder of a minority stake in the parent club.

Unless I am mistaken, the Atlanta Braves organization is the Danville Braves' actual owner; while every Appalachian League team takes the nickname of its MLB parent club, at least some of those teams are owned separately from their parent clubs. Therefore, as dire as the Appy League's future seems to be, the Atlanta Braves probably have much more of a luxury in updating the Danville club's logos than do the Appy League team owners or ownership groups that are separate from their parent clubs' ownerships. If nothing else, the Atlanta Braves organization could modify the Danville team's emblems for one of the remaining clubs in the Braves' farm system if and when the D-Braves and the Appy League are ejected from the established MiLB framework.

Once again, Studio Simon, bravo!

If the St. Paul and Sugar Land indie-league teams are indeed earmarked for moves to MLB-affiliated minor leagues, then the latest plan seems to be that: the St. Paul Saints would take the Fresno Grizzlies' place in the AAA Pacific Coast League, the Grizzlies would then replace the departing Lancaster JetHawks in either the existing High A California League or a new West Coast-based lower-level minor league that would include the Cal League's remaining teams, the Sugar Land Skeeters would follow the Saints into the PCL, and a second PCL club would then be forced to move to a lower-level minor league. However, I remember reading at least one earlier story that suggested that the Skeeters would head instead for the AA Texas League. Oh, well, if the Skeeters wind up in the PCL and the Astros make the Skeeters their AAA affiliate at the first possible opportunity, then the Round Rock Express might gain a chance to reunite with the Texas Rangers -- who, for the time being, have opted for the Nashville Sounds as their AAA representative largely because the Rangers organization (a) regards the now-PCL-member San Antonio Missions' current venue as too decrepit and (b) sees too little, if any, progress being made toward a new ballpark for the Missions anywhere in the San Antonio area.

I, for one, hope that if and when Major League Baseball banishes all of those teams from the established minor leagues, the owners of the displaced MiLB teams will reject involvement in any new league organized at least partly by MLB, whether it is an "independent" professional league like the "Dream" league or a summer collegiate league. Instead, in my opinion, those owners who are willing and financially able to transform their MiLB franchises into independent pro teams should either try to get their clubs into established independent pro baseball leagues or band together to form one or more new truly independent pro leagues that would have no involvement with MLB whatsoever. Likewise, I think that those owners who believe that their MiLB clubs could survive without an MLB team affiliation only with a switch to unpaid college players should either try to secure places for their teams in existing summer collegiate baseball leagues or join forces to create one or more new summer collegiate leagues that would keep well away from any connection with MLB.

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@Mr. Bojangles, I agree with all of this except for what should be done with the Cannon Ballers' home jersey. I think that the retention of the staggered alignment of the wordmark for the full nickname on the home jersey is wonky, but I believe also that a baseball club trying to establish a new nickname with fans in the community where it plays is wise to have the full nickname somehow on the front of the jersey that is likely to be worn during most of the team's home games. Therefore, I would do one of the following with the home jersey (in order of preference): 1. Develop an alternate alignment of the current script wordmark for the full nickname -- one in which "Cannon" is completely above "Ballers" -- and use that alignment on the front of the home jersey (albeit probably with slightly smaller letters). 2. Devise an alternate wordmark comprised of capital block letters -- possibly in a font reminiscent of carnivals and/or circuses -- and use the resulting logotype on the front of the home jersey (preferably with, again, "CANNON" fully on top of "BALLERS"). 3. Move the home jersey's placement of the roundel logo -- a symbol whose boundary happens to contain the team's full name -- from the left sleeve to the left side of the chest, shift the number on the front of the home jersey to the right side of the chest, and place the CB monogram on the left sleeve. The Chicago White Sox, the Cannon Ballers' major-league parent club, have their "SOX" monogram on both their cap and the left side of the chest section of their home jersey, so the Cannon Ballers are more than justified to do the same with the drawing of their new mascot.

Studio Simon has been providing generally good nicknames and visual identities for its baseball team clients so far. However, a part of me hopes that Studio Simon does not become too popular among baseball clubs, lest the company then become inclined to perform its work at least as formulaically as has Brandiose.

While I would rather see the South Atlantic League's Kannapolis team be called the Cannons or the Cannonballs (even with a spelling of either nickname with a K instead of a C) if the plan is for a circus-inspired nickname, a third possibility for a name with a circus theme may well be the Kannapolis Clowns. If nothing else, the team's ownership could spin such a choice of name as a tribute to the Indianapolis Clowns, who were Negro League baseball's last surviving professional club, the first pro baseball team to employ and use Hank Aaron as a player, and probably the closest thing that baseball has ever had to an equivalent to the Harlem Globetrotters.

Sorry about that, @Red Comet. I was hoping that you were being sarcastic. Anyway, to get this thread somewhat back on topic, have any of you ever read NewBallpark.org, a blog that has spent years covering the Athletics' lengthy, difficult quest to land a replacement for the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum? I neither am an A's fan nor have any personal connection to Northern California, but I have nonetheless been reading that blog somewhat regularly for most of the nearly fifteen years that it has existed. Both the blog's deep, steady coverage of the political and financial intrigue that has prolonged and complicated that club's pursuit of a new home venue and the many passionate comments that many readers have made about the matters covered by that blog have been enough to draw me into being a surprisingly frequent reader.

Fixed.

I suspect that the struggles that the NFL has had with logos for recent Super Bowls are the product of a desperate desire within that league's leadership for a common element in the branding of each Super Bowl. Meanwhile, the Olympic movement has enjoyed a strong common branding element for decades thanks to that iconic symbol of five interlocking rings. It seems to me that as long as those rings, the host city's name, and the year in which that city is holding an Olympic Games are present, an organizing committee for those Games and anyone hired by such a committee to design an emblem for that edition of the Olympics should expect to have a wide degree of freedom in crafting a logo that works well with the event's place and time. As for the 2024 Olympic Games' new emblem, it is a stylish and alluringly daring symbol that is very befitting an Olympics being held in a city known worldwide as a hub of art, design, and fashion. Whoever developed that logo gets an emphatic merci beaucoup from me. Now, I am curious as to what will become of the rest of the visual identity for the 2024 Games.

The International League Charlotte Knights' BB&T Ballpark has been in operation "only" since 2014, and the Pacific Coast League Nashville Sounds' First Tennessee (soon to be First Horizon) Park dates back "only" to 2015. For that combined reason, a Major League Baseball franchise for Charlotte or Nashville would have to be very set in stone before I would regard a move of that city's respective minor-league club to St. Paul as being justifiable. Otherwise, assuming that the major leagues are not expanding at that moment -- which would need to happen before the minor leagues in general have their own expansion -- and the Charlotte or Nashville MLB club is thus the result of a relocation, a St. Paul Class AAA team might as well come at the expense of Fresno (if the relocating team must be in the PCL) or a still-population-losing and still-economically-depressed area in the Great Lakes region, the Mid-Atlantic, or the Northeast (if an IL club can be moved to St. Paul).