Latest posts
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Season of Change
Fall is in the air. The clocks are changing. My backyard lost a scrubby wall of vines and now is bare to the new-build beyond. My gray and tan wrangler is giving way to a new blue boy. The World Series is wrapping up and we will soon enter a strange baseball off-season. The current…
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The Ghosts of Team Names Past
Just because a name went away doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good name. Some historical team names simply evaporated due to moving cities. That is a reasonable choice for any new venture. It’s pretty nuts how long the NBA team once in New Orleans (a city known for Jazz music) has continued to be called…
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Podcast #6
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POD 5
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Guest Author Cameron Dodworth: Approaches to Baseball and Life- Part Deux
Writing and Artistic credits- Cameron Dodworth I love baseball. I also love many other sports: football, basketball, soccer, hockey, just to name a few. The baseball-adjacent sport of cricket is one that I’ve most recently gotten into, triggered primarily by an English friend of mine, but also bound to happen due to my academic interests…
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Team Names: Plants
We covered my favorite tree options here. We covered canines here. And here’s an old-school let-the-name-happen-organically plan. Time for some plants! Existing Plant Teams Plants are not a common source for team names. The only major sport franchise is the Toronto Maple Leafs. The leaf is pluralized as any proper noun (Leafs not Leaves) and…
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What to Expect When You’re Expecting MLB
Yes I’m playing off a famous book about pregnancy. And since Raleigh is not yet pregnant with an expansion franchise, we’re still on Chapter One: Before You Conceive. Pre-conception(s): We are definitely stuck in a cycle of pre-conceptions- mostly about the attractiveness and viability of Raleigh vs. Nashville. This is to be expected. The case…
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Jinx!
There’s a bird in Eurasia called the Wryneck. The Greek word for the wryneck is “iynx.” This is the origin of the English word “jinx” that came to be known for spells and curses. Growing up you yell “jinx” in the face of anyone who synchronizes with you. If you say it first, you are…
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Team Colors
Most sport teams in America are using some amount of red and blue for their team colors. Trivia question right off the top- in your head, no cheating, can you name the 9 MLB teams that (mostly) don’t feature red or blue? I’ll have the answer for you below. Maybe Raleigh’s MLB team joins the…
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Podcast 4
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Realignment Theories
A famous political scientist, V.O. Key Jr., theorized that certain elections illustrate fundamental shifts in coalitions such that a new combination of issues and interests forms a new dominant majority. The broadly accepted examples are the 1860 abolition Republicans, the 1932 New Deal Democrats… and, I would argue, the 1980 Reagan-Christian-Right Republicans. These are basically…
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Pod 3
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Ballpark Location: St. Aug’s Campus
My favorite ideas for a Raleigh baseball team are not likely outcomes. I recognize that. Timeline, team name, team colors, ballpark location… there are more probable choices than my choices. Nevertheless, I think it is a worthy exercise to try out creative, fringe ideas. My favorite location for a Raleigh MLB team is the current…
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Podcast 2
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Is Raleigh a Baseball Town?
There are certain cities with MLB teams that just seem like baseball towns. Sometimes that is because baseball is the only major sport, sometimes not. So what makes a baseball town? What are the odds that Raleigh is the kind of city that could be a baseball town? I think there are a few ingredients-some…