Gastonia Ghost Peppers

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This team debuted last year with the (non-)name Gastonia Baseball Club. It was basically intended to be a placeholder name while they tried out several names over the course of the season (each name being used for a few days) to see which ones fans liked. At first glance this sounds like a great idea, and a great way to end up with a good name.

Not so fast.

Yes, cream rises to the top, as the saying goes. But only if there is any cream to rise to the top. When the cup has nothing but creamless milk, the only thing that can happen is for milk to end up on top. And if the milk is sour, then the only thing that can happen is for me to realize that I'm stretching this metaphor farther than it was ever intended to stretch and forget about it. Whatever. My point is the names they tried out were all bad. Don't believe me? Here's a list, excluding the ultimately-chosen "Ghost Peppers" and the option of sticking with "Gastonia Baseball Club":

• Gastronauts
  
  
• Bolognia
  
  
• Galactic Dinos
  
  
• Zombees
  
  
• Garden Gnomes
  
  
• Yarniaks

All six of these are too clever by half. Want to name the team after astronauts? Great! But just call them the Astronauts instead of trying to make some weak alliteration that makes it look like a food reference. Want to name the team after wither zombies or bees? Okay, but don't try to name it after both. As for "Yarniaks", the promotional video they made for that one seems to suggest this was a combination of "yarn" and "yaks", and let me just say that I live in the same state as the owners of this team and there is no way that whatever drug inspired that one is legal here. Even in a world where names like "Rumble Ponies" and "Sod Poodles" are a thing, naming a baseball team after freaking yarn is about the dumbest idea for a team name anyone has come up with. Yes, I know it's a reference to the city's textile history. No, that doesn't help.

To the right of the names you can see the logos that were designed for the six ultimately-not-chosen names, and of course you can see the logo for the name they did go with at the top of this page. As you can see, most of these logos had the same too-clever-by-half problem that the names had. This puts the Ghost Peppers logo in the same place as the name: it's not good, but it still blows the competition away. Had I been voting, and had I decided the names were all hopeless and I was just going to pick the name with the best logo attached, there's a good chance I'd have gone with the Ghost Peppers. Of course, there's a better chance I'd have thrown my hands up in despair and just not voted.

The pepper looks like it's trying to do a villainous, maniacal "Muahahahahaha!" type laugh, which probably seems like a reasonable personification of what a ghost pepper is thinking until you think about it and realize what a failure ghost peppers are. Remember: hot peppers are not hot because they want to punish you when you eat them. Hot peppers are hot because they don't want you to eat them in the first place. Here is a type of plant that came up with the idea of being uncomfortable to eat as a way to protect itself from being eaten, only then this weird-ass primate says, "You know what? I like eating food that's uncomfortable to eat! I like it so much that I'm going to selectively breed it to make it even more uncomfortable to eat!" So the thing that plant came up with to avoid being eaten instead winds up being the thing that guarantees it won't avoid being eaten. A personification of a ghost pepper is not laughing maniacally. A personification of a ghost pepper is screaming in existential horror at the realization that it has become an icon of Greek tragedy, its strength having become its downfall.

Maybe that's what the logo is actually trying to represent, but it doesn't really look like it's screaming in existential angst. Nor does it look like it's screaming in agony, which is another possibility I considered — after all, I know I'd be screaming in agony if I was on fire. In the end all I can really say is I have no idea what's going on here. I have no idea what the pepper in this logo is supposed to be doing, I have no idea what they were thinking when they came up with this logo, I have no idea what they were thinking when they came up with this name, I have no idea what they were thinking when they came up with the other logos, I have no idea what they were thinking when they came up with the other names. I'd try to figure it all out, but frankly, I'm afraid I might succeed.

Final Score: 82 points.
Penalties: Alliteration, 5 pts; Humanoid, 30 pts; Cartoon, 47 pts.
Bonuses: None.