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No joke, (or Smoke), Wally's days are numbered
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Published: April 17, 2008
Following in the grand tradition of tossing out the first pitch at baseball games, I'm taking it upon myself to toss out the first suggestion for the renaming of Winston-Salem's minor-league baseball franchise.
The Winston-Salem Smoke.
Think about it. The name has everything. It's unique. It's steeped in local history. It's got a certain alliterative quality. Heck, it practically rolls off the tongue.
Think of the marketing possibilities. Maybe Garry Trudeau (the creator of Doonesbury) would loan us his Mr. Butts character as a prototype for the new mascot.
OK, the Smoke was a joke. Tobacco has done plenty for this town. But the "contest" to rename the Winston-Salem Warthogs is not a joke.
Team co-owner Billy Prim and the gang over at Mandalay Baseball Properties (the entertainment company that Prim has hired to run the team) are quite serious about a new nickname and have started a campaign to come up with one.
"Seriously, we don't have a name yet," said Kevin Mortesen, a Mandalay spokesman. "We're looking for ideas, and all suggestions will be taken into account."
With the obvious exception of Smoke.
Gimme a 'B'
Let's correct one misconception right off the bat. Though it's true that team management will take suggestions through this fine family newspaper and online, the contest is not an exercise in democracy.
We don't get to vote, and no hanging chads are going to cloud the selection. You can only make suggestions. Even having a few hundred of your closest friends suggest the same name won't help.
"This is not meant to be a popular vote," Mortesen said.
That's too bad, because some of the coolest new names have resulted from these types of stunts.
When the campus government asked students at the University of California, Santa Cruz to vote for a mascot for their teams in 1985, 80 percent picked Banana Slugs over the Sea Lions nickname favored by the school's administration.
Banana Slugs won, and UCSC teams are known by that unique nickname to this day. John Travolta popularized the Slugs when he wore a school shirt in Pulp Fiction.
We've been down the renaming path here before. When the franchise wanted to lose the Spirits nickname in 1994, the team held a similar contest.
By a wide margin, the most popular choice submitted by fans was Camels. Other suggestions included Coon Dogs, Dirt Dobbers, Hammerheads, Beavers and Cigarettes. (It wasn't me.)
Perhaps it's a good thing that ownership reserved veto rights.
Warthogs forever
All joking aside, let's call this contest what it really is — a marketing ploy designed to drum up interest in the team's new downtown ballpark and sell new T-shirts and hats.
The renaming trend first appeared on a big scale in the late 1980s and early '90s when revenue-hungry minor-league teams turned to cutesy new names and cartoonish logos. Hickory Crawdads, Lansing (Mich.) Lugnuts and Winston-Salem Warthogs were but a few.
On the minor-league level, new stadiums generally mean new nicknames. The ballclub just over the county line in Greensboro morphed from the Bats into the Grasshoppers just in time for the opening of the Gate City's spanking new downtown park in 2005.
Now for a serious suggestion — keep the Warthogs name. It's unique. It's based in history — African warthogs were a new exhibit at the N.C. Zoo when the team changed names. Winston-Salem Warthogs has an alliterative quality, and kids already love Wally the mascot.
Best of all, keeping the Warthogs name would be a nod to fans who will shell out good money next year for tickets into the new stadium — and in the form of city-backed financial assistance and tax breaks — keep a few hard-earned bucks in our pockets.
Go, Hogs.
n Scott Sexton can be reached at 727-7481 or at ssexton@wsjournal.com.
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