Staten Island Yankees

32

Sometimes I understand why a minor league team chooses to use the same nickname as its parent team. Other times I totally don't understand. What makes the New York Yankees organization interesting is that with only one exception, every team that uses the Yankees name is a case I don't understand and every team that doesn't is a case where I would understand if they did.

First, you've got the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders at the AAA level and the Trenton Thunder at the AA level. Regardless of whether you love or hate the Yankees (and I hate them), you have to acknowledge that the Yankees organization has such a widespread fan base that there are Yankees fans almost everywhere you go, so trying to cash in on that name makes a certain amount of sense. And the teams are far enough north that the "Yankees" name makes sense. (The RailRiders did in fact use the Yankees name from 2007-2012.) But these teams choose to go by other names. I'm certainly not criticizing that decision; I can definitely see why a team would want to have its own identity. But I couldn't blame either team for calling themselves the Yankees. If I bought the team in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, in fact, I'd probably change the name back to Yankees, if only to get rid of that silly "RailRiders" name.

Moving down the ladder, there's the Low-A Charleston RiverDogs. This is the one exception I referred to in the first paragraph. Of course a team in South Carolina doesn't want to call itself the Yankees.

Then you've got the High-A Tampa Yankees. I'll say more about them tomorrow, but in a nutshell: A team in the southernmost of the continental states goes by the name Yankees? Come on. They could have at least gone for irony and called themselves the Snowbirds.

Finally, you've got these guys. Sure, the name is just as appropriate in Staten Island as it is in the Bronx. How could it not be when the two teams are in the same city? And therein lies the problem. The situation isn't quite as bad as with the San Jose Giants (at least Staten Island isn't bigger than the Bronx the way San Jose is bigger than San Francisco), but you still have the potential confusion any time you try to talk about the minor league team, and there's the same inability to develop any identity of your own. Maybe the owners of the Staten Island team figure they gain more in ticket sales from the name than they lose from the lack of identity. Or maybe the owners of the Staten Island team just don't care, since the owners of the Staten Island team are the team in the Bronx. I'm sure the Staten Island Yankees are just as much an afterthought to them as the borough of Staten Island is to most New Yorkers. Either way, I think they should pick a new name for the Staten Island team. I'd suggest they do it because it would be the decent thing to do, but...come on. This is the fucking Yankees we're talking about. Of course they're not going to do anything because it's the decent thing to do.

The guys over in the Bronx gave about as much thought to the Staten Island Yankees' logo as they did to the name. All they really did was take the New York Yankees' logo, add a typical high school-style underlining, and stick the words "Staten Island" in that underlining. I suppose if you're going to use the parent team's name, you may as well use the logo, but this just makes giving the team its own identity even harder. But, hey, like I said...fucking Yankees. I think I'll say it a few more times just because it feels good to say it: Fucking Yankees.

Fucking Yankees.

Fucking.

Yankees.

There. I feel better now.

Final Score: 32 points.
Penalties: Script, 7 pts; Offspring, 12 pts; Equipment, 13 pts.
Bonuses: None.