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--- bicyclemike wrote:

The Yankees were originally the Highlanders, the Red Sox were primarily known as the Americans in their early years.

I just think it's laziness on the part of the ball club. No one associated with the ball club has taken the time to do the research on the club's origins, nor do they really care about it. And the research is not hard to do, especially in this information age.

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I thought the Red Sox used to be called the Beaneaters.
If I didn't know BicycleMike better I'd say he just might be bucking to become the next head historian for the St.Louis Cardinals. I kind of like the name Perfectos. One must wonder just how many perfect gems our Redbirds would have amassed in team history if they had not switched names to the Cardinals from the Perfectos? Names have so much to do with how one performs. Want a rough tough boy? Name the little rascallion Nick or Brutus. Want a studious or intellectual kid? Name your little bundle of joy Poindexter or Albert......hmmm....let me ponder this a bit more.

bicyclemike wrote:

Jmodene1 wrote: I suspect one reason the Cardinals don't want to recognize the 1800's teams is because they were called the "Browns".  Until 1899, I think (after the Robison brothers got the team after the bankruptcy sale that stripped the team from von der Ahe), when they were called the Perfectos, and then 1900 when they became the Cardinals.

Could be. With the American League St. Louis team adopting the name of Browns in 1902 I believe, after one year as the Milwuakee Brewers, and the fact that the original Browns played in the American Association, which went defunct after the 1891 season, the organization must feel it's less confusing to start with the National League years. But then, they were the Browns throughout the 1890s as you mention, with the "Cardinals" nickname not being adopted until late in the decade when the owners changed the teams colors to red.

But again, I really don't buy any of those reasons. Lots of franchises change nicknames. The Yankees were originally the Highlanders, the Red Sox were primarily known as the Americans in their early years.

I just think it's laziness on the part of the ball club. No one associated with the ball club has taken the time to do the research on the club's origins, nor do they really care about it. And the research is not hard to do, especially in this information age. But as I said, Bob Broeg and others wrote a lot about those pioneering days in the A.A. years ago, so there is really no excuse.

And baseball-reference lists all the former nicknames of teams.  It's a little confusing, especially with teams that moved around and shared names with other teams.  The Orioles also used to be known as the St. Louis Browns?  The Mariners too?  And the Yankees used to be the Baltimore Orioles.  The White Stockings were the Cubs' forebears, not that of their crosstown rivals who later adopted the name as the White Sox.  The Cubs were briefly known as the Orphans when Cap Anson left, and then because of the large youth movement they became the Colts and finally the Cubs.  I agree with pugs, the Perfectos is a cool name.  The Astros' former nickname, the Colt 45's, is interesting as well.  I love history myself.

KatieCubFan wrote: 
  The Astros' former nickname, the Colt 45's, is interesting as well.  I love history myself.

Forgot about the Colt 45's. Great info there, Katie! I think Cincy started out as the Red Stockings, then evolved into the Redlegs, before finally settling on the name "Reds" somewhere around the time one of Wisconsin's finest, Joe McCarthy, was going on his Commie rampage.....or there about. I was living in Phoenix when they first got word that they were getting a ML franchise. The Az. Republic held a contest for coming up with the best name for their new team. If I'm not mistaken the prize was season tickets for life. At that time it was thought that the team's name would be the Phoenix ---------- and not the Arizona ---------. I submitted the name The "Phoenix Flamethrowers", mainly because I thought it was unique and that it would tie into the brutally hot temps in the region. Plus, the name "Flamethrowers" conjures up the vision of a Randy Johnson type hurler firing loads of heat in the direction of any batter who dared to step into the box. I even took it one step further and also submitted these super cool team logos that I drew. Everybody at work thought I had the contest in the bag. When they announced the winner as "Arizona Diamondbacks", I almost gaged. Everybody and their mother sent that name in......not because it was the best choice, but rather because it was the easiest name to come up with. I love history as well, Katie. The most interesting class I ever took at ASU was one called "Hitler" and it was taught by a Prof. Kleinfeld. This gentleman was the spitting image of Adolf Hitler, complete with that mini Hitlerish mustache. That was 25 years ago......I've often wondered what he would look like today, if he's even still alive. Prof. Kleinfeld was a fantastic orator and when it called for it to make a point, he would go into a wild rant while slamming his fist on a desk. It was one of those rare classes where it was totally impossible to daydream about anything but the topic at hand. That hour of class really felt like you had stepped into a time machine and had now found yourself in the same room with Adolf Hitler himself.

Bear in mind, too, that in the early days, a team's nickname often depended on what newspaper you read; different newspapers would have different nicknames for the teams.  In New York, for instance, one paper might call the NL team the "Titans", while another paper would call them "Giants".  The 1899 St. Louis NL team was called "Maroons" by at least one paper because of the color of the trim (they had gotten rid of the brown trim after 1898).

But just a couple of examples of team names and locations changing:

The current Yankees team was originally the new Baltimore Orioles, founded after Baltimore was dropped from the NL after 1899.  They moved to New York in 1902 and were called (by most, but not all) the Highlanders because they played in Highland Park.  The Yankee name started on an unofficial basis during WW 1 and became official by the end of the 1910's.

The current Oriole team was founded in 1900 as the Milwaukee Brewers, who moved to St. Louis in 1901 and became the new Browns.  They moved to Baltimore in 1954 and became the Orioles, the third major league team to hold that name (there were the original Orioles of the 19th century NL, the new AL Orioles who moved to New York, and the new-new Orioles of 1954 and beyond - and that doesn't include the International League Orioles of the 1910's and 20's who produced such ballplayers as Babe Ruth and Lefty Grove).

The Cubs have stayed in the same city and the same league since 1876 but were originally the White Stockings.  They were called the Colts and the Orphans at various points during the Cap Anson years, before eventually becoming the Cubs.  (Cubs and Colts both referred, BTW, to the relative youth of the roster)

The Cleveland AL team is supposedly named after Lou Sockalexis, a Native American who played for them.  Some believe that to be apocryphal, but it is a fact that for a number of years, they were called the Naps, after their best player, Nap Lajoie.  Not many teams out there named after a player, it'd be like the 1950's Cards being called the "St. Louis Stans".

And there were a couple of teams that tried changing their name to revise their image and/or change their luck - the Boston Braves became the Boston Bees for a number of years in the 1930's, I think, and in the 1940's, the Philadelphia Phillies were called the Bluejays (one word).  The Astros, as noted, were originally the Colt .45's but most people just called them the Colts.  They became the Astros when they moved into the domed stadium in 1965, and since that move coincided with NASA building the space center in Houston, Astros was the name of the team and Astrodome the name of the stadium.  The most recent team to change its name, of course, is the Rays, who were the Devil Rays from 1998-2007 and became the Rays in 2008.

As for the Reds - they were originally the Red Stockings before they became the Reds; they were called the Redlegs during the 1950's during, as noted above, the McCarthy era.

And let's not forget the Brooklyn Superbas, one of the names used for the Brooklyn team of the 1890's or early 1900's.  Ned Hanlon was their manager back then, and apparently there was a vaudeville act called "Hanlon's Superbas" - so the press took to calling the Hanlon-led Dodgers (which was short for Trolley Dodgers) the Superbas for a while.

The Beaneaters?  I think that was the Boston NL team of the 1890's that was called that, not the AL Red Stockings/Red Sox.

The Red Sox originated in 1901 and were a product of the American League which came into being about 1900. They debuted as the Boston Americans and became the Red Sox in 1908. Seems that they were also called the Boston Pilgrims at one time.

In with war with the new league the Cardinals lost all of their key players except for playing manager Patsy Donovan, including Hall of Famers Cy Young, Jesse Burkett and Bobby Wallace. John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson also were on the team but left and became National League managers.

In 1882 the Cardinals were the Brown Stockings and became the Browns in1883.

Jerry is right I believe, as "Beaneaters" was the NL Boston team nickname for awhile. The current club is the American League team that started out as simply the "Americans", and then the Red Sox in 1908 as mentioned above.

There was a SABR article a few years ago about the "Pilgrims" nickname, because in latter day articles that name was sometimes used in conjunction with the 1903 team that played in the first World Series. But the article was about research done to find out the origins of that name, and there were no references to it during those early American League days, so the author concluded that the name evolved later by historicans inaccurately calling the team "Pilgrims".

The Houston Colt .45s was indeed a great team name. And not only that, those original Colt .45s uniforms and hats were great. If you get a chance to see some baseball cards of some of those Houston players from 1962-1964, check them out. I love the hats with the ".45s" on them. But the jerseys were even better, with a Colt .45 having "smoke" coming out of the barrel spelling "Colts".

Speaking of naming a new team like the Diamondbacks that Pugs mentioned, the Rockies had the same thing as far as a naming contest. There were articles in the papers (we had two big papers at the time, the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News - the latter has since closed shop) about whether or not the team should use "Denver" or "Colorado" as it's origin name. I favored "Denver", and submitted the team name of "Denver Mountain Lions". I thought it was the perfect name because you use Denver as the location name, which is better than "Colorado" in my opinion, and then with "Mountain Lions" you bring in the mountains as sort of a regional tie, and you have an animal name that makes for terrific logo and mascot potential.

I figured sort of like the Colt .45s, people would often just refer to the team as the "Lions", like you might hear "...the Lions are on a 5 game winning streak right now." But the official name would be "Mountain Lions" with a cool mountain lion logo/insignia and mascot.

When they announced they were going to be the "Colorado Rockies", I thought "talk about no creativity - that name been used already" (the New Jersey Devils hockey team was formerly the Colorado Rockies).

I would have gone with Rocky Mountain Oysters. 

I remember comedian George Carlin joking about football team names, and how they're always something formidable and fierce like Lions, Bears etc.  He suggested something milder like the Minnesota Mice.  Go Mice.  Or the New England Crabs.  "The Crabs were all over the Cowboys today..."

Tank McNamara's college team was the Fighting Sandcrabs.  They became the Jellyfish for a while in the 1980's when the university was de-emphasizing sports.

KatieCubFan wrote: I would have gone with Rocky Mountain Oysters. 

I remember comedian George Carlin joking about football team names, and how they're always something formidable and fierce like Lions, Bears etc.  He suggested something milder like the Minnesota Mice.  Go Mice.  Or the New England Crabs.  "The Crabs were all over the Cowboys today..."