Puffy Head Bird Legs or Trash Pandas? Minor League team holds vote on nickname

Published 2:30 pm Thursday, July 26, 2018

By The News Courier

The new Minor League Baseball team in Madison is asking fans to vote on a nickname for the team before it begins play in 2020.

On its website, the team said it is looking for a name “that tells the story of Northern Alabama and perfectly captures everything that makes the region unique. We are searching for the perfect team name with which the entire community can have great fun.”

The nickname list has been narrowed to 10 finalists, and an online fan vote will determine the winner.

The 10 finalists, and a description of why the nickname was chosen, follows:

  1. Army Ants: The Army’s Redstone Arsenal serves as a center for missile and national defense programs and employs more than 40,000 members of our community.

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    Comet Jockeys: “Rocket City” was put on the map for its cutting-edge aerospace development. Comet Jockeys is a celebration of our brave astronauts who explore outer space.

  3. GloWorms: GloWorms are rare tiny bioluminescent creatures that call the caves at Dismals Canyon in North Alabama home, one of few places in North America.

  4. Lunartics: We are home to some of the wildest mad scientists facing today’s challenges in space and technology. You’d have to be a “Lunartic” to do that.

  5. Moon Possums: A scavenger at heart, these local critters are known for hanging around and having a good time with their families – just like going to ballgame.

  6. Puffy Head Bird Legs: No joke! It’s lingo coined by our astronauts for body fluid moving from feet to head in outer space due to the lack of gravity.

  7. Space Chimps: A tribute to Miss Baker, one of the first animals safely launched into space. She is buried on the grounds at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

  8. Space Sloths: A nod to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, the Space Sloths is up there with classic Minor League Baseball names like IronPigs, Flying Squirrels, Chihuahuas and Jumbo Shrimp.

  9. ThunderSharks: Mix the powerful thunder of North Alabama’s storms with the ultra-strong, sleek determination of the shark and you end up with the personality of our community: willing to attack any problem. Visiting teams won’t mess with our ThunderSharks.

  10. Trash Pandas: (Slang for raccoon) Our community is known for engineering, and no creature in our galaxy is as smart, creative, determined and ingenious a problem solver – dedicated to the challenge at hand – as our local raccoons.

Fans can also vote on what the team’s regional identifier should be: Madison, North Alabama, or Rocket City.

Fans can vote at https://secure.milb.com/tickets/form.jsp?formid=madison_team_name_vote&formcode=form&section=team3.

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