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Sugar Land Skeeters 105

Posted 2019 August 22

In 2010 the Atlantic League, which previously had only had teams in the Northeast, announced an expansion team in Sugar Land, Texas. At the time, it was reported to be the first of a new western division. So here we are, almost a decade later. Let's see what teams the Atlantic League has in the general vicinity of Texas:

  1. Sugar Land Skeeters
Oh. Still just Sugar Land, eh? Oh well. The league has expanded out of its Northeastern footprint, but not by much: the High Point Rockers are in North Carolina. That's a little bit closer than the Skeeters' previous closest opponent in Southern Maryland, but it's hardly a western expansion.

The Skeeters, for their part, don't seem terribly bothered by this. Teams switch leagues quite often in independent baseball, and the American Association has two teams in Texas, but the Skeeters are still in the Atlantic League.

I realize you may be wondering about the name "Sugar Land". It sounds like it might have an interesting story behind it. Alas, there's not really much to tell. It started as a company town for the Imperial Sugar Company. The "Skeeters" name isn't especially interesting, either. It's short for "mosquito", and there are a shit-ton of mosquitos in the area. You may say that mosquitos aren't the most intimidating animal in the world, but...well, you're right, actually. They're not. You often hear that mosquitos kill more humans every year than any other animal, but that's not precisely true. Mosquitos are a vector for diseases which do the actual killing. The mosquitos themselves are an annoyance at worst. Yeah, I know some of you are saying that's not a lot of comfort to a person who died of malaria. Point conceded. But still, the mosquito itself doesn't have the capacity to do much more than make you itch. You want to know which animal is responsible for the most human deaths each year without relying on being a vector for disease? Humans, that's who. And I know some of you are saying that humans aren't really animals because we're somehow better than animals, but if we were that much better than animals we wouldn't kill so damn many humans. So yeah, we're animals. And not only do we kill more humans than any other animal, we kill over four times as many as other animal. And we have to cheat to say it's only four times as many, because because humans are just one species and snakes (the next animal on the list) are an order consisting of over 3500 species.

But intimidating or not, mosquitos are what the team was named after. The logo features a mosquito and an outline of Texas, the latter because there's probably a clause in the state constitution requiring teams to do that. The mosquito is apparently the size of Texas, which I really don't think is possible given how arthropod anatomy works, and has apparently stabbed the state and is sucking out all of its...blood? oil? Hell if I know. It's also holding a baseball which look like it's roughly the size of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Why? Again, hell if I know. Whoever designed this logo was probably delirious. Dengue fever can cause delirium, you know.

But the mosquitos themselves can't.

Final Score: 105 points.
Penalties: Alliteration, 5 pts; Equipment, 13 pts; Humanoid, 30 pts; Cartoon, 47 pts; Name, 10 pts.
Bonuses: None.


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