saved by the bell

Some Americans might know the phrase saved by the bell" as the name of a 1980s TV sitcom about high school kids. But we use this idiom to often mean that someone is saved by something unplanned that gets them free from a tough situation. It might be a bell that saves them - one to end a class so that they don't have to give their speech, or a phone call that frees them - but it can it could also be the person who summons you from a meeting that you didn't want to attend.

The the idiom originataes in sports. In boxing, to be saved from misfortune or unpleasantness and a possible loss by the sound of the bell signalling the end of the round. Even a boxer who is knocked to the canvas and must regain his feet before a count of ten or lose the fight can be saved by that end-of-round bell if it is rung before the count is finished. That gives him until the start of the next round to recover and resume fighting. 

ADHI dates this to the "mid-1900s" while the OED cites the first boxing use in 1932, and later figurative use in 1959.

lacrosse

UNC team playing Duke in lacrosse
2009 By Caroline Culler Link

Lacrosse is a sport played on a field between two opposing teams using sticks (crosses) and a ball, whereby one team defeats the other by achieving a higher score by scoring goals within the allotted time.

Lacrosse is based on games played by various Native American communities as early as 1100 AD.  By the 17th century, a version of lacrosse was well-established and was documented by Jesuit missionary priests in what is present-day Canada.

Ball Players by George Catlin, Public Domain, Link

The traditional aboriginal Canadian version was quite different from what we know today. Each team consisted of about 100 to 1,000 men on a field several miles/kilometers long. These games lasted from sunup to sundown for two to three days straight and were played as part of a ceremonial ritual, as a kind of symbolic warfare, or to give thanks to the Creator or Master.

"Lacrosse" is borrowed from the Canadian French la crosse (“the stick”).

Lacrosse has historically been played for the most part in Canada and the United States, with small but dedicated lacrosse communities in the United Kingdom and Australia. Recently, however, lacrosse has begun to flourish at the international level, with teams being established around the world, particularly in Europe and East Asia.

2005 NCAA Women's Lacrosse Championship
 CC BY 2.0, Link

Montreal Expos

Before Major League Baseball expanded to Montreal in 1969, there were minor league teams in Montréal and they were usually named the "Royals." This was a reference to Mount Royal (French: Mont Royal), which is located west of today's downtown and after which the city was named.

The Montréal Expos (French: Les Expos de Montréal) were a Canadian professional baseball team there. They were the first Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise located outside the United States.

The Expos were named in honor of Expo 67, which was the World's Fair (exposition) held two years before the Expos began play.

They played in the National League (NL) East Division from 1969 until 2004.  They have no World Series Titles.

In 1994, a players' strike wiped out the last eight weeks of the season and all of the post-season. Montreal was in first place by six games in the National League East Division when play was stopped, but no official titles were awarded in 1994.

Their top franchise players were Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Vladimir Guerrero, Pedro Martinez, Tim Raines, Steve Rogers, Rusty Staub, and Jose Vidro.

Following the 2004 season, the franchise relocated to Washington, D.C., and became the Washington Nationals and the "Expos" name was retired.

Montréal currently has no MLB team.  The Kansas City Royals team name has no connection to the old Montréal teams by that name.

Tennessee Titans

The Houston Oilers, who played at the Astrodome from 1960-96, moved to Nashville for the 1997 season. They maintained the name Oilers along with an oil derrick logo. After two seasons as the Tennessee Oilers, owner Bud Adams announced that the team would change its nickname since Nashville had no ties to the oil industry as Houston had.

In 1999, the franchise unveiled a new logo as the team was renamed the Tennessee Titans.

"Titans" has some history as a football team name. It had been the earlier name for the current-day NY Giants.

Adams selected the name because "Titans" were powerful ruling figures in Greek mythology and that seemed to fit since Nashville is nicknamed the "The Athens of the South." (Of course, it's also known as "Music City.") The city's own Parthenon is a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens, Greece.

The Titans' website has quite a bit of information about the franchise's Oiler history.

Washington Commanders

What's in a name? A lot.

After 87 years as the Redskins and 2 years as the Washington Football Team, the franchise announced today that its new name would be the Commanders.

The Redskins name which has offended Native American Indian tribes for many decades has been the subject of discussions for years without any movement. But that changed in mid-2020 when a letter signed by 87 investors and shareholders with a total worth of $620 billion was sent to sponsors FedEx, PepsiCo and Nike, asking them to stop doing business with the team unless its name was changed. 

There had been some fan input and one popular name among fans, RedWolves, was dropped because of trademarks held by others. Other names under consideration included Presidents, Brigade, Redhogs, Football Team, Armada, and Defenders.

The renaming process itself took 18 months and two full NFL seasons. 

Their new Twitter account is @Commanders

Cleveland Guardians

A fresh look from the 216. pic.twitter.com/0W8VTtZ7b0

— Cleveland Indians (@Indians) July 23, 2021

 Another team has announced that they are changing their team branding - name, logo, mascot - so that it does not offend Native American Indians.

The Cleveland Indians are playing their final season this year under that name and once the season ends they will be known as the Cleveland Guardians.

Why "Guardians?" The "Guardians of Traffic" are 43-foot statues that have stood on the Hope Memorial Bridge for almost 100 years. In a promotional video announcement (narrated by Tom Hanks) you can see the statues and beyond them is the team's Progressive Field. How do they represent Cleveland or baseball? According to the franchise, the Guardians of Traffic symbolize the spirit of progress. "We are excited to usher in the next era of the deep history of baseball in Cleveland," owner Paul Dolan said in a press release.

And why Tom Hanks? Besides him being a beloved actor and voice we trust, he has been a fan of the Cleveland baseball franchise since the late 1970's when he was a young actor interning at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival.

 

Oh, and that 216 reference? Check here.

Major League Baseball

One of the many signs of spring is baseball's spring training, even though it wintry in much of the U.S. then. Even opening day games in April are often cold and even snowy. The "Boys of Summer" probably prefer days that are in that just-right Goldilocks zone that is late spring and early autumn.

The pandemic really hurt baseball as well as other sports in 2020 and although the games are on this year, the number of fans is still limited and teams still are still dealing with cases.

Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada.

There are 30 teams in American Major League Baseball (MLB). They are divided up evenly between the American League (AL) and National League (NL) with 15 teams in each. Each of the leagues is divided into three divisions called the East, the Central, and the West.

The NL and AL were formed as separate legal entities in 1876 and 1901, respectively. Beginning in 1903, the two leagues cooperated but remained legally separate entities. In 2000 the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball.

We are working our ways through all the teams' name origin stories. 

MLB also oversees Minor League Baseball, which comprises 256 teams affiliated with the major league clubs. I don't know if we'll get around to all those minor league teams - but some have very interesting name-origin stories.

See all our baseball team name origins 
and all our other sports name origins posts.

National League
East
Atlanta Braves
Miami Marlins
New York Mets
Philadelphia Phillies
Washington Nationals
Central
Chicago Cubs
Cincinnati Reds
Milwaukee Brewers
Pittsburgh Pirates
St. Louis Cardinals
West
Arizona Diamondbacks
Colorado Rockies
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants

American League
East
Baltimore Orioles
Boston Red Sox
New York Yankees
Tampa Bay Rays
Toronto Blue Jays
Central
Chicago White Sox
Cleveland Indians
Detroit Tigers
Kansas City Royals
Minnesota Twins
West
Houston Astros
Los Angeles Angels
Oakland Athletics
Seattle Mariners
Texas Rangers

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Super Bowl LV (55) in 2021 will be played in Tampa, Florida.
We have already written about the Kansas City Chiefs here,
so today we add their opponent, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, and they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. 

They were an NFL expansion team in 1976, along with the Seattle Seahawks. In their first season, they played in the AFC West division and prior to the 1977 season, Tampa Bay switched conferences and divisions with Seattle, becoming a member of the NFC Central division. Then during the 2002 league realignment, the Buccaneers joined three former NFC West teams to form the NFC South. 

The team name of "Buccaneers" was selected early in 1975. The name was said to be reminiscent of José Gaspar and the Buccaneers of the Caribbean. Gaspar (AKA Gasparilla) is an apocryphal Spanish pirate and the "Last of the Buccaneers." According to legend, he sailed and plundered across the Gulf of Mexico and the Spanish Main from his base in southwest Florida.

The term buccaneer was taken from the Spanish bucanero and derives from the Caribbean Arawak word buccan, a wooden frame on which Tainos and Caribs slowly roasted or smoked meat. From it derived the French word boucane and from that, the closely sounding boucanier was used to describe French hunters who used such frames to smoke meat from feral cattle and pigs on Hispaniola. The English colonists anglicized the word as buccaneer.

The nickname "Bucs" quickly became popular (but not the variation of "Bay Bucs").

The team's original colors were green, orange, and white. Orange represented the Florida citrus industry. The green was quickly dropped as being too similar to the teal used by the Miami Dolphins and the greens used by the college Miami Hurricanes and Florida A&M. Red was added as an accent color. Some people say it is a nod to the University of Tampa Spartans and loosely, to the Florida State Seminoles. The orange/red/white combination was now a composite of all major college teams in the state at the time.

Shortly after the franchise was awarded, in February 1975 the team name of "Buccaneers" was selected. The name was said to be reminiscent of José Gaspar and the Buccaneers of the Caribbean Sea, and the color orange representing the Florida citrus industry. Almost immediately, the nickname "Bucs" became popular, but the alternative "Bay Bucs" failed to gain traction.

History of the team logo - via Wikimedia

A few months later, however, green was dropped from the color scheme. The artists' renditions were too similar to the teal used by the Miami Dolphins, as well as the green shades utilized by the Miami Hurricanes and Florida A&M. While they desired to keep the primary color orange, which provided a popular visual link to the Gators, Hurricanes, and Rattlers, they sought to further distinguish themselves. The color red as an accent color was substituted, as a gesture to the former Tampa Spartans and loosely, to the Florida State Seminoles. The orange/red/white combination was now a composite of all major college teams in the state at the time.

There was a conscious effort to distinguish the team's branding from the other NFL "pirate" team, the Raiders. The Bucs would beat the Raiders by a score of 48–21 in Super Bowl XXXVII, nicknamed 'The Pirate Bowl'.

Name Changing: Washington Redskins and Kansas City Chiefs

 
July 23, 2020

Effective immediately, Washington will call itself the “Washington Football Team”, pending adoption of a new name. This is not a final renaming and rebranding for team; this is the name it wants to use until pending adoption of a new name in the future.

July 14, 2020: This week the Washington Redskins announced that they would be retiring their nickname and logo after completing a thorough review that began on July 3.

An earlier post here about how team names change as the team moves from city to city ended with a mention of the football Washington Redskins. Their name and logo have been controversial for a long time and particularly in the past few years there has been greater public outcry to change them. 

The logo that was controversial and that has been retired

The Washington Redskins name controversy involves the name and the logo of the team. Native American individuals, tribes, and organizations have been questioning the use of the name and image for decades. Over 115 professional organizations representing civil rights, educational, athletic, and scientific experts have published resolutions or policies that state that the use of Native American names and/or symbols by non-native sports teams is a harmful form of ethnic stereotyping that promotes misunderstanding and prejudice which contributes to other problems faced by Native Americans.

The Washington Redskins team is only one example of the larger controversy, but it receives the most public attention due to the name itself being defined as derogatory or insulting in modern dictionaries and the prominence of the team representing the nation's capital.

a "less controversial" script logo used by the Redskins (1972–2019) Sportslogos.net, Public Domain

When an NFL franchise was bought for Boston in 1933, the team was set to play at the home of the baseball Boston Braves so it adopted the same name. The following year, the Braves moved to Fenway Park and changed their name to the Redskins. The Redskins name traveled with the team to become the Washington Redskins. Of course, the baseball Atlanta Braves, also use American Indian imagery - and a pretty tasteless "chop" motion in the stands by fans.

It is just a matter of time before the same pressure is put to bear on other teams, such as the NFL's  Kansas City Chiefs who also use Native American imagery in its logo of an Indian arrowhead. 

The team was supposedly named in honor of Kansas City mayor Harold Roe Bartle who was instrumental in bringing the AFL Dallas Texans to Kansas City, MO in 1963. Bartel earned his nickname as the founder of a Boy Scouts honor camping society Tribe of Mic-O-Say in which he was "Chief" Lone Bear. But their logo doesn't seem to represent that origin story.

In 1989 the Chiefs switched from Warpaint, a Pinto horse ridden by a man in a feathered headdress, to their current mascot K. C. Wolf. A horse named Warpaint returned in 2009 but is ridden by a cheerleader.

New York Mets

The New York Mets are in the National League East and are based in the New York City borough of Queens.

They were one of baseball's first expansion teams. The Mets were founded in 1962 to replace both of New York's departed NL teams, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. The American League team in New York City is the New York Yankees who are based in the borough of the Bronx. The team's colors combine the Dodgers' blue and the Giants' orange.

The nickname "Mets" was adopted as a shorthand to the club's corporate name, "The New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, Inc."

The name also recalls the "Metropolitans" which was a former New York team in the American Association from 1880 to 1887. The shorter form worked better in newspaper headlines.

After the 1957 season, the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants relocated from New York to California to become the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants. That left the country's largest city in the United States with no National League franchise.

There was a threat that a New York team joining a new third league, so the MLB the National League expanded by adding the New York Mets following a proposal from William Shea.


For the first two years of its existence, the team played its home games at the historic Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan.

In 1964, they moved into newly constructed Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens, where the Mets played until the 2008 season.

In 2009, the club moved into Citi Field, adjacent to the former Shea Stadium site.

Tom_Seaver_at_Shea_Stadium_1974
(Delaywaves CC BY 2.0, Link)

In their inaugural season, the Mets posted a record of 40–120, the worst regular-season record since MLB went to a 162-game schedule. The team never finished better than second-to-last until the "Miracle Mets" beat the Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series. The win is considered one of the biggest upsets in World Series history.

In the years since the Mets have played in four World Series. These include a dramatic run in 1973 that ended in a seven-game loss to the Oakland Athletics and a second championship in 1986 over the Boston Red Sox. The "Subway Series" ended in a loss against their cross-town rivals the New York Yankees in 2000. Their last Series appearance resulted in a five-game loss to the Kansas City Royals in 2015.

At the end of the 2019 season, the team's overall win-loss record was 4448–4808, a .481 win percentage.

         

Kansas City Chiefs

The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri.

They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division.

Lamar Hunt made unsuccessful attempts to purchase and relocate the NFL's Chicago Cardinals to his hometown of Dallas, Texas but was turned down. So, Hunt then established the American Football League and started his own team, the Dallas Texans, that began to play in 1960.

In their third season, the Texans played in their first American Football League Championship Game, against the Houston Oilers. The game was broadcast nationally on ABC and the Texans defeated the Oilers 20–17 in double overtime.

Hunt decided that the Dallas–Fort Worth media market could not sustain two professional football franchises and considered moving the team to either Atlanta or Miami, but an offer from Kansas City Mayor Harold Roe Bartle with a promise to triple the franchise's season ticket sales and expand the seating capacity of Municipal Stadium to accommodate the team clinched a move to KC.

In 1963, the team relocated to Kansas City and assumed their current name. Oddly enough, Hunt and head coach Hank Stram initially planned to retain the Texans name in KC. But, like many other teams, a fan contest was set up and that determined the new "Chiefs" name. "Chief" would appear to be an Indian reference but actually was meant to honor Mayor Bartle whose nickname of "Chief" that he acquired in his professional role as Scout Executive of the St. Joseph and Kansas City Boy Scout Councils and founder of the Scouting Society, the Tribe of Mic-O-Say.

The other contest leaders were "Mules" and "Royals" and in 1969, "Royals" would be the name of the city's Major League Baseball expansion franchise after the Athletics left Kansas City for Oakland.

From 1960 to 1969, the Chiefs/Texans won 87 games, which was the most in the 10-year history of the AFL. After the American Football League merged with the National Football League, the Chiefs were placed in the American Football Conference's West Division.

In 1970, the Chiefs won only seven games in their first season in the NFL and missed the playoffs.

The Chiefs have won three AFL championships, in 1962, 1966, and 1969. They became the second AFL team (after the New York Jets) to defeat an NFL team in an AFL–NFL World Championship Game when they defeated the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV.

In 2020, after a 50-year drought, they played in Super Bowl LIV (54) against the San Francisco 49ers and were able to become champions once again with a score of 31 -20. They play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2021 Super Bowl LV.

Many sports teams with names or mascots that allude to Native Americans have been considered controversial. The Chiefs have largely avoided that controversy.

Though their name came from a non-Indian origin, their logo was an Indian arrowhead, and their first mascot was Warpaint, a pinto horse. Warpaint served as the team's mascot from 1963 to 1988.

In the mid-1980s, the Chiefs featured a short-lived and more controversial unnamed "Indian Man" mascot which was scrapped in 1988.

The team then moved to a cartoonish "K. C. Wolf" which has served as the team's mascot. The mascot was named after the Chiefs' "Wolfpack" which was a group of rabid fans from the team's days at Municipal Stadium. The rebranding worked and K. C. Wolf is one of the most popular NFL mascots and was the league's first mascot inducted into the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2006.

San Francisco 49ers

The San Francisco 49ers (also known as the Niners) are a professional American football team. The 49ers are currently a member of the Western Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL).

The name "49ers" comes from the name given to the prospectors who went west during the California Gold Rush which began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California.

In the next year, that news brought some 300,000 people to California. The gold-seekers, called "Forty-niners" as a reference to 1849. Because of the gold rush, San Francisco grew from a small settlement to a boomtown, and roads, churches, schools and other towns were built throughout California. A state constitution was written and California became a state in 1850.


The 49ers official mascot is Sourdough Sam who wears jersey number 49. Before Sourdough Sam, the team's first mascot was a prospector's mule named Clementine that wore a red saddle blanket and appeared in the 1950s and 1960s.

Sourdough Sam is a gold rush prospector/miner who first appeared in the 1970s though he was based on a character that appeared on the covers of game programs created by William Kay between 1946 and 1949.

The "Sourdough" refers to sourdough bread which is associated with San Francisco.

Team owner Anthony J. Morabito chose 49ers for his All-America Football Conference squad because it reflected San Francisco’s link to the California Gold Rush.

The 49ers began to play in 1946 as a charter member of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and joined the NFL in 1950 after the AAFC merged into the older league.

The team was the first NFL franchise to win five Super Bowls.

The 49ers teams of the 1980s and early 1990s were a dynasty given their five Super Bowl triumphs in that span, including four in the 1980s. The Niners won 10+ games for 16 straight seasons.


Famous 49ers include three-time Super Bowl MVP Joe Montana, perennial Pro Bowler Ronnie Lott, all-time highest career quarterback rating holder Steve Young, and career touchdown leader Jerry Rice.

All of them played for the 49ers during their greatest period.

They have been division champions 20 times between 1970 and 2019, making them one of the most successful teams in NFL history.

The 49ers have been in the league playoffs 50 times (49 times in the NFL and one time in the AAFC).

In 2020, they played in Super Bowl LIV in Miami against the Kansas City Chiefs and lost with a score of 31 - 20.