With no byline, the following was from this morning’s Boston Globe (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory).
There is more than one way to eliminate the Yankees. Just ask the Lowell Spinners.
The Red Sox Single-A affiliate announced today that it is on a mission to get rid of the name “Yankees” from youth league teams around New England. Not coincidentally, the team is trying to change those monikers to the “Lowell Spinners.”
“When you are a kid playing baseball it is pure fun and worrying about what team you are on should be the least of your concerns,” Spinners general manager Tim Bawmann said in a press release. “It becomes an issue where kids are devastated when they find out they are on the Yankees. Many kids actually pray they will not be on the Yankees when the rosters and teams are announced.”
The Spinners estimated that close to half of the youth baseball leagues in New England include a team named the “Yankees,” and the team said it has already begun contacting organizations in an attempt to convince them to adopt the name change.
If a league agrees to eliminate their Yankee teams and replace them with the Spinners, the team said it will pay the cost of replacing the uniforms and allow those squads to play at the minor league club’s home field — Edward LeLacheur Park — before a Spinners game this summer.
Not to be outdone, the Brooklyn Cyclones have promised new uniforms, ice cream and round-trip tickets to Disney World to all Little Leaguers willing to testify they’ve never seen John Franco in the company of a reputed mob boss.