Great Lakes Loons

243

It definitely takes some chutzpah to use Great Lakes as your locative when you play in the Midwest League. Ten of the twelve teams in the league play in a state that touches one of the Great Lakes, and an eleventh plays just over (and by "just over" I mean less than a thousand feet from) the state line dividing the state where the team plays from a state that touches one of them. If you were to draw the smallest possible circle that encompasses all of the Great Lakes, the entire league would be within that circle. This is the equivalent of a team in the National Football League called itself the United States [Nickname]. And obviously, since this is the Midwest League we're talking about, what I'm saying about this team has been true for its entire existence.

You might ask, why would a team do this? Well, you probably know how various regions come up with names to refer to the whole region that aren't simply "the [insert name of biggest city in the area] region". For example, the area around Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida is "Tampa Bay". The area around Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, and Virginia Beach, Virginia is "Hampton Roads". And so forth. Midland, Michigan (where the Loons play) is part of a region which used to be known as "Tri-Cities", but seeing as how there are roughly twenty other places in the U.S. known as the Tri-Cities, including one other in Michigan, the area around Midland (along with Saginaw and Bay City) has been trying to rebrand as "Great Lakes Bay". So in a way the name makes sense, if you overlook the fact that the team is called the Great Lakes Loons and not the Great Lakes Bay Loons. Also, the bay near the "Great Lakes Bay" region isn't called Great Lakes Bay, it's called Saginaw Bay. I suppose they didn't like that name for whatever reason, but "Great Lakes Bay" makes no sense. Saginaw Bay, incidentally, is the water feature that separates the "thumb" portion of the Lower Peninsula from the "fingers" part. And as it turns out, the area that corresponds to the "thumb" portion of the Lower Peninsula is known to locals as "The Thumb". Maybe the people in Saginaw, Midland, and Bay City could go with something similar. Or at least they could if they could figure out what the proper name of that fleshy little area between the thumb and the index finger is called. Because calling the region "That Fleshy Litle Area Between the Thumb and the Index Finger" isn't a very good name for a region. Although "Fleshy Little Area Between the Thumb and Index Finger Loons" does have a certain je ne sais quoi if you ask me.

You're probably looking at the logo and thinking that the designer was inspired after spending the weekend visiting a local art museum that was featuring an exhibit on Fauvism. Nope. It turns out that those colors are in fact accurate. Yes, loons' eyes really are red. Yes, loon's beaks really are grey. And yes, loons' necks really have vertical stripes. If there's anything inaccurate on the logo in terms of color, it's that the sky is green. But I have heard (fortunately I don't have firsthand experience) that the sky often turns green when there are tornados nearby. So maybe the sky is accurate, and any fans at the game need to take shelter now. (Do baseball stadiums in the Midwest have tornado shelters? In all seriousness it wouldn't surprise me.) The loon has an oddly confident smirk on his face that I don't know that loons are actually capable of, but we'll let that one slide, in part because that sort of thing is expected in sports logos and in part because I don't know that I've ever been within a hundred miles of a loon so for all I know they really do smirk like that.

But even if he is capable of it, why is he smirking like that?

Maybe he knows the proper name for that fleshy little area between the thumb and the idex finger, and he's amused that he knows that when he doesn't even have one while I'm wracking my brain trying to figure it out.

Final Score: 243 points.
Penalties: Region (tredecaply-egregious), 203 pts; Alliteration, 5 pts; Scenery, 11 pts; Humanoid (because of the eyes), 30 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.