October 28, 2004
The Exposés
Ball-Wonk has discovered that their may be intelligence in the commissioner's office after all.
BallWonk cannot imagine that all these moves show a coordinated campaign to put an African-American face on our new team, the better to promote baseball to Washington's large black middle class and vibrant black entrepreneurial sector. No, wait, BallWonk can imagine that. What BallWonk doesn't understand is how Emperor Selig and his dark minions could suddenly have become so smart. Working to get black families on the bandwagon from day one is a really, really good idea. DC is a majority-black city with a thriving black middle class whose major sports teams are an historically white-attracting football team, a soccer team in whose stands Spanish is a first language, a lilly-white hockey team, and a basketball team so bad that it could lose an exhibition match against the Washington Generals.
Which is not to put down on our other teams. They're all wonderful in their own ways, but none has established itself in the heart of the black community. Why, DC United soccer games draw more fans than Washington Wizards basketball games. This gives baseball an opportunity to market itself to black families in Washington that it would not have in most other cities.
The natural conclusion of a campaign to put an African-American face on our new team would be naming it the Grays. And Major League baseball has unwittingly provided yet more evidence that it plans to do just that. The Homestead Grays' colors were blue and gray (well, mostly; like a lot of teams back in the 1930s and '40s, colors could change at random from year to year, but blue and gray were the defaults).
When Emperor Selig's dark minions created an official web page for our new team, they gave it a blue-and-gray facade and a logo in, you guessed it, blue and gray.
I would remind people that working in that office is one Sandy Alderson, who is one of the smartest people in baseball. And the one thing for which I have praise for Selig's tenure is his outreach to minorities. This is a marketing strategy that makes perfect sense. And though I'd like to see them named the Exposés because it would be very humorous, I'd much rather see them called the Grays than the Senators.
I hope BallWonk is right (and thanks for the introduction to that site). I remember first hearing the Grays idea from Rob Neyer a while back, and I thought it was brilliant -- it's smart marketing, politically correct (and I mean that in a GOOD way), historical and appropriate for the city, and distinctive.
Everyone I've talked to here in NoVa (ok, my dad, my brother, my wife, and a few colleagues) loves it. And it eliminates the danger of a crappy, random name like the Wizards or Raptors or Wild.
Yup. "Senators" is the first thing that comes to peoples' minds, but "Grays" hits all the right buttons for all the right reasons.
"Senators" doesn't have a good track record, they should stay away from it.
I was hoping for Grays all along and still want to see the DC team dubbed that.
Re: Washington Grays
If they called the team the Grays, maybe finally there would be a major league team where all the statues and plaques of all the Negro League players could be displayed at a Major League Ballpark. After all, so many Negro League Games were played at Griffith Park in DC, including many all-Star Games. As with Yankees Stadium, all of the great negro league players could be honored with plaques, statues, a wall or hall of honor--the stadium itself could be a tourist attraction for tourists visiting from out of town.
What could be a more fitting tribute to fleet Oscar Charleston, to burly Josh Gibson, to the great Martin Dihigo, to Luis Tiant Sr., to all the other greats whose careers passed in the shadows of Jim Crow, segregation and hatred.
--Art Kyriazis
I dislike the Grays nickname, but like the Negro League connection. It's a moot point, as it's the only nickname even mentioned. Grays it will be.
Well, there's also "Senators," of course. I've also heard "Monuments," which, as inspiring as the actual monument may be, is not very inspiring as a team name. "Hi. we stand up really tall and straight and don't move."
And then, of course, every would-be pundit has chimed in with their own dig at the government and enjoyed a yuk or two by suggesting they call themselves the "Lobbyists" or some such.
It's a safe bet that the Washington team will NOT become the "Senators"... and not just because of the dreadful track record of that francise (Walter Johnson aside).
Thanks to past baseball history, the Texas Rangers currently own the rights to the "Washington Senators" name... which means royalties on any retro Senators gear or other use of the logo/name. The Rangers would demand a chunk of change from the new Washington team to buy the rights to the "Senators" name. Want to bet that won't happen, especially with the notoriously penny-pinching Bud Selig involved?
So here's one more good argument for the team name Washington Grays, the copyright to which as far as I know are owned by noone.
Am I the only one who wants them to be called the Washington Expos?
Long live Warren Cromartie.