User talk:Baseball Bugs/MLB team variants

MLB team variants

Major League team nicknames
Hi, Bugs,

And best wishes from an unbeliever for Twelfth Night (Epiphany).

I'm doing a slow, unhurried reformatting of the team table at Major League Baseball, and I wanted some knowledgeable advice. Basically, I truncated the seconds off those geographical co-ordinates (the seconds actually make it harder to compare how far west or south different teams play), and put in a column for essential changes in nickname or city since 1903 while avoiding specialized trivia. (I also put in some shading to distinguish expansion teams from the 8 & 8 of 1903, and to better key the conference lists with the map.)

My sandbox is here: User:Shakescene/MLB to 1960.

What I wanted to do (despite the rationale from the editor who removed them from the footnotes) was provide the essential information that a non-sporting reader would need to recognize, for instance, the St Louis Browns or the Montreal Expos when they read about (say) Christy Mathewson. Also so they don't think that Seattle Mariners is (like Colt.45's for Astros) just a nickname change for the Pilots, Washington Nationals for the Senators, K.C. Royals for the K.C. Athletics, or Milwaukee Brewers for the Braves. Let alone being able to distinguish between the four AL & NL teams that have played in the Five Boroughs.(The Mets are not a new nickname for the Giants.)

Do you think there is something in my draft table that I should add, or can safely remove?

[Feel free to share this with any of the other Green Diamond experts and historians on Wikipedia.]

It think it'll be only a month before pitchers and catchers have to report, and the Truck loads up on Yawkey Way for sunnier climes.

Thanks for any pointers,

—— Shakescene (talk) 19:20, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

MLB team nicknames
This can get to be kind of a slippery subject. Your advice to see individual team pages is good. I recommend you take a look at History of baseball team nicknames to get an idea of what you're up against. Another good resource for cross-checking all manner of things, including nicknames, is Retrosheet. This, for example, the 1901 final standings.

The thing is, nicknames were often pinned on teams by sportswriters and were not necessarily "official", although they were often treated that way. Several American League teams ended up being named for their National League cross-town rivals' original names: Boston Red Stockings, Chicago White Stockings, St. Louis Brown Stockings.

Brooklyn's case shows how fluid this all was. They started as the Atlantics, which was a name left over from the "amateur" days of the 1860s. Then they got labeled the Bridegrooms for a while, then Trolley Dodgers. During Wilbert Robinson's tenure as manager they were still the Dodgers but more often the Robins, until he retired.

Nearly every team in Washington has been called either the Nationals or the Senators (or both). Nearly every team in Baltimore has been called the Orioles. Milwaukee's teams were once called the Cream Citys (note the spelling), and then Brewers became favored (even during Prohibition, presumably).

Then there's Pittsburgh, which was originally designated Allegheny when it was a separate city. Some sources will claim they were called the "Alleghenies", but that spelling is incorrect. Teams were often called by pluralized proper names: the Bostons, the Chicagos, the Philadelphias... and the Alleghenys. Once they were re-designated Pittsburg(h) they would have been called the Pittsburghs, until they acquired the "Pirates" tag in about 1891.

There are also cases where teams had very short-lived nicknames. One example is Cleveland, which was called the Blues for a few years, but that's pretty forgettable in the bigger picture. As is the attempt to rename the Phillies the "Blue Jays" or the Braves the "Bees". In a more recent example, the Houston Colt .45s were quickly shortened to just Colts, and the name was changed when they moved to the Astrodome. The Colts name turned out to be as temporary as the rickety ballpark they were playing in.

So it's a question perhaps of the scope of the table you're producing. I could make some changes to it if you want me to. I would flag my changes in some way so you could decide on them. I was thinking "(none)" rather than a blank space might be better for teams whose names have never changed, such as the Detroit Tigers, whose name was already official even in their Western League days. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:28, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

MLB team nickname addendum
Hello, again, Bugs,

That was extremely helpful and informative, but I see my problem rather differently.

That footnote about consulting team articles actually originated with the editor who deleted all our wonderful historical footnotes. I want to keep him or her happy to avoid some hurt feelings and edit wars, while providing what is relatively important information to identify and distinguish different teams. Of course, there's no ideal solution short of what was there before (save perhaps for towns and nicknames before 1903), but I'm trying to restore at least the minimum, and in the table itself rather than footnotes that might not be consulted by those who would benefit most (e.g. confusing the Royals with the K.C. Athletics, the Pilots with the Mariners, or the Brewers with the Braves, let alone the D.C. & N.Y. teams). However the further back you go before 1940, the trickier it gets to judge; how often, for example, would a (mythically) average reader encounter the Brooklyn Robins or the Boston Bean-Eaters?

Anyway, I'm taking an enormous liberty with your talk page by providing here your own sandbox, which you can safely play with without any fears of disrupting anything.

Some day, no doubt, you'll thank me.

Until then, have a good weekend, and four years of the new Administration,

—— Shakescene (talk) 14:54, 6 January 2017 (UTC)