Reading Phillies

58

Some names in baseball just make sense. Even if you're unfamiliar with baseball, it's easy to understand why teams would pick names like the Birmingham Barons, San Angelo Colts, and Newark Bears. A name like the Everett Aqua Sox might be a little confusing, but once you understand that baseball has a strange kind of foot fetish when it comes to team names, you get that one, too. But Reading Phillies is odd however you slice it. Why is the team in Reading, Pennsylvania named after a misspelling of the word for a female horse?

Okay, so the reason isn't really that mysterious if you are familiar with baseball. The Reading Phillies are so named because they are affiliated with (and owned by) the Philadelphia Phillies of the National League. "Phillies" is simply the plural of "Philly", which is a short name for "Phialdelphia". This is, to say the least, an odd way to name a team. However, no other team name has been continuously used by the same team in all of North American sports for as long as "Phillies". I guess when you have a winner you stick with it, even if the only way you can call this name a "winner" is if you enter it in a contest for the dumbest name imaginable for a baseball team. In fact, the name isn't just bad, it's scary. The plural of Philadelphia? Isn't one Philadelphia more than enough?

But if the name "Philadelphia Phillies" is bad, then "Reading Phillies" is even worse. The Reading Philadelphias? What the? And the strange thing is that if they did the same "shorten and pluralize" thing to their own city's name, the result would be better. Think about it: the Reading Readies. No, it's not a good name, but it's better than Reading Phillies. After all, "ready" is an actual word (an adjective and not a noun, but that didn't stop the Cincinnati Reds, New York Metropolitans, or Washington Nationals), and it means something positive. And while on its own the name isn't great, as a riff on the convention the Philadelphia Phillies use, it's kind of neat. It's definitely a step in the right direction.

As for the logo, there's not much to say. You can't really make a graphic logo for a name like "Phillies", so the logo is just a word. But, interestingly, that word isn't "Phillies". It's "R-Phils". One can only assume that this is what the locals call their team to avoid confusion with their parent team. Oddly, the name isn't even in the same font that Philadelphia uses. Reading does use a star for the dot over the "i" just like Philadelphia does, but again, it's not the same star. That's about the most interesting thing about it: they manage to find a slightly different way to do the same boring thing. Given the name, however, I don't think I'd want to see them try to do anything interesting. It would almost certainly backfire. But even if it didn't backfire and they somehow managed to come up with a good logo, it would constitute a cosmic injustice. After all, a name as dumb as "Reading Phillies" doesn't deserve a good logo.

Final Score: 58 points.
Penalties: Offspring, 12 pts; Letter, 24 pts; Name, 10 pts; Logo, 12 pts.
Bonuses: None