Northwest Arkansas Naturals

88

Sometimes I look at a terrible team name and just know it's fairly recent. Only in the past fifteen to twenty years have teams gotten bad about ridiculous compound words, especially with capital letters stuck in the middle for no reason. Augusta GreenJackets? That's got to be recent. Wilkes-Barre/Scranton RailRiders? No one would have thought that one up in 1923. Akron RubberDucks? Rubber ducks are at least a real thing, but it's doubtful anyone a hundred years ago would give their team such a name and even if they did it would be two words.

Others speak to a naming convention that dominated long, long ago. Asheville Tourists? That clearly sounds like a name that was first used over a century ago, and sure enough it was first used in 1915. Arkansas Travelers? Yep, 1895. Birmingham Barons? Unlike the other examples I've given that's actually a good name but there's still something about it that sounds very old-fashioned, and indeed it dates all the way back to 1885 (the only older name in minor league baseball is the Buffalo Bisons, first used in 1877). And then we come to the Northwest Arkansas Naturals and you just know that no one in the Twenty-First Century would come up with a name like this. It's got to date back to before the Great Depression.

Nope. This one doesn't even manage to pre-date the Great Recession, as the name debuted in 2008. That's right: this name is less than a decade old. I have no idea what they were thinking. Granted, I have no idea what people were thinking when they came up with names like the Asheville Tourists or (and this is a real team from the late 1890s) Worcester Farmers, but I don't expect to understand the mindset of people from the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. The North Carolina of 1915 was very different from the North Carolina of today; the Massachusetts of 1898 even more so. But the Arkansas of ten years ago isn't so different from the North Carolina of today.

Or maybe it is. Apparently there was quite the controversy when a local preacher discovered that (gasp!) alcohol was going to be served at the ballpark! Look, I've got nothing against people who aren't keen on drinking (I myself have never been drunk), but to be surprised that a ballpark is going to let people buy a beer? In the Twenty-First Century? And then, proving once again that I don't understand the Arkansas of 2008, this preacher's opposition to an alcohol-serving ballpark nearly killed the team. Seriously: after this preacher announced his opposition, a movement to vote against a referendum to provide tax-payer funding for the stadium rose up and in the end the referendum passed by a mere fifteen votes. I'm trying to imagine what would happen if there was a push to build a stadium here in Raleigh and a local pastor announced his opposition on the grounds that beer would be served. In that instance fifteen votes sounds less like how much the referendum would win by and more like the number of votes that would actually change as a result of the preacher's opposition. And if we're talking about a basketball stadium then it wouldn't even be that high. After all, for all the churches in Raleigh, everyone who lives here knows that largest denominations in town aren't Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics, but Wolf Pack, Tarheels, and Blue Devils.

The name could have been worse, incidentally. The "Naturals" name was the winner of an online fan poll. The second placer? "Thunder Chickens". No, seriously. And apparently it's an annual thing where for one night the Naturals go by that name. (It's usually in early June, if you're interested.) I don't know what other names were in the poll. But I can't help but think: good god, if Naturals won and freaking Thunder Chickens was the runner-up, what must the other options have looked like? I'm sure with some intense Googling I could find out, but honestly? I'm not sure I want to know.

Final Score: 88 points.
Penalties: Region, 8 pts; Reference (to the movie), 10 pts; Alliteration, 5 pts; Scenery, 11 pts; Equipment, 13 pts; Colorful, 31 pts; Name, 10 pts.
Bonuses: None.