With the presidential election in its final days and Game Seven of the World Series looming that evening, it was easy to ignore Ken Babby announcing on Wednesday the Jacksonville Suns would change their name to the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.
Babby unveiled the new logo, a demonic looking shrimp who wouldn’t be out of place if the nightmarish visions of Hieronymus Bosch were blended with whatever scraps could be found in Chuck Jones’ and Tex Avery’s waste baskets. Over at the team’s official website, the newly born abomination could be seen clutching an outline of the Sunshine State, one hand on the Panhandle and a tail crushing I-4. Note to Babby’s team: people in Orlando and Tallahassee barely care about the Jaguars despite being an NFL franchise. They certainly aren’t going to care about a Southern league baseball team.
Of course Babby, who bought the Akron Aeros in the Eastern League and changed the name to the Akron RubberDucks (why that name is one word is beyond me), defended the new look.
“This is a high-energy, impactful, bold move,” Babby told the Florida Times Union about the name and logo change. “There’s certainly risk that goes along with it. There’ll be feedback and, I’m sure, some resistance. We’ve been holding on to this for a while and look forward to sharing it with the community. The tradition of the Jacksonville Suns is entrenched in Northeast Florida. It’s been known and loved. The passion for minor-league baseball in Jacksonville doesn’t change [with a new team name]. It’s just a new chapter in its evolution.”
As Babby noted, the Jacksonville Suns are a part of the First Coast’s tradition. With the exception of a handful of years in the late 1980s when they were the Expos, the Jacksonville minor league team had been the Suns since 1962. Currently the Miami Marlins’ Double-A team, the Suns have won seven Southern League titles with the likes of Nolan Ryan, Tug McGraw, Tom Seaver, Randy Johnson, Giancarlo Stanton, Clayton Kershaw, Alex Rodriguez and plenty of other prominent names playing in Jacksonville over the years.
But Babby completely missed the mark about baseball needing a “high-energy, impactful, bold move.” Those very words are complete anathema to what baseball is all about. Granted the sport isn’t as popular as it used to be, but baseball is a slower game than say professional football or basketball. It encourages relaxation, contemplation, actually talking to your neighbors in the stands instead of just screaming at the field.
Baseball is also a link to our past, a powerful reminder of what America used to be. That nostalgia factor is one reason why so many conservative pundits ranging from George Will to Bill Kauffman wax lyrically about the game. Minor league baseball is usually closely tied to the community, one reason why Kauffman is so high on it from his perch at The American Conservative and other outlets.
I grew up with the Suns, spending too much of my high school years sitting on the bleachers of the old Wolfson Park. Thankfully, the tickets were always affordable, no small consideration for a kid who started off bagging groceries at Winn Dixie on a “training wage” which was below minimum wage.
Despite being a baseball fan, I wouldn’t be able to rattle off more than three or four names on most Major League rosters today. But the Jacksonville Suns rosters over the years? I know them well. Who needed Ken Griffey, Jr. when his cousin Craig Griffey played for the Suns? I’m still mourning what injuries did to Dave Fleming and figuring out why Brian Turang didn’t turn into the star I thought he would be. Every now and then, when I watch Major League Baseball, the Suns are on my mind. Hey look, coming out of the Marlins bullpen is Kyle Barraclough. That’s funny, the Suns used to have a guy with that name....and of course it’s the same guy.
Jacksonville’s been built up and torn down quite a bit in the more than three decades I’ve called it home. The history and heritage are there of course but, increasingly, they’re hard to see. The Suns--unlike the disastrous Jacksonville Jaguars under the inept Gus Bradley and Tony Khan, the owner’s son thinking he’s Billy Beane--help on that front with their rich legacy.
James Earl Jones said in best in “Field of Dreams.” “The one constant through all the years Ray, has been baseball,” he says in the film. “America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past...it reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.”
Wise words at the end of the worst election season in recent memory, even as Babby and his marketing team steamrolled and erased a large part of Jacksonville’s history and replaced it with a cartoonish monstrosity who would be more at home fighting the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than as the logo of a proud baseball tradition.
