Tucson Padres

74

To be honest, I'm not entirely certain why I'm bothering to do this review. The team (formerly known as the Portland Beavers) is only going to be in Tucson for two years. They left their former home of Portland because the stadium in Portland is being reconfigured as a soccer stadium for MLS' new Portland Timbers. The Beavers were sold to the Padres' owner, and are being relocated to Escondido, California (a suburb of San Diego). There's just one problem, which is that there isn't a baseball stadium in Escondido. Since staying in Portland for a couple of years isn't an option, and just playing in San Diego is apparently not an option for some reason (I know it would be tricky, but it could be made to work), they're going to be in Tucson for a couple of years while the permanent home is being built. So any effort I put into this review is effort put into something that I know is going away in a couple of years.

I think my main motivation is that I strongly believe that no logo this bad should go unremarked upon. The logo consists of either a tiny mountain in front of a normal-sized cactus or a normal-sized mountain in front of a gigantic cactus. The rock is, inexplicably, blue; even more improbably, the cactus is grey. (I understand that the team wanted to use San Diego's current colors, but wouldn't a blue cactus and a grey rock have made more sense?) Even better, someone has trimmed all the needles off the right side of the cactus while leaving the needles on the left-size intact. In other words, it looks like a zombie cactus that has undergone manscaping. Below this Sonoran absurdity is the name of the team, written in a font that the parent team used during its worst years. The font isn't particularly bad in its own right, but only once in the entire time the San Diego Padres used it did they finish above fourth in their division. In other worse, it calls to mind the years they got their asses kicked. Who in their right minds would pick the moment of their greatest ass-kicking as a time to commemorate? And before anyone mentions the flag of Mississippi, let me stress that I asked who in their right minds would do this.

Anyway, the one good thing that can be said about this logo is that it isn't going to be in use for very long. But I suspect that it will be haunting people's dreams for years to come. If manscaped zombie cactuses aren't the stuff of nightmares, I'm not sure what is.

Final Score: 74 points.
Penalties: Scenery, 11 pts; Offspring, 12 pts; Irrelevance, 39 pts; Logo, 12 pts.
Bonuses: None.