Harrisburg Senators

31

As traditional names go, "Senators" is hardly up there with "Bears" or "Tigers" but it does have an established pedigree. I've never quite understood why. Remember, team names are supposed to sound intimidating. Now, here's a trivia question for you. Name the first ten senators (past of present) that come to mind. My list (and yes, I really did just type the first ten names I could think of that I know are or were senators) is as follows: Bob Dole, Elizabeth Dole, Kay Hagan, John East, Jesse Helms, Orrin Hatch, Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Barack Obama, Marco Rubio. You probably don't recognize all the names (four of them are current or former senators from my home state, some of whom are fairly obscure), but you probably do recognize some others. How many of them would you consider physically intimidating? That's what I thought. Most teams named after types of people are named after people who can physically harm you. Vikings. Pirates. Knights. Warriors. Senators? Senators can not physically harm you. Senators can not do anything. Even if a majority of Senators decided to attack you, there's a good chance it wouldn't be a filibuster-proof majority and the ones wanting to attack would be stopped dead in their tracks. That's how the Senate works, people. The damn Capitol could catch fire and there'd be a filibuster to keep anyone from dialing 911.

It's particularly odd to see the name belonging to a team in a state capital. As I've said before, naming your team after the fact that you're located in a state capital doesn't make sense unless the league is only statewide. But as it turns out, the Harrisburg Senators get some leeway here. The Senators name was first used in Harrisburg in 1893, when the Harrisburg Senators joined the Pennsylvania League as a replacement for the Harrisburg Ponies, who had relocated to Scranton during the middle of the previous season. True to its name, the Pennsylvania League was entirely composed of teams located in the Keystone State. And since there's an unwritten rule in baseball that says any name that was used before World War II is "traditional" and thus perfectly acceptable even if it makes no damn sense, I'm not really allowed to criticize the Harrisburg Senators name, even if the team does currently play in a league that covers nine states.

(Incidentally, someone may be thinking that they picked that name at least in part because they're affiliated with the Washington Nationals, and Washington used to have a team called the Senators. Uh-uh. The team in Harrisburg started using the Senators name seventeen years before they became an affiliate of the Washington Nationals.)

As for the logo...well, what are you gonna do? You can't really draw a senator for the logo. Most modern senators just look like people in suits, making them indistinguishable from business executives, lawyers, clergymen who don't have a specific liturgical outfit, and numerous other professions. You could draw a Roman senator, but that would come across as a ripoff of Ottawa's hockey team (plus I imagine a lot of people wouldn't get it). Under the circumstance I can't really criticize their decision to use a letter as their logo.

So, in short, this is a logo that isn't very good for a name that isn't very good, and I can't really complain about either one. Oh, well.

Final Score: 31 points.
Penalties: Equipment, 13 pts; Letter, 24 pts
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.