Seattle Baseball

Pitchers and catchers have been warming up since late February in warmer climes and the cry of "Play ball" is as sure as spring. In my continuing series of sports team names and specifically those for baseball teams, in this post I visit Seattle which has been the host city to a number of baseball teams.

The original Pacific Coast League minor league club in Seattle was initially called the Indians, as a reference to the Native American legacy of the area. That team was renamed the Seattle Rainiers. Though it obviously references Mount Rainier, it actually was named for the Rainier Brewing Company.

The Rainiers operated through 1968. At that time, the major leagues expanded and a new Rainiers ball club was formed and played from 1972–1976.


The Seattle Pilots AL expansion team in 1969 was named for the many marine activities in the Puget Sound area. The name references not airline pilots, but ship pilots who guide large ships into port. The Pilots' caps featured the "scrambled eggs" golden-leaf symbol of a ship's captain.

The team ran into financially troubled waters and and became the first major league club since the 1901 Milwaukee Brewers to switch cities after one year.

The Pilots moved to Milwaukee and became the new Milwaukee Brewers.

Ken Griffey Jr. Mariners #24 Hall of Fame shirt - via Amazon

The current Seattle baseball team is the Mariners who came about during another AL expansion in 1977. As with the Pilots, the name is a nod to fishing and other marine activities.

In a nod to the past, the Rainiers name has been used by the Seattle Mariners' Triple-A affiliate in nearby Tacoma since 1995.

San Diego Padres

There was a minor league team called the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League that was in operation from 1936-1968. When Major League Baseball expanded to San Diego in 1969, the old nickname was retained for the new San Diego Padres.

That minor league franchise won the PCL title in 1937, led by 18-year-old Ted Williams, the future Hall-of-Famer who was a native of San Diego.

Though it has no sports connection, the name Padre was taken from the Spanish word for "Father", a term of respect used for Spanish missionaries. Padres refers to the Spanish Franciscan friars who founded San Diego in 1769.

logo 1985

The team is frequently called the "Pads" or "Pods" in the media, which rhymes with the first syllable of "PAHD-rays". "Friars" has also been a longtime team nickname.

Red Sox, White Sox and Red Stockings

The first openly all-professional team was the famous Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869-1870. They began as an amateur organization in 1866. But after the American Civil War, interest in baseball returned and the Red Stockings gained popularity as they went on road tour, known as "barnstorming." During their 1869 - 1870 "season" they went undefeated.

Nevertheless, they weren't making a profit and they were disbanded. But when the first professional league, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, began in 1871, the Cincinnati Red Stockings regrouped in Boston, joined the new National Association and formed the Boston Red Stockings. (They eventually evolved into the Atlanta Braves.)

The influence of the Red Stockings is still felt in that nearly every professional team in Cincinnati since then has worn red as their primary trim color.

The National Association folded with the better teams and some new additions regrouping as the National League in 1876. One new teams was the Cincinnati Red Stockings who later was expelled from the league in 1880 for selling beer at games and playing games on Sundays.

A separate American Association was created to challenge (but not play against) the National League. The AA was considered the low class version because it had cheaper admission prices, offered alcoholic beverages, and had teams in working class "river towns" like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville and St. Louis.

A resurrected Cincinnati Red Stockings eventually shortened to the Cincinnati Reds and won the first American Association pennant. In 1890, the Reds were readmitted to the National League, and continue to play in Cincinnati to this day.

In the 1950s, "Reds" became a synonym for "Communist"and  they officially changed their name to the "Cincinnati Redlegs" with the logo altered from 1956 to 1960 to remove the term "REDS" from the inside of the C symbol. "Reds" came back in 1961 uniforms.

Cincinnati Reds Fan Shop

When Charles Comiskey brought his St. Paul Saints team into Chicago in 1900, an older team name of the White Stockings which was quickly shortened to White Sox by the press. In 1912, the team started wearing the first incarnation of its "SOX" logo on the shirts.

The team is often called the "Chisox" in headlines to distinguish from the other sox - the "Bosox" of Boston (although within their own hometowns they are often just "the Sox."

Chicago White Sox Fan Shop




In 1901, the American League club in Boston spent 7 seasons wearing blue stockings and was just known as "Boston", the "Americans" or the "Boston Americans" (because they were in the American League and there was another National League Boston team).

For the 1908 season,  the AL team shirts featured a red stocking across the front labeled "BOSTON" along with red stockings and white caps. Confusingly, the NL team also wore red stockings and  red caps with an old-English "B".

The now familiar "RED SOX" first appeared in 1912, coincident with the opening of Fenway Park.

Boston Red Sox Fan Shop

boston.redsox.mlb.com

cincinnati.reds.mlb.com 

chicago.whitesox.mlb.com

 

Baltimore Orioles

The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland and are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League.

In its first year, it was a team in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the Milwaukee Brewers, The team was next moved to St. Louis and became the St. Louis Browns where it remained for 52 years. The Browns moved to Baltimore in 1954.

They adopted the name from the Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula), a small blackbird of the passerine family. The bird got its name in 1808 because the male's colors resembled those on the coat of arms of George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, who was part of the Calvert family that established the Maryland colony in the 17th century. The Baltimore Oriole is also the state bird of Maryland.

Earlier short-lived Baltimore teams, in the early 1870s, were called "Lord Baltimore" and "Maryland" respectively. The first club to be called the Baltimore Orioles was a charter member of the American Association in 1882. When the AA folded after the 1891 season, four of its teams were brought into the expanded National League, including the Orioles.


The newly-formed American League wanted to compete directly with the National League's New York Giants, but the Giants used their political clout to block the American League from placing a club there. Instead, a team was placed in Baltimore in 1901.

So, in 1954, when the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore, they adopted the city's old traditional baseball nickname.

Many fans, and the team itself, also refer to the team as the "O's" or the "Birds".

New York Mets

        

The current New York Mets name goes back to the original Metropolitan Baseball Club which was a member of the 19th Century American Association, a club which lasted until 1887.

They were normally listed as "Metropolitan" in the standings, and writers would sometimes use the pluralized "Metropolitans" in the style of the day, to distinguish them from the "New Yorks" Giants.

When Major League Baseball expanded in 1962, the old name was revived in the form of the Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York, otherwise known as the New York Mets.

"Met" is a common short form of "Metropolitan", as in "The Met" for the Metropolitan Opera; or "MetLife" for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

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Cleveland Indians

  

Cleveland is known as "The Forest City" and its earliest 1870s pro team was called the Forest City Base Ball Club.

In the 1890s, their National League team was called the Cleveland Spiders by the press, supposedly because of its long-limbed players.

After a dreadful 20 and 134 season in 1899, they picked up the names the "Wanderers" and the "Exiles" since they became a road franchise.

The following year, they were resurrected in the young American League as the "Blues" because of their dark blue uniforms. But they went through other names too.

While being led by player and sometimes-manager Nap Lajoie, the team was known as the Cleveland Naps and when managed by Deacon McGuire, they picked up the moniker the "Molly Maguires".

Legend has it that the team honored Louis Sockalexis when it assumed its current name in 1915. On the contrary, the media and the team chose Cleveland Indians as a play on the name of the . Proponents of the name also acknowledged that the late-1890s club had sometimes been informally called the "Indians" during Sockalexis' short career there, a fact which merely reinforced the new name.

The Cleveland "Indians" name originates from a request by the club owner to decide on a new name, following the 1914 season.

Because there was already a Boston Braves (now the Atlanta Braves), the media chose "the Indians". (The Boston Braves were nicknamed the "Miracle Braves" after going from last place on July 4 to a sweep in the 1914 World Series.)

They are nicknamed "the Tribe" and "the Wahoos". The latter is a reference to the mascot which appears in the team's logos, Chief Wahoo.

Chief Wahoo is a trademarked mascot for the Cleveland Indians baseball team. The illustration is a Native American cartoon caricature. The mascot has been accused of reinforcing negative stereotypes about Native Americans. The expression "Wahoo" generally means a loud yell. The character's initial incarnation made its first appearance as a shoulder patch on Cleveland uniforms in 1947.

There are some claims that because the original team had a native American player, Louis Sockalexis, play for them for 3 seasons in 1897-1899 when they were the Spiders that the renaming was a tribute to him.



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