Biloxi Shuckers

163

<jaw drop>

Oh. My. God.

This name shucks. The logo is pretty shucking awful, too, but there's not much you can do logowise when your name shucks this bad. What convinced them to pick such an awful name?

Perhaps one could be generous. They did have a fan vote with several other names, and somehow this won. So maybe this is just the result of bad shuck. But then, the team didn't have to let this be an option, so blaming it on the fans would really just be passing the shuck. I'll have no shuck with that.

The other names, incidentally, didn't shuck. The other options were Beacon, Black Jacks, Mullets, Schooners, and Shrimpers. Okay, so they're not all good, either. "Shrimpers" relates to the town, but it's the sort of name that only works if it's been around for decades, which it hasn't (Biloxi has only been home to one other baseball team, the Sand Crabs, who only lasted a single season back in 1908). Mullets is actually a reference to the fish, but you just know that everyone's going to think of the hairstyle. Schooners and Beacon aren't great names but they'd do. Black Jacks is probably the best of the lot, and it's...all right. Okay, fine: all in all this list is pretty shucking lame. There has to be better stuff to name teams after. Their first hockey team was the Mississippi Sea Wolves, and with Biloxi being on the coast I assume that's a reference to something or another. And I'm sure you could come up with some names drawn from all the casinos in town. Names better than "Black Jacks", that is. (Biloxi Sharks would have a nice casino/nautical double meaning.) Given the options at their disposal, it's a shucking shame that list was the best they could manage, even before the worst option on the list won the vote.

But even if we allow for the name, that logo disturbs me. We all know that oysters don't actually have eyes, right? Some do have cells that detect light (others don't even have that), but they're not really eyes. And the eyes in this logo are sitting on what looks more like a tongue than an oyster. Seriously, oysters aren't pink. The coloring of the shell, meanwhile, makes it look like a walnut. So the team name is supposed to be a reference to oysters, but the logo features eyes sitting on a tongue that's been stuffed into a really big walnut. That's some Grand Guignol shit right there, folks.

I think the team just needs to admit this was a mistake and start over. There's no shame in that. We should all be willing to learn from our mistakes and move on. The people in Biloxi need to do that, and then apologize to their fans. "We're sorry, everyone, we really are. Honestly, we don't know what the shuck we were thinking."

Final Score: 163 points.
Penalties: Humanoid (egregious), 61 pts; Irrelevance, 39 pts; Cartoon, 47 pts; Name, 10 pts; Logo, 12 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.