Why not the “Yankee Doodle Dandies”?

by David Benjamin

“After years of contemplation, Washington announced in January that the team’s nickname search had been cut down to seven options: Armada, Brigade, Red Hogs, Presidents, Commanders, RedWolves, and Defenders.”

— Jack Dougherty, Sportscasting

MADISON, Wis.—I’m wearing a t-shirt that honors the 1932 Jersey City Skeeters. This somewhat silly but unique monicker derives from a tradition, dating to the 19th century, for whimsy in the nicknaming of minor league baseball teams. 

I also have shirts, sold by a outfit called Ebbetts Field Flannels—named for the home field of the the Brooklyn (Trolley) Dodgers—that commemorate the Shenandoah Hungarian Rioters, Boston Beaneaters, Lansing Lugnuts, Pawtucket Clam Eaters, Hot Springs Bathers and the immortal Zanesville Flood Sufferers. Anyone with a smattering of baseball history has heard of the Memphis Chicks, Durham Bulls, Pittsburgh Crawfords, Indianapolis Clowns, Chattanooga Lookouts, Atlanta Crackers and, of course, Corporal Klinger’s beloved Toledo Mud Hens. 

Here in Madison, the minor-league Mallards play teams called Growlers, Kingfish, Dock Spiders, Woodchucks, Mud Puppies, Moondogs, Pit Spitters, Jackrabbits, Honkers, Loggers, Larks and—my favorite—the Rockford Rivets. 

I bring this all up because any of these strange and wonderful labels would beat the hell out of the new names hung, by corporate drones and P.R. twits, onto the Cleveland baseball team and the Washington football team. I mean, really?

Guardians? Commanders?

Since I was a kid, team names have fascinated me. This interest became a personal ax to grind in ninth grade at a brand-new school named for the great Progressive statesman, Robert M. La Follette. We were so new that our teams were nameless. So, local sportswriters applied to our football players an honorific reminiscent of our namesake: The Fighting Bobs. I loved this, but lost it in a student plebiscite that turned my Fighting Bobs into “Lancers.” I mean, really?

By popular demand, we forsook the feistiest hero in Wisconsin’s political history for an elitist blood sport that’s been defunct since the Middle Ages.

Later, while covering high school football, I was pleased that kids at Polo (Ill.) High are called the Marcos and bemused that teams at Pekin High were (but are no longer) known as the Chinks. I quietly rooted for the E-Rabs of Rockford East. I envied students at Monroe (Wis.) High, who are known as Cheesemakers.

This naming device harkens to an era when teams bespoke the main blue-collar occupation of their community. So, the Acme meatpacking company team in Green Bay became the Packers. The Pittsburgh NFL team, logically, was the Steelers. And the Dallas team was aptly named Cowboys. Likewise, in the days of leatherhead football, the working-class Providence team was called the Steam Roller and the mining town of Wheeling, West Virginia fielded Ironmen.

Similarly, teams at the University of Wisconsin, recalling the hardscrabble cave-dwelling miners who worked the lead mines in southern Wisconsin and the iron veins of the eastern Mesabi Range, came to be called Badgers. There are no actual wild badgers burrowing under Wisconsin, likewise no wolverines in the Michigan woods, no wildcats roaming Evanston, Tucson or Lexington, no cougars in Provo, no bears in Chicago or lions in Detroit and Pennsylvania. But that’s okay, because these are vivid, muscular, embraceable mascots. Go, Vandals!

No one is really sure what a Hokie, Hoosier or Hoya is. But that’s why these are such good team names. They’re easy to yell and no one else is using them.

For that matter, no one else is using Commanders or Guardians. But this is because they’re no fun, besides which, what do they mean? Really.

I’ll concede that finding a cheer-worthy occupation in Washington D.C. is a challenge. Wizards is okay, but it’s taken. So are Patriots, Bills, Capitals and Nationals. The remaining options plunge steeply downhill. Diplomats? Pols? (God, no!) Solons? Lawmakers? Speakers? Justices? Supremes? No, no and no.

And why did they turn down Red Hogs?

The naming committee (or whoever) of the Washington NFL team landed on Commanders apparently because of its military cachet, linking the team to a Pentagon that’s lousy with commanders of all ranks and egos. But this is a label that hardly suggests Blackjack Pershing ordering doughboys over the top, or George Patton bitch-slapping a Pfc. One pictures, rather, the Joint Chiefs of Staff smoking cigars around a big table and lobbying Joe Biden for a budget increase. Football teams go to war. So, why not call these guys Warhawks! Warhorses! Warlords! Warlocks! Warhogs! Better yet, Warmongers.

I’m still thinking. The Fighting Dems or Roaring Republicans are off-limits, although the Independents—or Independence—has a nice ring. Perhaps the Washington Rebellion? The Washington Monuments?… 

Wait, wait! Got it. There’s a nickname from the past that blends history with forgotten politics. It revives, without partisan baggage, America’s foremost extinct party and features the all-important flourish of alliteration. Bag the Commanders, Dan, and welcome to RFK Stadium the Washington Whigs. Ta-da-a!

On to Cleveland. What are the Guardians—evidently named after a couple of pillars on a bridge—supposed to be guarding? The 325-foot foul pole in left field?

It appears that, in renaming the storied Indians (who will still always be Indians, thank God, in Major League), Cleveland’s front-office lexicographers were trying—God knows why—to preserve the “-ian” word ending. But did they even bother to peek into a thesaurus?

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of -ians out there, many as ethnically evocative as “Indians”: Egyptians, Armenians, Thessalonians, Ionians, Galatians, Indonesians, Belgians, Mongolians, Ukrainians, Ethiopians, even… meh, Russians.

As for occupations (other than Guardians)? Well, let’s see. The Cleveland Custodians? Or Electricians, Morticians (Go, team! Bury the Yankees!), Pediatricians, Librarians, Grammarians, Technicians, Dietitians…

Okay, I give up. You can Google a thousand jobs and not find an -ian occupation much more baseball-worthy than Guardians—although Guardians still sucks. This is why I turn, for solace and inspiration, to the Toronto Raptors.

Remember. There would be no team anywhere called Raptors without the release, in 1993, of Stephen Spielberg’s prehistoric allegory, Jurassic Park, in which the nimble, ferocious and intelligent velociraptor stole the show from T Rex. Two years later, inspired by Hollywood special effects (and greed), the founders of a new NBA franchise decided to call their hoop gods the Toronto Raptors. 

This brainstorm, the first movie tie-in to a professional sports team, reaped a fortune in merchandising, including the creation of a Jurassic Park carnival venue outside the Raptors’ stadium. 

Pay attention, Cleveland. It’s not too late to follow Toronto’s lucrative lead. All you need to do is latch onto a hit movie with a compelling fictional creature whose name ends with -ian, or, better yet, -ion.

You see it coming, don’t you? 

Adorable little round yellow mascots, in a dozen variations, racing ’round the bases during every seventh-inning stretch, squeaking and squabbling unintelligibly, dashing into the stands, dumping water buckets onto giggling fans and hugging little kids, giving away lollipops and balloons, selling millions—billions—in movie/baseball tchotchkes (t-shirts, beach chairs, hats, bras, panties, sneakers, socks, bobbleheads, skateboards, Halloween costumes, cars, onesies, BBQ grills, yellow houses—subdivisions!—with round roofs and team logos eight-feet high).

The Cleveland Minions!