MADISON — Holy Trash Heap, the Rocket City Trash Pandas win again!
Back in 2018 when it became certain the Tennessee Valley was getting a new Minor League baseball team, Ralph Nelson, the former president and CEO, put out a call for the community to submit potential names for “their” new baseball team.
It was a way of making it personal for the fans who would be the team’s biggest supporters. The community and its fans would be the ones buying tickets, purchasing and wearing the gear, sponsoring the team out in the business community and pulling for them to win.
In fact, the team sold more than $2 million in merchandise in its first 13 months – and the Trash Pandas would not take the field until 2021. Since then, Trash Pandas apparel has been sold in every state, territory and some 30 countries. The team, in fact, was the first in Minor League Baseball to have online sales overseas.
The Minor League teams are a lot different from The Show in that the more successful and popular teams have offbeat and funny names that provoke a giggle with their “off-the-wall identities” – such as the Biloxi Shuckers (the former Huntsville Stars) and the Lansing Lugnuts.
But according to Riley Clark, a writer for Casino.org, an online gaming authority, a recent survey of 4,000 baseball fans across the nation ranked the Rocket City Trash Pandas as hands-down, the No. 1 most Outrageous Minor League team name today.
“Hats off and paws up to the Trash Pandas for winning America’s number one most outrageously named MiLB team,” she wrote. “The Trash Pandas have won the hearts of many with their endearing and eccentric name.
“Once previously known as the Bay Bears, upon repurchase and relocation (to Huntsville/Madison) in 2020, the Rocket City team got a facelift for something a bit more…grungy.
“Now the Trash Pandas have been proudly wearing the name for 3 years with a unique symbol of a raccoon, or more affectionately named trash panda, blasting out of a garbage bin into outer space … to fight the Sugar Land Space Cowboys perhaps?”
Just wait until she gets a load of The Junkyard at Toyota Field … we offer her an open invitation.
Finishing No. 2 out of the Top 15 were the Amarillo Sod Poodles followed by the Binghamton Rumble Ponies at No. 3.
The complete Top 15 are as follows:
- Rocket City Trash Pandas
- Amarillo Sod Poodles
- Binghamton Rumble Ponies
- Akron Rubber Ducks
- Albuquerque Isotopes
- Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp
- Sugar Land Space Cowboys
- Lansing Lugnuts
- Hartford Yard Goats
- Biloxi Shuckers
- Montgomery Biscuits
- Fort Myers Mighty Mussels
- El Paso Chihuahuas
- Beloit Sky Carps
- Toledo Mud Hens
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