Minor League Baseball is incredible for so many reasons – professional players, youth and excitement, affordable close seats, crazy food – and a recent wave of increasingly whacky team names has done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, though, we won’t get a chance to see one of the whackiest team names of all:
Staten Island will remain the "Yankees" for the immediate future. For more info, read our full statement here: https://t.co/719F8OAQdB https://t.co/bkz6O2JeYO
— StatenIslandYankees (@SIYanks) December 19, 2016
If you didn’t know, the short-season A-ball minor league affiliate of the New York Yankees plays in Staten Island, and is called the Yankees. Earlier this year they announced a plan to have a new team name and logo, which would be determined by fan votes from among the fan-suggested finalists:
Staten Island Bridge Trolls
Staten Island Heroes
Staten Island Killer Bees
Staten Island Pizza Rats
Staten Island Rock Pigeons
Bridge Trolls or Pizza Rats all the way!
… but, as the tweet indicates, it won’t be happening. The full release from the team, which includes a statement from team president Will Smith, indicates, “We had a favored name, logo and branding plan. We were prepared to move forward, but encountered obstacles that unfortunately delayed the process beyond industry deadlines.”
We can only speculate as to what “obstacles” delayed the process. I have a conspiracy theory involving actual bridge trolls and pizza rats, but I’ll save it for our sister site, Insane Conspiracies Are Fun.
There’s a chance one of these names will eventually be brought to Staten Island in the future, but, for now, and for 2017, they’ll just be the Yankees.
(In case you’d forgotten about THE pizza rat.)