Palm Beach Cardinals

40

As I mentioned in my review for the Jupiter Hammerheads, the Palm Beach Cardinals are one of four teams that play at Roger Dean Stadium, along with the Hammerheads, the Gulf Coast League Cardinals, and the GCL Marlins. In my review for the Hammerheads I commented that I had no idea how that worked. Since the topic has come up again (and since I don't have much else to talk about here), I went and checked. It's what I originally guessed: During the GCL season (which runs from late June to the end of August), just about every day features a game day hosted by one of the GCL teams and a night game hosted by one of the FSL teams. For the remainder of the FSL season (which runs from early April to early September), there's one game per day. That stadium either has some really good groundskeepers or the worst surface in all of baseball. It looks pretty good on the website, but it could simply be that they took a picture on the first day or the season.

And beyond that I don't much to say. The problem is that the St. Louis Cardinals do the same thing for the minor league teams they own that the Atlanta Braves do: they all use the same name as the parent team (although St. Louis' AAA affiliate is a slight exception, calling themselves the Redbirds), and they all use a variant on the parent team's logo. In fact, the Cardinals are arguably worse on this front than the Braves. The Braves at least put some additional element into their farm teams' logos. All the Cards do is switch between the one-bird and two-bird versions of their logo, and replace the word "Cardinals" with the name of the city. Even the Memphis Redbirds use the Cardinals logo with "Memphis" instead of "Cardinals". I understand the desire to extend your brand, but I still find it kind of lame.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take a few minutes and figure out what the hell I'm going to talk about for the Springfield Cardinals review...

Final Score: 40 points.
Penalties: Region, 8 pts; Script, 7 pts; Offspring, 12 pts; Equipment, 13 pts. Bonuses: None.