Tacoma Rainiers

25

Tacoma is located in the shadow of Mount Ranier, the tallest mountain in Washington. It is a stratovolcano, which means, um, something. Look, I'm not a geologist and you're not here for a geology lesson, so let's just say it's a type of volcano and leave it at that. Mount St. Helens is also a stratovolcano, so if you're old enough to remember its eruption back in 1980, you have a decent idea of what would happen if Mount Ranier was to erupt. Only it would be a lot bigger and deadlier. Mount Rainier is about twice the size of Mount St. Helens, and there are a lot more people living in the vicinity of Mount Rainer than in the vicinity of Mount St. Helens. Like, you know, the population of Tacoma.

This is not a purely theoretical concern, incidentally. It's been a while since it erupted (the last significant eruption was over 500 years ago), but all indications are that it's still active. It's actually on a list of "Decade Volcanoes". That doesn't mean it's expected to erupt in the next decade, but it does mean that it's considered to be more capable of causing damage (where "damage" is a euphemism for "loss of human life") than most. How likely is it to erupt? I'm no expert, but based on what I've seen from experts, the best answer to that question is "Who the hell knows?" I will say, for what it's worth, that the Decade Volcano project was started in 1990, there are sixteen volcanoes designated as decade volcanoes, and ten of those sixteen have erupted since 1990 (some of them multiple times). That's not my idea of good odds.

The city of Tacoma, incidentally, is named after the Mountain. The original, native name for the mountain was Tacoma — or at least Tacoma is a reasonable approximation of the original name, which includes a couple of sounds that don't exist in English. There is a push to change the name of the mountain back to Tacoma in much the same way that Mount McKinley was changed back to Denali. I'm not sure how the team would handle things if that happens. Presumably they wouldn't want to keep using Rainier name. Tacoma Tacomas? That's ridiculous, of course, but if they want to keep a name with local color what else are they going to do? Tacoma is basically known for two things. One, the mountain. Two, the god-awful smell from paper mills that the town had to put up with from the 1930s to the 1990s (today it's much less pungent, but apparently can still be pretty bad on days when the wind blows in a particular direction). I don't care how well it rolls off the tongue, there's no way the team renames itself the Tacoma Aroma. Compared to that, maybe Tacoma Tacomas wouldn't be so bad after all.

Also, it's hard to imagine what logo you'd pick for a team called the Tacoma Aroma. With the name Tacoma Tacomas, you could do the same thing that you can with Tacoma Rainiers, which is to put the mountain in your logo. Not that the Rainiers actually do that, that would make too much sense. They did at one time, but they got rid of that long ago and replaced it with a logo featuring a compass rose (their parent team is the Seattle Mariners). Then in 2016 they got rid of the compass rose and replaced it with the current logo, which is...nothing, basically. Just the team name written in cursive. It goes without saying that they should put something into the logo, and the mountain seems like the obvious choice.

On the other hand, remember what I said a couple of paragraphs ago about the potential for Mount Rainier to erupt. Have you seen before and after pictures of Mount St. Helens? If Mount Rainer erupts, any logo that contains the image of the mountain will instantly be out of date because the mountain won't look anything like that anymore.

But if that happens, I suspect that will be the least of any Tacoma resident's concern.

Final Score: 25 points.
Penalties: Script, 7 pts; Letter, 24 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.