A Team by Any Other Name

listen:

My left fielder brought a goat to practice.

The goat sat in the dugout while we took batting practice and fielded ground balls.

Since Warner is a town where “I had 4-H, Coach” is still a reasonable excuse for missing sports practice – and since I was aware that the Chicago Cubs had been successfully cursed by an angry goat owner – I let the goat stick around.

But I should have seen what was coming.

This was the day we were to pick our team name – the name that would announce and define us as a ball club.

The name we would shout aloud in our team unity circle as we thrust our hands into the air to induce valor on the playing field.

I opened the team meeting up for name suggestions, as I promised I would.

The Blue Unicorns! Someone suggested.

The Huskies!

The Whales!

Oh, dear.

Erica did a little dance, ending with a big finale, her team name suggestion: The Wiz!

Wiz! Wiz! Wiz!

My assistant coaches and I were…stupefied. I winced, and dared not ask how to spell it.

A little democracy can be a dangerous thing in baseball.

And then, the inevitable:

The Goats! Yeah! Goats! Goats! Goats!

As a coach or a parent, you tread a fine line between respecting a child’s choices and saving her from them.

And to coach seven-to-ten year olds at anything, you have to be willing to mix in a dollop of goofiness.

But could these kids really be oblivious to the fact that “Warner Goats” sounded like a punch line?

And the “Warner Wiz…” The Warner Whales…?

Hayle is a righteous seven-year-old with sparkly sunglasses who sings in the outfield.

Relative to the size of her frame, she can hit the snot out of the ball.

She raised her little hand and waited patiently.

“The Doors,” she said.

It took me a minute.

“As in Jim Morrison and the Doors?”

“Yeah!” She said.

This tiny child wanted to name our 10-and-under softball team after a rock and roll band whose bad-boy lead singer perished in a French bathtub during the Nixon Administration.

This had possibilities.

It would be hell on chatter.
“C’mon Doors, we need runs here…” “OK, Doors, play’s to second base…”

But think of the theme music.

We could explode out of the dugout to the tune of Break on Through…

Tried to run,
Tried to hide
Break on through to the other side OH YEAH…

(Of course, after the week of rain that washed our field downriver, “Riders on the Storm” would have been more appropriate for this season.)

But Hayle's suggestion opened up all sorts of other possibilities.

We could be the Warner Squirrel Nut Zippers.

The Warner Pogues.

The Warner Ramones!

We’d be Allie Ramone, Fiona Ramone, Hayle Ramone, Molly Ramone…

A line-up card could never be so easy.

Ramone. Ramone, Ramone. Ramone.

Your attention please, now playing left field for Warner: Ramone.

Most teams do not undergo this naming ritual.

That is because their coaches are cowards.

They either plagiarize Major League Baseball (Cardinals, White Sox, Yankees…boring, boring, boring) or name themselves after their sponsors.

That's fine, if you happen to get a cool name like, say, “Ducky Slattery’s Sinclair.”

It's not so great if you get stuck with, say, Nagash, Perkins, Hargrove & Edelstein Attorneys-at-Law.

Talk about hell on chatter.

I confess, my assistant coaches and I had rigged this naming election slightly.

We gave ourselves the right to vote.

We figured that, as a block, we could provide appropriate…direction.

When my assistant coaches heard ‘Doors,’ their hands shot in the air.

And they both grinned.
In the end, while “Goats” had some popular appeal, and despite shameless Doors-related lobbying by alleged adults, tradition ruled.

“The Huskies” won the day. And provided us with the opportunity to growl in our team-unity circle.

Still, at practice, I catch myself humming…tried to run, tried to hide….

I hope Hayle plays again next year.