Bridgeport Bluefish

133

Sometimes I love the randomness of Wikipedia. If you look up this team on Wikipedia, the first section gives you a history of baseball in Bridgeport. Remember, this actually has nothing to do with this team; it's a bit like having the Wikipedia page for John F. Kennedy start by telling you about all the other presidents who came from Massachusetts.* But it's there. And it lists all the team names used by those other teams: Victors, Soubrettes, Orators, Crossmen, Mechanics, Hustlers, Bolts, Americans, Bees, and Bears.

There's what, two or three names on there that don't suck? To be fair, we should probably give "Orators" a pass; apparently there was a famous-at-the-time major league player named James "Orator Jim" O'Rourke who came from Bridgeport. But Soubrettes? I had to look up what that even means, and according to the dictionary it means "an actress or other female performer playing a lively, flirtatious role in a play or opera". That seemed so outlandish that I figured it had to be a joke someone had stuck in there. But Baseball Reference lists them as a real team who played a single season (1897) in the Connecticut State League. And the book Orator O'Rourke: The Life of a Baseball Radical has mention of them on page 214. The book even explains that the name (like many team names of the time) was bestowed on the team by local sportswriters, and that yes, the definition I gave is what they had in mind when they game them that name.

This raises so many questions. One, was this a word that was actually well-known at the time? I'm guessing I could go up to one hundred random people and ask them if they knew what a soubrette is, and hardly anyone would know the answer. Hell, there'd probably be more yelling at me to leave them alone than giving the correct answer. Second question, what about the team made the sportswriters think of such a thing? They apparently weren't that bad a team, finishing third in a league of six team (albeit a league at the lowest levels of minor league ball). Finally, how did the team continue to play so well after being saddled with a name like that? Or maybe that's what made them good. Maybe they sucked at the start of the season and got so pissed off by being labeled a bunch of flirtatious women that they went on a tear just to show those bastards. Then again, maybe they were undefeated until they got saddled with the name and then became so demoralized that it ruined their season. I'm really just theorizing here. There's no telling.

The more I think about it, though, the more I wish the Bluefish would change its name to the Soubrettes. Part of this, I admit, may be crankiness over the fact that I've spent the last couple of months reviewing the Blue Crabs, Blue Jays (twice), Blue Rocks, Blue Wahoos, and BlueClaws, and I'm just sick and tired of team names starting with "Blue" (blue is actually my favorite color, but even when you like something you can get tired of it after a while). But also, I think it has something to do with my general preference for creative, even outlandish names over mediocre ones. Because let's face it, naming a team the Soubrettes is pretty creative. And outlandish. And terrible, yes. But it's got that so-bad-it's-good thing going for it. Like I said in the last paragraph, how many people today would even know what the word even means? They could even keep the current logo (replacing the word "Bluefish" with "Soubrettes", of course) and say that "soubrette" is French for "bluefish" and a lot of people would believe them. Particularly people who believed any of Trump's campaign promises; anyone who believed that would believe anything. And if anyone points out to these people what the word actually means, all the team has to do is scream "Fake News!" and that's the end of that.

Then again, I think it would be even better if the team was open about what the word means, and actually put a soubrette in the logo. Maybe one swinging a bat? We are going for so-bad-it's-good here, after all. Yes, it would be a terrible idea. But it would be creative, damn it.

* John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Calvin Coolidge, in case you were wondering.

Final Score: 133 points.
Penalties: Alliteration, 5 pts; Humanoid, 30 pts; Cartoon, 47 pts; Player, 51 pts.
Bonuses: None.