By Stephen Turk

As the baseball playoffs go on, it’s got me thinking about the names of the team s involved.  We have the Boston Red Sox, the Tampa Bay Rays, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Los Angeles Dodgers.  The Dodgers, Red Sox, and Phillies have all been around for a long time, and as such their team names came about in different ways than teams that came about later.  The Rays, of course, are one of these later teams, and looking at the stories behind the names, yields some interesting stories, as well as tracks some of the changes that have occurred in sports.

Let’s look at the three old time teams first.  When pro baseball started up, there weren’t official team names for many of them.  They would be the baseball club from Hyannisport or wherever.  Nicknames often came about from sportswriters making an alliteration of the coaches name, relating them to a popular trend, or merely pointing out a common element of their play or uniform detail.

First come the Dodgers.  As many know, the LA Dodgers used to be the Brooklyn Dodgers, and they were one of the pioneering teams in early organized baseball, starting in the 1890s.  The nickname Dodgers comes from a shortening of Trolley Dodgers, a nickname unique to the area and the time because of the multitudes of trolleys in their hometown.  There were any number of other nicknames being used at the time, however.  The Dodgers went as the Bridegrooms, the Superbas, the Fillies, the Wonders, and the Robins, before settling on the Dodgers permanently in the 1930s.  In 1958, the team moved to LA, with the goal of expanding baseball to the west coast, where it was a largely unserved commodity.  In a move that would certainly never happen today, the team kept the nickname it had gotten due to it’s New York location, it’s colors, and it’s uniform design, changing only the B on the caps to the now familiar interlocking LA.  The move proved to be a successful one, and though the Dodgers were inspired by Brooklyn, they are firmly rooted in LA.

Check out this timeline for more Dodgers info: http://losangeles.dodgers.mlb.com/la/history/timeline01.jsp

 A quick glance at the name Red Sox, and most of what anyone needs to know about how the name came about it revealed rather quickly.  It’s no trick or confusing circumstance, the Red Sox are called the Red Sox because they wore red socks with their uniforms.  Like many teams from the early twentieth century, however, they were not always officially known by this name.  The team started in 1901, but didn’t adopt the name we know them by until 1908.  In the ensuing seven years, the Boston club was unofficially called the Americans, as they were part of the upstart American League.  The American years were up and down, before some young talent reinvigorated the club, who decided to rename themselves, leading to a good deal of success in the early twentieth century, winning the World Series in 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918, before the infamous selling of Babe Ruth to New York, which propelled the Yankees to prominence and kept the Red Sox from a championship for 80-odd years.  While the Red Sox of today have become one the most beloved and reviled teams in baseball, the name is classic.  They wear red socks?  Okay, that’s the team name.

Red Sox timeline! http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/bos/history/timeline1.jsp

The Phillies are yet another team with roots back to the 1800s.  They are indeed the oldest continuous, one name, one city franchise in all of professional baseball.  They first played in 1883.  The name is as simple as it gets, it’s simply a shortening of Philadelphia.  The team was christened by the then owner, Al Reach.  Like every team with a long history, the Phillies have had their share of success and struggles, making numerous appearances in the post season and the World Series but have only won it all once, in 1980.  Still, you got to love the name.  They are the only team I can think of in baseball (the Montreal Canadiens come to mind if we consider all sports) that are named after the residents of the city that they play in.

The Phillies timeline is here: http://philadelphia.phillies.mlb.com/phi/history/timeline01.jsp

Modern times have brought different techniques for team naming.  First an foremost, teams are very valuable franchises.  A name is more than just a convenient way to be referred to in the papers, it’s what will be emblazoned on hats, shirts, banners, and any number of merchandise items.  Most names for teams that have come into existence in the past fifteen years or so, are the result of fan selection.  Oftentimes names end up being a generic scary animal (jaguar, thrasher?) or weather event (lightening, thunder).

The Tampa Bay Rays have a different story than any of these old time teams.  First off, before this year they were the Devil Rays, as they were named for the aquatic animal common to the area.  They were not a pioneering team from the early days of pro ball or an upstart league, but rather an expansion team.  They came right into the MLB in 1998 with the Arizona Diamond Backs (indigenous animal names were popular then).  This year they changed to simply the Rays, a nickname with the double meaning of both the animal, and the term for sunshine.  Though the name doesn’t quite have the history or the charm of the older teams, it remains to be seen just what kind of history the Tampa Bay team will forge.  They don’t have the built in legacy that other teams can benefit from.

So while I think it is pretty clear that older teams in general have more charming, relatable names, newer team names, while generic, are at least commonly voted on by fans.  Of course there are also plenty of old names that simply didn’t work, and teams that had regionally inspired names moved locations and didn’t change their names, so not everything was good in the good old days.  The conclusion, if there really even has to be one, is that teams names, once an afterthought, now of utmost importance, can lead to cool stories, neat merchandise, and good slogans, but what defines a team is its character.  Though I wouldn’t mind seeing a resurrection of the Bridegrooms.