Tennessee Smokies

133

NOTE: This review incorporates text from the previous review for the Tennessee Smokies, which was posted 2014 April 20.

The Tennessee Smokies play about twenty minutes east of Knoxville in the village of Kodak. No, not Kodiak. Yes, it's the same name as the camera company. In fact, it's named after the camera company. Back in the 1890s the area was getting a new post office, and the postmaster heard the name of the camera company and decided that Kodak was an easy name to remember and spell, and gave the village that name after getting permission from company founder George Eastman. This is a silly way to name a place, but I live about half an hour's drive from a place called Lizard Lick, which apparently is named that because someone saw a bunch of lizards sunning and licking themselves. Both the name origin and the name itself are at least as ridiculous an origin for a town's name as Kodak's, and furthermore it sounds dirty.

The Smokies name for a team in or near Knoxville (the team only moved to Kodak in 2000) was first used in 1925, and has been in use for most of the time since (although there was a twenty-year stretch from the early 70s to early 90s when teams used their parent team's name). As such, it's one of those old names that we're supposed to say has been around so long that it would be a shame to change it at this point. And I suffer from no illusions that the name is likely to go away any time soon. But it's a fairly blah name. It's not impressive. I'm not saying the mountains themselves aren't impressive; they are (they're also quite beautiful). But that doesn't make the name any good. And there's certainly no lack of wildlife in the area to name a team after. Some people may think the name "Bears" gets overused in America, but it would be a perfect name for a team in the area of the Smokies. After all, there are bears all over the damn place in the Smokies. By the same logic, you could name the team the Wolves (or Red Wolves), Owls, Woodpeckers, Cuckoos, Hawks, Elk, Bucks, Foxes, or Bobcats. But really, I think the team should call itself the Kodak Bears. In addition to the obvious fact that bears are intimidating animals and they're definitely local, there's the pun off of Kodiak Bears, and the fact that the team is currently affiliated with the Chicago Cubs.

Apparently, the artist who drew the logo at least partially agrees with me, because they drew a bear for the logo. The bear is holding a baseball bat, but I'm not sure if he's supposed to be a baseball player or if he's about to use the bat to beat the shit out of you because you ain't from around here, are ya? The look on his face suggests the latter. This seems unnecessary. Given its claws, I figure the bear would actually be more of a threat without the bat than with. That said, if a bear comes at me with a baseball bat I'm not going to tell the bear that. Maybe because I don't want to bear to drop a weapon that's actually increasing my chances of survival. Maybe because I don't expect the bear to understand English. But probably because I'll be too busy crapping my pants. Be that as it may, the team should listen to the artist (and me) and change the name to the Kodak Bears. But like I said, I suffer from no illusion that they're actually going to do so. The name they're using is three years from its centennial. We're stuck with it.

NOTE: Since I'm not sure whether the bear is supposed to be a player or not, I'm giving them a half-penalty for "Equipment" and a half-penalty for "Player" (essentially averaging the penalty they'd get if the bear is a player and the penalty they'd get if it isn't).

Final Score: 133 points.
Penalties: Region (egregious), 17 pts; Scenery, 11 pts; Equipment (half-penalty), 6½ pts; Humanoid, 30 pts; Irrelevance, 39 pts; Player (half-penalty), 25½ pts; Name, 10 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.