Pope: Minor-league baseball team names get quite quirky

Macon has fielded a minor league baseball team in 78 seasons since 1895. As we well know, however, we haven’t any kind of club in the city since the independent Macon Music played in the South Coast League in 2007.

In those 78 years, Macon has not shown a lot of creativity in picking the team nickname. The most common moniker has been the Peaches, which has been on the Macon jersey in 44 seasons. Other Macon teams have been known as the Hornets, Highlanders, Brigands, Tigers, Dodgers, Redbirds, Pirates, Music and -- of course -- the Braves when Atlanta operated the franchise at Luther Williams Field from 1991-2002.

In case you didn’t know, a brigand is another name for bandit.

BaseballReference.com lists more than 30,000 teams in minor league history, with some of those having interesting and entertaining names.

Just take, for example, some of the teams playing this season. In the International League, you have the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. I wondered what kind of name that was, but then I learned that the Lehigh Valley area is a big steel producer and one of the elements needed to make steel is pig iron. The baseball team took advantage of that connection and came up with the catchy name.

In the Eastern League, you have the Akron Rubber Ducks. Once again, the baseball team used its location in establishing a name. Akron is one of the country’s major producers of rubber, and baseball management saw the name as a way to promote the area, as well as providing the team with a name that would be fun and recognizable.

Albuquerque of the of the Pacific Coast League got its team nickname, the Isotopes, from the Springfield Isotopes, the fictional team from the TV show “The Simpsons.” For a time, Homer was the team mascot for the Springfield team.

I am not sure why some of the teams playing this season chose the names they did, like the Southern League’s Montgomery Biscuits, the Eastern League’s Richmond Flying Squirrels (Wonder if Rocky is the mascot) and the Lansing Lugnuts, who play in the Midwest League.

The South Atlantic League, where Macon played the majority of its time in the minors, provides us with the Savannah Sand Gnats and the Greensboro Grasshoppers.

If you have ever spent any time in Savannah, you know that name is appropriate. I was just there last week and got my fill in a hurry. The Sally League has given us some great names through the years, like the Albany Pole Cats, the Columbus Catfish, the Piedmont Boll Weevils and the Charleston (West Virginia) Alleycats. Charleston is now known as the West Virginia Power, and Piedmont is called the Kannapolis Intimidators.

Unfortunately, like Macon, the Georgia cities of Albany and Columbus have no minor league baseball today.

There have been some other interesting team nicknames through the years among those 30,000 minor league teams. Among my favorites are the Texarkana Casketmakers, the Las Vegas Train Robbers, the Traverse City Beach Bums. the Muncie Fruit Jars, the San Jose Prune Pickers, the Omaho Omahogs and the Grand Prairie Air Hogs.

If minor league baseball returns to Macon, I could care less about what the team is called as long as we have a club in the city.

Contact Bobby Pope at bobbypope428@gmail.com

This story was originally published July 6, 2015 at 4:02 PM with the headline "Pope: Minor-league baseball team names get quite quirky."