Acereros de Monclova

53

Whenever I review one of the leagues from the Mexican League, I feel that one of the first things I need to do is translate the name into English for the benefit of people who don't speak Spanish. In this case, before I do that I have to figure out precisely what the Spanish name is. Seriously, various sources can't even agree on this team's name. I've read in a few places that the official name of the team is "Acereros del Norte". That is the name given for the team if you go to the official Mexican League website. On the other hand, several other sources (including the team's website) call the team "Acereros de Monclova". And if you look at the logo, it splits the difference by saying both "Acereros del Norte" and "Acereros Monclova" depending on how you look at it. Since "Acereros de Monclova" is what appears on the team site, I'm going with that, even though that clearly doesn't appear in the logo.

"Acereros" is basically Spanish for "Steelers", if a word like "Steelers" can be said to have a translation into other languages. Monclova is a bit like Pittsburgh, you see. It's known as the Steel Capital in Mexico, and more steel is produced in Monclova than anywhere else in Mexico. This last part means that Monclova isn't actually like Pittsburgh after all, because Pittsburgh is where more steel was produced than anywhere else in the United States. Today there's as much steel production in Agency, Montana (pop. 348) as there is in Pittsburgh, because there isn't any steel production in Pittsburgh anymore. None. (In fairness, there is some production in other cities just outside Pittsburgh.) As best as I can determine, the center of steel production in the United States today is Gary, Indiana. Is Gary's baseball team named after steel? No, it's named after a commuter train. But it's going to be a few months before we get to them, so let's not worry about that right now.

In any case, los Acereros del Nor— er, I mean, los Acereros de Monclova face the same problem that the Pittsburgh Steelers do, which is that it's not easy to come up with a logo for a team called the "Steelers". In Pittsburgh's case, they solved it by adapting the logo from the American Iron and Steel institute. The Acereros didn't have that opportunity (or at least they didn't take that opportunity), so they did an odd variant on the old BIC logo: instead of a baseball in a circle, we have a baseball in a diamond. Then they added the nickname of the team in a trapezoidal banner across the top for good measure. Then they added pinstripes (horizontal, for some reason) for better measure. Then they added the name of the city where they play in a banner across the bottom because by this point they'd lost it and were throwing random shit into their logo for no good reason. Then someone said, "¡Hey, espera un minuto! ¿No es nuestro nombre en realidad 'Acereros del Norte'?"* And nobody really knew the answer to that question, so they decided to throw "del Norte" under the baseball because...well, it had to go somewhere, didn't it? Finally, the madness reached a level where they placed some bizarre red icon on the baseball which, depending on how you look at it, is vaguely reminiscent of either a letter in the Hebrew alphabet or a mirror-image swastika, and I have no freaking clue what I'm supposed to say about that except that it is completely and utterly messed up. Fortunately, at this point sanity returned and they quit adding shit to the logo, although they didn't gain enough sense to remove the crap they'd already put there.

The end result of this, sadly, is a logo whose shape is reminiscent of the logo for the band Twisted Sister. Were they aware of this? Was Twisted Sister well-known in Mexico? (Man, I hope not! They'd probably declare war on us if they were familiar with Twisted Sister, and I can't say that I'd blame them.) Was this logo made before Twisted Sister came about? Perhaps Twisted Sister are secretly fans of Acereros de Moncl— er, I mean Acereros del N— er, I mean...shit, I had it right the first time, didn't I? Anyway, were Twisted Sister fans of this team? When we're dealing with a person like Dee Snider, nothing would surprise me. Nothing.

In any case, there's only so much you can do with a team name like "Steelers" or anything that translates to it, so all in all I can't be too hard on the logo. But seriously, that weird swastika/Hebrew letter thing has got to go. It is totally weirding me out.

* "Hey, wait a minute! Isn't our name actually 'Steelers of the North'?"

Final Score: 53 points.
Penalties: Region (Half penalty because no one can say for sure what the team's name is), 4 pts; Ers (or at least its Spanish equivalent), 26 pts; Equipment, 13 pts; Diamond, 16 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.