Inland Empire 66ers

71

I haven't been able to confirm this anywhere, but if I remember correctly, the name of this team used to be much longer. Basically, the team wanted to make fun of the then-newly-renamed "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim", so they changed their name to be "Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino of California of the United States of America of North America of the planet Earth". For several years it was officially known as the "Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernadino".

Since the Inland Empire 66ers are now affiliated with the Angels, I'm guessing any evidence of this mockery is going to be covered up as much as possible. Indeed, the team now consistently refers to itself as simply the "Inland Empire 66ers", and it's all but impossible to find a reference to the "full" name on the web. But there are still plenty of references on the web to the "Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernadino" name.

The name, as you may have guessed, comes from U.S. highway 66, which originally ran from Chicago to Los Angeles and now runs from nowhere to nowhere (the highway was decomissioned about a quarter century ago). Why name a baseball team after a highway? Because this isn't just any highway. This is the mythical, magical, Highway Sixty-Six, where Ameri—

Oh, spare me. It was just a highway. Hell, to those of us who live in the East, where more often than not even the U.S. highways have a median and multiple lanes in each direction, it wasn't even a proper highway. To us it was just a back road that went through a part of the country that was largely populated by cactuses and tumbleweeds. I think it's very telling that US-1 survived even after the interstate system came along, US-11 survived even after the interstate system came along, but US-66 couldn't survive after the interstate system came along. In fact, fewer than ten of the one- and two-digit US highways (generally speaking, those were the longer ones when the system was first devised) are completely gone, and 66 is one of them. And yet some people want to hold it up as somehow being the most authentic highway, the highway that runs through the most authentic part of America. Sorry, but I call bullshit. It seems to me that any "authentic" part of America should actually have people living there. The Constitution doesn't begin with "We the tumbleweeds", after all. And if any part of America is more "authentic" than any other, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it's the part where the American Revolution was fought. And guess what? US-66 never came anywhere near there.

My opinions nonwithstanding, the people of San Bernardino consider this long-dead road to be an extremely important part of the town's heritage, which probably says more about the town than they want it to. So they named a team after the highway and made the logo look like a sign for Highway 66. Sort of. Actually, it doesn't look much at all like one. The shape of the shield is wrong (there should be a point at the top center, not a horizontal bar), and it's interstates and not U.S. highways that are red and blue (and those have a red top and a blue bottom instead of a blue top and a red bottom). I guess they were worried that if it looked too accurate it would be boring, which is probably true. Or maybe they thought if they were too accurate it would have been too reminiscent of the Phillips 66 logo, which may also be true. Of course, it's still boring and still too reminiscent of the Phillips 66 logo, so it's not like the inaccuracy actually helped any.

They should do something about that. The easy thing would be to try to improve the highway sign, but I think they should look for a better inspiration for the logo. You know, look around town and see if there's anything that grabs them. They should get in their car, and find a road that can take them from one end of San Bernadino to the other, and drive up and down that road until they find inspiration. And there's a perfect road to do that on.

It's called Interstate 10.

Final Score: 71 points.
Penalties: Region, 8 pts; Ers, 26 pts; Equipment (egregious), 27 pts; Name, 10 pts.
Bonuses: None.