January 08, 2008
Camping Out
Rays Index is not impressed with the Blue Jays signing Shawn Camp.
Can we get the Blue Jays to shorten their name to the Jays, just to be consistent? Maybe we should drop all two-name nicknames, and let Chicago and Boston fight over which team is going to be known as the Socks. :-)
I think the Blue Jays would go with Les Bleu first, in honor of their deceased brethren from the North.
The Jays have all but dropped Blue from their name already and like most decisions these days it was a corporate decision. The Jays are owned by Rogers Communications one of the two largest communications companies in Canada. Their main color is Red. Their main competition is Bell Canada and YES their color is Blue.
If I recall, the original owner of the franchise was the Labatt's Brewery, one of whose most popular brands in Canada was, and is, "Labatt Blue" and, so the tale goes, they named the team the Blue Jays (an original Yankees name, as you know) in the hope that the impulse to shorten would result in the team being called the "Blues", perhaps on the model of the University of Toronto moniker, the "Varsity Blues". Such was not to be. Right from the start they've been nicknamed the Jays.
Why would Chicago and Boston fight over the Socks? Clearly Boston would just choose to be called the Reds.