Burlington Bees

140

Starting this season, the Burlington Bees are affiliated with the Oakland Athletics. I like that. There's an elegance here: The Bees are affiliates of the A's. I'd like to see that extended to other leagues. But there's a problem, of course. The Bees are in the Midwest League, a few steps down from the A's. Ideally, the Bees name would belong to the A's' AAA affiliate. Currently that's the Sacramento River Cats. No problem: "River Cats" is a stupid name anyway, so we'll just make them the Sacramento Bees. Then we have to make the team in Midland, Texas change from the Midland Rock Hounds to the the Midland C's. (We can't use "Seas" because Midland is nowhere near the coast.) We'll make their logo a musical note. Then we have to turn the Stockland Ports into the Stockland D's (logo: a woman with large breasts), and the Vermont Lake Monsters into the Vermont F's (logo: a report card). Burlington fits into the "E" slot, and I have no idea what to use for a logo. I'm sure someone will think of something. Probably a bear. Every team that can't figure out what to put in their logo uses a bear sooner or later.

The sad thing about all this is that the Burlington team is the only team whose name wouldn't be improved by this. Okay, maybe Stockton loses out a little, but you can't convince me that "C's" is any worse than "Rock Hounds" or that "F's" is any worse than "Lake Monsters". And if you're going to seriously going to argue that "River Cats" is better than "Bees" then save your breath. In fact, hold your breath. Hold it it until you turn blue. You'll be doing the human race a favor, because your parents obviously scratched the 8-ball while playing gene pool.

The Bees' logo is a bee with a "B" on a ball cap — try saying that three times fast. She has a blue-and-yellow body, is wearing a white, short-sleeve shirt, and has antennae where her eyebrows should be. (Yes, I know bees don't have eyebrows, but I think you catch my drift.) She also has two arms and no legs, and wings coming out of her neck. Her body appears to have only two segments (bees normally have three). In other words, there is almost nothing accurate about the way this bee is drawn. Indeed, I'm calling this bee "she" just so there can be one accurate thing here, which is the stinger. Male bees don't have stingers, so if the bee is male, then there's nothing at all which is accurate.

Frankly, this thing doesn't look anything like a bee to me. She looks like a Martian. And now that I think about it, Burlington Martians wouldn't be a bad name. Neither would Sacramento Martians, Stockton Martians, or Vermont Martians. And Midland Martians sounds pretty darned cool if you ask me. The Rock Hounds should definitely change their name to the Martians. Burlington can keep the name Bees. I'll come up with something for Sacramento, Stockton, and Vermont another day.

Final Score: 140 points.
Penalties: Alliteration, 5 pts; Script, 7 pts; Humanoid, 30 pts; Cartoon, 47 pts; Player, 51 pts.
Bonuses: None.