The Atlanta Braves are shortchanging fans of all their Minor League Baseball teams and putting the creativity of the teams’ front offices in handcuffs. With the exception of the Class-A Myrtle Beach Pelicans, all of the Braves’ Minor League teams are owned named after their parent franchise and bear the “Braves” moniker.

This bothers me, and I feel it shortchanges all the fans of Minor League teams with creative, unique, and local-community-specific nicknames. The Atlanta Braves’ farm system consists of the Gwinnett Braves at the Triple-A level, the Double-A Mississippi Braves, the Pelicans and the Rome Braves at the Single-A level, and the Danville Braves, as well as the Gulf Coast League Braves and Dominican Summer League Braves (GCL and DSL teams all bear the name of their parent MLB clubs).

Creative, and even sometimes cooky, team names are part of the Minor League Baseball fun for me. Seeing a team named and branded with a name like the Timber Rattlers or Lake Monsters is something that appeals to not only nickname conossieurs like myself, but also to children, who enjoy the cartoon-like colors, mascots, and fonts that often accompany these names. The front offices of these teams are then challenged and presented with the fun opportunity to represent the unique team within the local community and get the word out about their team.

A lot of uniquely-named Minor League franchises are named for local community attractions. The Huntsville Stars, for example, are named for the U.S. Space & Rocket Center located within the city, and the Nashville Sounds are named for the music-rich heritage of Tennessee’s capital city.

Naming all your teams after your Major League club, even if you own them, takes away from that creativity and loyalty to each team’s local community.

The upside to calling all their teams the “Braves” is that who the team is an affiliate of never comes into question. Hearing about something the Rome Braves or Gwinnett Braves have done will undoubtedly link the activity to the Atlanta Braves themselves, and when a family unfamiliar with the ins and outs of which Minor League teams are affiliated with which MLB teams goes to see an Atlanta affiliate play, they’ll be sure that the players they’re watching could be big-time Braves one day, rather than the Minor League version.

It just takes away from the spirit of Minor League Baseball, though. MiLB is supposed to have a fun, family-friendly and somewhat light-hearted atmosphere, and if all the teams were named after their parent clubs, it just wouldn’t be that. Part of the fun for me is all of the crazy nicknames Minor League teams come up with, and honestly, the different names draw attention to the teams moreso than a cookie-cutter team name would. A number of times, I’ve looked up a team’s information on the internet because I’ve been captivated by the team’s nickname and wanted to look up which Major League team it was affiliated with. Though their affliate wasn’t tagged onto the team name itself, I eventually found out because of the initial interest their unique name created.

Plain and simple, it’s boring. No one wants all of their Minor League teams to be named after their parent club. Choose creativity. It’s what makes World of Warcraft, Scion, and yes, Minor League Baseball, so successful.

Programming Note: Due to me having to send my laptop off for repairs (for the second time), I may not be able to blog as often over the next week or so as I have over the past few days. Thanks to everyone for reading TCO and helping me get started, and I hope to be back running strongly as soon as possible.