They want us to name the team what?

Best name honors dental heritage
MIKE ARGENTO

Jun 16, 2006 — Keystone Baseball is conducting a vote on what to call York's minor league baseball team, allowing the public to select from a list of five finalists that, they say, reflects York's heritage and history and culture, which is a huge mistake because it could lead us down the path of Lancaster and get us saddled with a nickname that, well, smells like the Codorus Creek on an ozone action day.

Here are our choices:

· Choppers, a reference to false teeth, I believe, a tribute to Dentsply, a leading manufacturer of dental appliances, which makes it sound like your dentist is installing a dishwasher in your mouth.

· Steel Horses, which refers to the episode of "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." titled "Steel Horses," during which Brisco, played by the brilliant Bruce Campbell of "Evil Dead" fame, takes on a gang that steals some motorcycles to facilitate the theft of an orb being transported by a government wagon train.

· Dukes, which reflects York County's deep and lengthy cultural attachment to "The Dukes of Hazzard." Actually, I believe Dukes narrowly beat "Cooters," which was rejected on the grounds that some people might think it means something that it doesn't.

· Revolution, which honors the local commitment to changing the world for the better and would adopt, as a mascot, Che Guevara.

· White Roses, obvious homage to our gardening prowess.

Now, they're all fine names, as far as they go. But do we really want to be saddled with any one of them? Sure, naming the team the Choppers would probably result in huge amounts of cash from Dentsply. But other than that, there's no upside to being associated with "Brisco County," or Cooter, or Che, or flowers.

We could become like neighboring Lancaster, saddled with a stupid name for a team, the Barnstormers, which is a reference to crop dusting, I believe, and if you believe the movies - well, "Independence Day," anyway - crop dusters are always old drunks who wear funny hats with earflaps and, mysteriously, have both Mexican and Anglo kids and who eventually are able to save the world because dusting crops with a World War I airplane is, apparently, adequate training to fly an F-14 into the maw of an alien ship.

See, it's a complicated thing. Lancaster would have been much better off adopting an Amish guy as a mascot, dressing the players all in black with straw hats and calling the team the Barn Raisers.

Other cities have much better names for their minor league teams, and some of them actually make sense. Louisville, for instance, has the Bats, a reference to the huge blood-sucking vampire bats that swoop into the city on a regular basis.

The Macon Whoopee, which actually was a hockey team, was named in honor of the city's commitment to casual, recreational relations. The Lansing Lugnuts apparently pay tribute to the city's burgeoning lunatic population, wingnuts rejected because it was deemed too obvious and would have riled up the wingnuts.

Some names are practical. In the Mexican leagues, you have the Cancun Langosteros, which translates to the lobstermen; the Saltillo Seraperos, which means serape makers in honor of people who make blankets, and the Culiacan Tomato Growers, apparently sponsored by Miracle Grow.

We could adopt some of these approaches.

We don't have bats - well, except for the people who live in the Avenues who occasionally get bats in their attics - but we do have the fearsome Codorus carp. It's not exactly original; the Japanese league has a team in Hiroshima called the Carp. And like the Hiroshima carp, the Codorus carp is a huge, mutant carp that threatens to evolve and crawl from the water to exact revenge on humans whose folly created it. We're talking Carpzilla.

And Codorus Carp does have a ring to it, and we'd immediately have a mascot that, in the words of a Japanese writer, would "kick the principle quantity of the donkey."

Or we could go with wingnuts. We have a surplus of those.

Or we could go with a product that's related to York - the Peppermint Patties. Well, we might run into some copyright problems with the estate of Charles Schulz. Besides, York Peppermint Patties are made in Reading now. Forget that. How about York Snackers, in honor of our snack food industry? The team could have a Frito as a mascot, or better yet, the Frito Bandito.

Or we could go the manufacturing route, like the Seraperos. We could name the team the Motorcycle Makers, or Motorcycleros.

Or, better yet, the Dental Appliances.

Keystone Baseball could get Dentsply and Harley-Davidson into a bidding war with the name going to the highest bidder. As a plus, the Dental Appliances could have the greatest mascot ever - Toothy, the giant tooth - and could have some great giveaways.

Free bridge night.

Or free upper night.

Sounds good to me.

And it sure beats naming the team after an episode of "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr."
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Last week, I reported on Red Lion English teacher Danielle Suppa's planned participation in the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim. She finished the 4.4-mile swim Sunday, but it was touch-and-go. She experienced some back pain about 3 miles into it - her husband reported it was probably due to fighting cross currents - but toughed it out and finished in two hours, 42 minutes and 39 seconds, placing her 462nd out of the 599 swimmers who finished the course. "If nothing else," her husband, John Peirmatteo, reported via e-mail, "she has a time to beat next year."

Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.Read more Argento columns at ydr.com/mike or at http://www.yorkblog.com - Argento's Front Stoop.