Of baseball logos, the Philadelphia Daily News’ Stan Hochman says the Boston Red Sox’s stockings are “appropriate for a laundromat but not a big-league baseball team.” The Indians, writes Hochman, have “the worst logo” in the game (a “humiliating caricature of a Native American”). But in the wake of Manny Ramirez’ brief stint for the PCL’s Albuquerque squad, the columnist finds much — perhaps too much — to admire about the Isotopes’ design (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)
Ramirez started his rehab, reluctantly, in Albuquerque. Reluctantly, perhaps, because he thought they told him he would be joining a team called the I’s-a-dopes, and Manny, being Manny, felt disrespected.
They talked softly because Ramirez totes a big stick. They patiently explained that the team was called the Isotopes, and that an isotope is any of two or more species of atoms of a chemical element with the same atomic number and position in the periodic table and nearly identical chemical behavior but with differing atomic mass.
Manny was OK with that, especially when they told him the air was thin and the fences cozy and the pitching mediocre. And yo, testosterone-breath, the team logo was cool, an abstract A with no crossbar. Just two of those slanted circles featuring an atom or a proton or a neuron, whatever.
It is a cool logo because it refers to the secret place outside of Albuquerque where scientists perfected an atomic bomb that blew away huge chunks of two Japanese cities and brought a swift end to World War II, making the world safe for democracy once again.