Gwinnett Stripers

15

The Gwinnett Stripers are one of a small number of teams named after a county. I actually don't have a problem with that in this instance. Gwinnett County is basically one large suburb of Atlanta. It does have cities and towns, but the unincorporated areas look indistinguishable from the incorporated areas. Also, none of the towns are a significant fraction of the county: the largest city is less than fifty thousand, but the county's population is just under a million. So basically the entire county is one large, sprawled-out city.

The county is named after Button Gwinnett, who was— yes, I said "Button". No, I don't know why his father thought "Button" was a good name for a son, so I'm not going to dwell on it. Button Gwinnett was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, so while he may not be a particularly well-known person, he's definitely an important part of history. He also wrote the first constitution used by the State of Georgia, and served briefly as the state's president (governor). By "briefly", I mean about three months, at the end of which he died. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that for a year or so before becoming president he had been in what frankly is best described as an ever-escalating pissing match with one Lachlan McIntosh, his political rival. The two men kept vying for the same positions of power, and once one of them got into a position of power he would basically use his newfound power to fuck with the other rather than to actually do his job. Things came to a head when President Gwinnett convinced Georgia's General Assembly to authorize an attack into Florida (then a British colony, but one whose population had no interest in independence) which was to be led by Brigadier General Lachlan McIntosh. The expedition was a disaster, McIntosh and Gwinnett both blamed the other, McIntosh was heard publicly referring to Gwinnett as a "scoundrel and lying rascal", and Gwinnett challenged McIntosh to a duel. Both men were injured in the duel, but McIntosh recovered from his injuries while Gwinnett died three days later.

Keep all this in mind the next time someone tells you the Founding Fathers were all great, wise men. Maybe some of them were, but clearly others were just petty assholes.

Anyway, back to the team. The team was actually founded in Atlanta proper as the Atlanta Crackers back in 1901. They were unaffiliated (as were many minor league teams) for most of their existence, but became affiliated with the Boston Braves for a while in the 1950s and again with the Milwaukee Braves in the mid-1960s. When the Braves moved to Atlanta at the end of the 1965 season, the Crackers moved to Richmond to become the Richmond Braves, then returned to the Atlanta area as the Gwinnett Braves in 2009. After the 2017 season they announced they'd be picking a new team name for the 2018 season, and while several names were floated, they ultimately went with Gwinnett Stripers. It's not a great name, but it's not a bad name. But apparently one of the names they considered but ultimately rejected was the Gwinnett Buttons. I really wish they'd gone with that. I say that partly because it's just a delightfully demented name of the sort that you couldn't possibly get away with in any sport other than baseball. But mostly, I want to see what logo a team like that would have. It would almost certainly be bad. It would probably be so bad it was good. It just might be so terrible it was awesome. The Stripers' logo was never going to be that. It's decent, but frankly it's a bit boring. It was almost bound to be, because there's just not much you can do for a logo when your name is the Stripers. But the Buttons? The possibilities are endless.

Final Score: 15 points.
Penalties: Region, 8 pts; Script, 7 pts.
Bonuses: None.