Pawtucket Red Sox

224

Providence has a hockey team which is the top-level affiliate of the Boston Bruins. They use the same name as their parent team. Pawtucket, which is a suburb of Providence (isn't the entire state of Rhode Island a suburb of Providence when it comes right down to it?) has a baseball team which is the top-level affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. They use the same name as their parent team. One of these Rhode Island teams also uses the parent team's logo, albeit with the "B" changed to a "P". The other uses a different logo whose major feature is a bruin. Guess which one has the bruin. Yep, you guessed it: The Pawtucket Red Sox!

The reason for this, as you can see from looking at the logo, is that the Pawtucket Red Sox go by the nickname "PawSox". The nickname makes sense, given the fact that you've got the ChiSox and the BoSox. What makes a bit less sense is that they feel the need to put it in their logo.

Well, actually, what makes less sense is this whole "Sox" business. I've been trying for some time to find an explanation of why baseball teams name themselves after socks, and the answer can be quite elusive. I've figured out that the Boston Red Sox appropriated the name of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, that the Chicago White Sox adopted a name previously used and abandoned by the team now known as the Cubs, and that the Cincinnati Red Stockings were the first team to use such a name. (I also know of several other examples, such as the St. Louis Brown Stockings and Toledo Blue Stockings.) What I can't find is why the Cincinnati Red Stockings used the name in the first place.

I do have vague recollections of reading one explanation, which is that in the very early days of baseball teams were experimenting with various ways of differentiating players (this was before anyone had stumbled upon the idea of numbers), and one of the ways was different color jerseys for different positions, with everyone on the same team wearing the same color socks. It sounds like a great yarn, but it also sounds like complete and utter B.S. Besides, the pictures I've found of the Cincinnati Red Stockings makes it look like all the uniforms were the same color. (Yes, these were black and white photographs. Yes, I suppose it's possible they were different colors but of similar enough lightness that they all look the same color in a black and white photograph. No, I don't think this is any more likely than wearing different colors in the first place.) Also, the descriptions I've read of the Red Stockings' uniforms clearly state they all wore white, and remember that they were apparently the first team to use this naming convention.

But we still don't know why they thought naming themselves after their socks made sense. Why not the Cincinnati White Shirts? I suppose the red socks were more distinctive, or something. Anyway, the Cincinnati Red Stockings were a kick-ass team (going undefeated one year), so everyone and their brother wanted to be like them, and the next thing you know all these other teams are calling themselves the "________ Stockings", which later got shortened to "Sox" because no one could spell "Stockings" — or "Socks", apparently. I, for one, am disappointed that there's never been a team called the Argyle Sox. But perhaps I'm not approaching this with the proper reverence.

This naming convention nonwithstanding, it seems a bit odd to me that the Pawtucket Red Sox actually put "PawSox" in the logo instead of "Red Sox". But it does at least explain the polar bear, sort of. If you're called the "PawSox" then people expect to see paws in the logo. And the paws should probably be attached to something to avoid looking totally weird. So you have to pick an animal. But why a polar bear? Well, as I've learned from hockey, any time a team wants to throw an animal into a logo for no good reason, they pick a bear. As for why it's a polar bear instead of any other kind of bear, I'm not sure. Maybe they just figured it would look good with the red and blue they inherited from their parent team.

Is the polar bear in question actually wearing red socks? We'll never know, because we can't see his feet. What we can see is an intensely goofy (and toothless) grin that makes him look about as menacing as a Saturday morning cartoon character from the 1980s, when do-gooder "parent groups" were at their tyrannical worst about removing violence, conflict, and anything else interesting or entertaining from cartoons. The snout keeps him from looking like an actual Care Bear, but you get the impression he wouldn't feel terribly out of place in one of their cartoons. He wouldn't even bash their faces in with the baseball bat he's holding, which is almost certainly how I (who grew up watching 1940s Tom and Jerry cartoons) would handle the situation if I suddenly found myself in a Care Bear cartoon. I'd probably then set their houses on fire, just because I could. That's why no one ever made a 1980s cartoon about me: 1980s cartoons were all about having all these oh-so-wonderful role models for the kiddies. Me? I'd make a terrible role model, particularly if I was in a cartoon where I could do whatever I could with no fear of repercussion. But I'd be a lot more entertaining than the Care Bears ever dreamed of being.

It is this overly friendly aspect of the polar bear that makes me hate this logo. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying the look itself causes an adverse reaction. This is a look very similar to the one I get from my pet greyhound, and on him it's very sweet and makes me say "awwwwww" and melt into a puddle of giddiness. But when the same expression comes from an animal in a baseball logo, it doesn't have quite this effect. You know the line from A League of Their Own, "There's no crying in baseball!"? Well, there's no goofy grinning in baseball, either. Or at least, there shouldn't be. I would fix this if I could. If I could, I would grab the bat right out of this polar bear's hand and bash his face in with it. Then I'd set his house on fire, just because I could.

Like I said: I'd make a terrible role model.

Final Score:224 points.
Penalties: Sox, 20 pts; Offspring, 12 pts; Equipment, 13 pts; Humanoid, 30 pts; Irrelevance, 39 pts; Cartoon, 47 pts; Player, 51 pts, Logo, 12 pts.
Bonuses: None.