Three Alternative Names for the Atlanta, GA (USA) Professional Baseball Team
currently called the “Braves”
Atlanta’s baseball team is called the Braves. The problem with that name is that is makes the people indigenous to that part of the world into mascots. A more belittling, demeaning, dehumanizing thing to do is certainly not hard to imagine, but to designate any group of human beings to be mascots of other humans is clearly in that vein. It puts them on a par with, bears, lions, tigers, eagles, etc. — as well as, gophers, toads, and mud hens, etc. But then the relative status of the animal to which they might be equated is hardly the point, is it?
To be clear, that team came to town (from Milwaukee, WI) with that name in place. As it happens, before they got to town Atlanta had a minor league team that had originated there that was called the Atlanta Crackers. “Cracker” in that sense is a word seldom encountered anymore, but at one time it was the popular term that meant the same as “redneck” does today. So there is that: Atlanta effectively had a team called the Rednecks.
Back to the present, the current Atlanta team (where I was born and have basically lived my whole life, by the way) needs a different name. Since rednecks are people, too, I have come up with three other possible names.
My favorite new name for the team is the Atlanta Peaches. Georgia calls itself “the peach state” and “Peachtree” is an (in)famously popular name for streets and places in the city. That would definitely a move away from the whole macho thing. At the same time, it is not actually ‘effeminate’: a person can be ‘a peach of a man’ and still be ‘all man’. To convey more of the, well, redneck notion of ‘masculinity’, there are few things in nature harder than the pit of a peach — and it does have a dangerously pointy end.
My second choice would be the Atlanta Thrashers. That was the name of its second professional hockey team (now also departed), but I don’t think there would be any legal barrier. The brown thrasher is the official state bird. “To thrash” is loaded with imagery pertinent to sports: giving the other team ‘a thrashing’ or, when playing poorly, ‘thrashing about’.
My third choice would be the Atlanta Warriors. It is basically a generic version of “Braves.” The offensive, because it is not generic, ‘tomahawk’ that currently adorns the team uniform could be replaced with a generic, stone-tipped spear — sans feather(s), if you please. Also, the chant in which the fans in the stands like to indulge when the team plays in Atlanta, which is ignorantly appropriated from indigenous culture, could be essentially retained: “Oh-oh-ohooh” could be readily replaced with “Warriors,” and the hand motion that accompanies the chant — a slow, up-and-down ‘chopping’ motion hinged at the elbow — could be replaced with a very similar motion, simulating throwing a spear.