Lexington Legends

142

Usually, when a team has a name as dumb as "Lexington Legends", it's a traditional name dating back to the 1400s or something. No such excuse here: The Legends name was first used in Lexington in 2001. Previous teams had been known as the Colts (1908-16 and again for a single season in 1954), Reds (1922-23), or Studebakers (1924). There are two surprising things here: First, that there was once a team named "Lexington Studebakers": you wouldn't expect a city in the middle of horse country to have a team named after a car unless there was a factory for that car company in town, and as best as I've been able to determine there wasn't. Second, you'd expect Lexington to have more of a baseball history than it has. Seriously, how did this city manage to from the fall of 1954 to the spring of 2001 without a team? It had a population of at least 100,000 that entire time, and many smaller cities managed to hold onto teams for much of this time. It's not because there wasn't a league nearby; Lexington is right in the thick of what used to the the old AAA American Association's territory. I honestly don't understand this, and if anyone has a good explanation I'd love to hear it.

As for the logo, I know they want to imply old-time baseball (Eddie Shore?) with that handlebar mustache, but that's not what comes to mind when I look at it. For some reason the mustache doesn't look like an old-time baseball player mustache as much as a 1970s porn star mustache. The bits of hair on the arms and chest hint at the person in the logo being a porn star, too. So does the raised eyebrow. But in spite of this, the guy in the logo doesn't really look like a porn star any more than he looks like a baseball player. After all, the arms make it obvious that this guy is juicing, and...well, let's just say that steroids have side effects which wouldn't help a man's career in pornography and leave it at that.

The drawing of the man in the logo is in fact so unsuccessful at conveying the idea of a baseball player that the team felt the need to put "professional baseball club" in the logo. Even the designer knew the logo wasn't getting the point across. And the designer didn't just feel the need to let us know that it was baseball; they also felt the need to let us know that it was professional.

Frankly, when I look at the logo I can understand why they were worried I might think it was an amateur effort.

Final Score: 142 points.
Penalties: Alliteration, 5 pts; Obvious (egregious), 35 pts; Cartoon, 31 pts; Player, 51 pts; Name, 10 pts; Legends, 12 pts.
Bonuses: None.