From the Archives of the League of Coater Flunkies...

Old Logos Tell A Forgotten Story

•  The League of Coater Flunkies began play in 2006 with ten franchises, expanding to twelve the following year.  In nine seasons of play, the league has seen 18 different owners, all with their own unique team logos.  Here are a few examples from the past.

Swatters/Knoxville Smokies (2006-08)

• Original Flunkie Bill Allen named his entry Swatters, in honor of all the great home run hitters in baseball history.  Unfortunately, to save a few dollars,  and receive valuable coupons, Bill enlisted the folks at Wal-Mart to handle his PR and equipment needs, and they assigned the task to eighteen-year-old Timmy, who was the regional manager's nephew.  When told that swatters hit flies, Timmy just naturally put two and two together, came up with three, and the fly swatter logo was born.  Not surprisingly, it was not a success with the fans, and Allen abandoned the name after only one season. 

• For the franchise's second season, Bill chose to honor their home city, while also taking full advantage of an offer for a discounted lease, renaming the team the Knoxville Smokies.  Sadly, Bill had learned nothing from the previous season's PR disaster, this time employing an out-of-work graphics designer whose only claim to fame was finishing in 6th-place in a national Sunny-D design contest years earlier.  The new logo had Mister Sun wearing sunglasses and smiling over snow-capped, rounded mountain tops, and left anyone who saw it either staring in disbelief, or laughing themselves to tears.  Defying all logic, the ridiculed logo actually caught on by the team's third season, becoming a cult icon in and around Knoxville.  By the end of the team's final season in Knoxville, logo-adorned trinkets sold by vendors in the stands were bringing in more money to the franchise's barren coffers than ticket sales were.  The team was sold to Joel Babka, and moved to Toledo, Ohio for the 2009 season.

Restore the roar (2009-11)

Ad promoting Toledo's newest pro baseball team.

• With great fanfare, Joel Babka brought the Knoxville Smokies to his hometown of Toledo, setting up shop at Swayne Field, widely believed to have been demolished years before.  Renamed Restore the roar, the team tried to lure young fans away from the established Toledo Mud Hens by sponsoring a logo design contest through the Toledo Blade newspaper.  Since the contest was restricted to elementary school children only, the submitted designs tended to be simple, but in turn were "happily affordable", according to Babka.  
• By using lower-case letters in the second and third words in their name, the team avoided copyright infringement with the NFL's Detroit Lions, who were in the middle of their own "Restore The Roar" campaign.  Babka dearly wanted a menacing lion as the team's logo and mascot, but he was truly afraid of William Clay Ford's threats to "personally come to your house and taunt you through the screen door", if any of the team's designs even remotely resembled the Lions' logos.  Ford allowed the baseball team to keep the billboard design shown above, saying that it looked more like "a big, round, blue kitty cat", than a lion. 

•  Despite the team's hassles with Ford, the children's design contest was a huge success.  Co-winners were named, with little Sissy LeMont's entry chosen for the team's home uniforms, while Corky Mendenthal's roaring whatsit was chosen to adorn the road jerseys.

  

  Home uniform emblem

  

  Road uniform emblem

•  Despite the change in ownership and venue, the team struggled for three seasons, both on the field and at the box office.  Even the colorful logos lost their appeal with the fans, with one critic calling the orange and brown lion "something I'd expect to see on the interstate if my car had a glass floorboard".  The team was sold to Bill McLain and moved following the 2011 season.  The logos stayed in Toledo.

BoSox (2007-08)

• Today's successful Photonic BoSoxs had a rocky beginning as an expansion franchise in 2007.  Although original owner Ron Germain promised the fans a competitive team for "years to come", his choice for a team logo left many observers questioning his future intentions.  Germain claimed that the bat-wielding red sock was about to smash the For Sale sign, so no one should place any importance in it, or the price tags that adorned everything owned by the franchise, or the weekly ads in the Sunday classifieds offering shares in the ball club.  The team was sold to Paul Patriacca prior to the 2009 season.

Canseco's Palmeiros/Chico's Bail Bonds/Dick's Taters

(2006-2010)

• One of the original ten franchises, Rob Booth coined the name Canseco's Palmeiros for his franchise, for no particular reason other than "it sounded neat".  The team logo was simple, clean, and easily recognizable, but lacked the originality that Booth sought.  Plus, the Canadian Pacific Railway people were none too pleased to find their corporate logo pilfered by a Yank.

Canseco's Palmeros logo

• For the 2007 season, Booth turned to the movies for inspiration, and laid claim to the fictional team sponsor from The Bad News Bears, renaming the team Chico's Bail Bonds.  The new name was a hit among fellow owners, suggesting a light-hearted, playful approach that appealed to young and old alike.  The name and logo lasted three seasons.

•  Booth had become increasingly unhappy with the iron-handed rulings of the league commissioner, and decided to use his franchise's name to make a political statement, and rally his supporters around the league at the same time.  So, for the 2010 season, the team became known as Dick's Taters, and began the slow march to it's own final solution.  Booth ran into immediate problems, as no responsible printer would use the new logo on team uniforms or souvenirs, and the public wasn't all that keen on a cartoon Hitler adorning a baseball jersey or cap. 

Original logo

Compromise logo #87

• The team proposed another eighty-five variations of the Hitler logo for fan approval before giving up and settling on a non-threatening, unobjectionable, and sadly, uninspiring cartoon potato as the team logo and mascot.
• At the conclusion of the 2010 season, Booth divested himself of all sports holdings, and moved to Central America to work for Sally Struthers in her campaign to feed starving children.  In a touch of irony, the franchise was taken over by Joe Player, who renamed the team Hogan's Heroes, who use the former Stalag 13 POW camp as a training facility.

dwight frye killers/killer coops/Billion Dollar Babys/

Public Animal#9/Vengeance is mine!/Under my wheels

(2006-13)

• Although it seemed as though Jimmy Gearhart changed his team's name every year (he did, in fact, change the name every year for the first six years of his eight-year ownership), the team logos remained unchanged.

The team's long-time cap logo

• Inspired by the TV show South Park, the team's cap logo was a simple interpretation of the killer himself.  The team's home jerseys sported a cartoon face framed by the word "Alice" on top and "Cooper" underneath, while the road jerseys were emblazoned with the blood-red "Alice Cooper" on the front.

Home jersey logo

Road jersey logo

• Gearhart's steadfast refusal to tamper with any of the three original logos was his only consistent action during his eight-year ownership.  Since selling the team to John Pfister following the 2013 season, Gearhart has devoted his full energies into stalking the real-life Alice Cooper at every opportunity.

And finally...

worst team (2007)

• To conclude our trip down memory lane, we have the other expansion franchise from 2007, Mark Germain's worst team.  Despite the pessimistic nickname, the team did well it's inaugural season, finishing ninth overall, only four games out of the championship playoffs.  

worst team logo 2007

• Fans around the league loved the "angry tomato" logo, and petitioned Germain to change the team's name to Killer Tomatoes for the upcoming 2008 season.  Germain labeled the suggestions as "silly", and vowed that worst team would never, ever change it's name.  Germain sold the team the next day to Victor Minicozzi, who immediately renamed the franchise MusicCityMadness and moved it to Nashville.