In today's Friday Know-It-All, AV Expert Davis is back with the segment called “Make a Name for Yourself (And Your Trivia Team),” exploring the names and branding of Minor League Baseball teams and beyond.
We’re back to the mostly-wacky world of Minor League Baseball to give you inspiration when naming your next trivia team! Let these stories of the team names and branding inspire you, and as a bonus to all of this, you can learn a lot about areas of the U.S. that you may never visit — or if you do, you can impress the locals with your extensive regional knowledge.
We start in the New England area. We don't care about the stats or the players on the teams, we only care about the branding. This is Making a Name for Yourself (And Your Trivia Team).
Option 1: Name your team after the local fauna
The New England seal population is projected to be between 75,000 to 100,000. There have been plenty of seal-named teams, most notably the San Francisco Seals, But Portland, Maine, wanted to make it weird, just like the similarly named city on the west coast, so they went with the Portland Sea Dogs — not the cryptid or the name for your fellow sailor, just a slang term for a seal.
Alternate Inspiration: Mostly food, but bowling honored, too
Each minor league team will play as alternate nicknames. These are always nods to local or regional aspects of their area and fandom. Rapid fire inspiration from the Sea Dogs alternates.
The Maine Whoopie Pies: Two round chocolate cake-like cookies with a sweet creamy filling or frosting in the middle. Quite a few places claim to be the maker of the whoopie pie in New England. Maine named it the official state treat in 2011.
Maine Red Snappers: An iconic hot dog in Maine that is known for its color, red, and its natural casing that “snaps” as you take a bite. Another delicacy that has been around for over 100 years in Maine. They’re not named after the fish, like I thought.
Bean Suppahs: A centuries old New England tradition on Saturday nights of feeding and gathering communities at churches and grange halls. Usually baked beans and a hot dog, or red snapper, and brown bread.
Clambakes: Native American New England tradition that include lobster, clams, corn on the cob, potatoes and blueberry cake and served over layers of seaweed in a pit oven. The Wabanaki Tribe called the area Ah-bays’auk (“clambake place”).
Candlepins: Candlepin bowling is a variation that is unique to New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces. It’s been a popular sport amongst Mainers since the 1880s. Candlepin bowling is played with a handheld-sized ball and tall, narrow pins that resemble candles.
Option 2: The people who came before you, but not in a good way
One of the lamer, or ignominious (I had to use a thesaurus for that), things a minor league team can do is name themselves after their parent club. While this is the case for the Worcester Red Sox, known as the Woo Sox, they at least have different branding that tells a story about the area.
The Woo Sox use a smiley face in their branding. That’s because the original smiley face was created in the town of Worcester in 1963 by Harvey Ball.
State Mutual Life Insurance Company of Worcester purchased another insurance company. The merger created low company morale. Ball was employed to come up with a symbol to increase morale. The sunny yellow circle with two asymmetrical eyes and a smile was put on a button and sold more than 50 million buttons by 1971.
The origins are somewhat disputed, but that didn’t stop the Worcester team from adopting the smiley face.
Alternate Inspiration: The punk scene
Wicked Worms: Worcester is often known as “Wormtown.” In the late ’70s, local DJ Leonard B. Saarinen, known as L.B. Worm, described the underground punk rock music scene as “Wormtown,” since it was so underground.
Option 3: Animals are the names for a lot of teams
Yes, okay, this one’s an animal too. In the area of New Hampshire lives the fisher cat, an animal that doesn’t fish primarily, nor is it a cat. The name comes from the French and Dutch people that first colonized the area and thought the animal looked like a European polecat, which they called the pelt fichet (pronounced fee-SHAY). Thus, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.
The name, while being slightly uninspired, really came from an emergency, according to logo creator Dan Simon. New Hampshire usually kicks off the long and arduous presidential election with their primaries.
The team wanted to honor that by going with the nickname New Hampshire Primaries. It was so unpopular that they pivoted quickly to Fisher Cats under the guise of a “Name the Team” contest.
Alternate Inspiration: Food, aliens, and big hills (mountains)
New Hampshire Space Potatoes: Potatoes have been the official vegetable of New Hampshire since 2013, honoring early Scots-Irish settlers that planted the first American white potato in Derry, New Hampshire. In 1961, there was one of the first widely reported alien abductions of Barney and Betty Hill. Why not honor both in one team name?
Manchester Chicken Tenders: The Puritan Backroom Restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, claims to be the originator of the chicken tender back in 1974. Food is always good inspiration for an alternate team name, as every team — and fan — tends to use it.
New Hampshire Mountain Men: That “Name the Team” contest comes around again to the alternate that didn’t win. This brand honored the Old Man of the Mountain in the nearby Cannon Mountains, and dressing the mascot up as a Revolutionary War soldier is also a nod to New Hampshire being the first state to declare independence from Britain. Rhode Island claims this too. We’ll let them fight over that.
Option 4: Name your team after a popular form of transportation
Hartford, Connecticut, had an old railroad yard in the city as part of the New Haven Railroad. A team from New Britain in the same state decided to move to Hartford and needed a new home.
They chose to build their stadium on that old rail yard and honored their town’s train history in naming their team the Hartford Yard Goats.
“But wait, that’s an animal! Look at their goat logo,” you yell at your screen.
First of all, stop yelling. Secondly, a yard goat is a small engine in the railyard that switches a train to get it ready for another locomotive to take over.
The logo designers, Brandiose, decided a goat was better for the logo than a little train. They were probably right.
Alternate inspiration: food, tourism, and wacky “laws”
Steamed Cheeseburgers: Ever had your cheeseburger steamed? Well, it’s pretty normal in central Connecticut thanks to Jack’s Lunch, the supposed creator of this delicacy, and Ted’s Restaurant, the most famous restaurant that still serves it.
Bouncing Pickles: In 1948, Sidney Sparer and Moses Dexler were arrested for selling pickles “unfit for human consumption.” The Connecticut Food and Drug Commission stated you could “drop (a pickle) one foot and it should bounce.” This started a whole rumor that there is a law that pickles need to bounce in Connecticut. There is no law, but the Yard Goats honored that rumor.
Leaf Peepers: According to the team, 10 million people every year come to New England just to watch the leaves change color. The Hartford squad wanted to honor this bump in tourism by donning the Leaf Peepers moniker.
Thunder Chickens: A slang term for turkey. Connecticut finds itself with an estimated 35,000 wild turkeys. The electrified poultry will find itself on their jerseys and hats for the first time in 2025.
MORE From the Archive:
