During the independent breakaway league of 1992-1994, a fanzine titled Linedrive was edited by London Warriors supporter Phil Ross, with contributions from Rex Phillips (including cartoons offering British baseball humour). A selection of the cartoons has been made available as part of Project Cobb. The fanzines were kindly supplied by Project Cobb collaborator Mark Tobin (who runs the British Baseball Data website, where you can find the most definitive set of league standings for British baseball that exists on the internet).
You can either access the cartoons via the Miscellaneous section of the Project Cobb webpage or go to them directly by clicking here.
12 comments
They’re a great addition to Project Cobb. I love the little touch in the sixth one down with the squirrel going up the tree saying “we saw the reds off!”.
I liked that bit too.
Linedrive is where I mentioned I found details of Norwich baseball on a previous thread.
Looking over those league standings in the various issues, you notice some funny things. For instance, the top two teams in “Northern Division One” in 1994 were both called Pirates (Menwith Hill and Nottingham). The Croydon Pirates were also playing at that time making three teams with the same name playing in a single season. Pirates has been used on other occasions as well in British baseball history: a team called just the Pirates was the West Ham seconds in 1937; there was a Wembley Pirates in the late 1930s, who dropped Wembley from their name in the 1940s; a Hull Pirates played in the 1950s; the Crawley Pirates were founded in 1959; a team called the Curzon Pirates competed in the 1960s; there was a Southglade Pirates in the 1980s; and there almost certainly have been others.
It has been commented that British teams need to get better team names, but this comment was made based on the list of National Champions. Linedrive reveals some great names for less successful teams, such as the Lashing Sluggers (from Maidstone) and the Droitwich Spa Tans (a pun on Drotiwich being a spa town but also a – perhaps accidental – pun on tanning spas). There has been even more adventurous word play – notably the Croydon Pie-rats (the Croydon Pirates second team from the late 1990s). And, more recently, we have the Bolton Robots of Doom of course – no danger of infringing MLB’s copyright, as someone mentioned to me. This force attempts to prevent teams here taking MLB franchise names (in Linedrive, again, we learn that, because of this, in 1992 the London Athletics became the Warriors (taking a name used by a team that many of the players were part of in the 1980s), the Birmingham Braves became the Devils, and the Reading Royals became the Bulldogs.
Add to that the Northfield Pirates, who were playing in the Midlands League in the late 1950s.
… and the Liverpool Postal Pirates of the 1950s.
Maybe we should start a BaseballGB competition where we think up some new names for current teams? Or is that likely to make us unpopular?!
I think there are a few things here. One is that it would be interesting to know why current team have the names that they do. Another is to think up names for baseball teams in towns that don’t currently have a club. Whether we’d want to go as far as suggesting new names for existing teams I don’t know! It would certainly be an interesting exercise.
… and the Chasewater Pirates of the early-1990s. That’s a dozen now by my count.
The Chelmsford Judges were named after Judge Tindal, a huge statue of him is in front of the old magistrates court.
Esso Tigers are pretty obvious for it’s company emblem.
I always wanted a baseball team to develop in Chorley and give it the name of Angels. On its own not that unique, but to say you play for Chorley’s Angels, how much better can it get, well not as good as the R.O.D.
Chorley’s Angels would be a great name, so long as the team didn’t end up renaming itself like its American counterparts has done. Certainly the Lancashire Angels of Chorley doesn’t sound quite so good!
Or if you want a similar situation to a town cashing in on its proximity to a bigger draw, how about the London Angels of Luton? (I’m thinking of “London Luton” airport.)
And now you can have the London Angels of Oxford too:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8208996.stm