MLB to Rename The Expos ‘Soon’ (WaPo)
While D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp was proposing a new baseball stadium plan that could derail plans to move the Montreal Expos here, team officials continued working on details of the transition. Expos President Tony Tavares said the team expects to announce its plan to sell tickets on Monday. Fans should have a number to call to order season tickets by midweek, “We have to get that done,” he said. Two published reports stated that the team will be named the Nationals if they move to the District, and a source said any name could be a temporary one. Whoever buys the team from Major League Baseball will be allowed to ask to change the name in time for the scheduled opening of a new stadium in 2008, the source said.
The Washington Times and USA Today reported that baseball is likely to choose the Nationals, the name of Washington’s franchise in the 1870s and ’80s, over the Grays and Senators. A source told The Post that the Nationals is the favorite of at least one top baseball official, but no decision has been made. “It’s all speculation,” said Major League Baseball spokesman Rich Levin. “We haven’t made a decision. We are going to try to do it pretty soon. We’ve done some focus groups and at some point we will make a decision.” The choice of Nationals would not be unexpected. The Grays were a Negro League team that played games here but was actually based in Pittsburgh, and Mayor Anthony A. Williams is against using the Senators, the name of Washington’s franchise in its two previous incarnations, because the District does not have representatives in the Senate.
Levin said the World Series and other commitments have delayed a decision on a name. Baseball is also taking into account the opinion of Williams, who two sources said favors Nationals. One high-ranking baseball source who is familiar with the thinking of Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig, said Selig actually favors Senators, but appears willing to acquiesce to Williams to expedite the process.
With the season five months away and tickets perhaps going on sale next week, team officials must begin marketing in the Washington area immediately, and the unveiling of a new name and logo — which should happen in the next two weeks — are essential parts of that plan. The uniform colors likely will be red, white and blue, a baseball source said. “We hope to have an announcement somewhere around the 15th,” Tavares said. “That’s a guess. And I’m not saying we’ll have uniforms in hand, but we should have renderings of what we’d like to do.” Tavares said baseball officials have used focus groups of Washingtonians to try to narrow the field of potential names. Sports marketing analysts said a name is essential in establishing a presence in the new Washington market, which has been without baseball since the Senators left for Texas in 1971. “The new name will be the most recent way to highlight that the market is coming together, and it would be something that the community would rally around,” said David Carter of the Sports Business Group, a Los Angeles-based sports marketing firm. “Whatever they ultimately want to choose, that name and the colors and the whole positioning of the franchise — the branding — is going to start here.”
I heard this on local radio a couple days ago, but had not seen anything in print before today. The “Washington Senators” is really a rather lame name and one associated with two failed teams. Honoring the Negro League’s “Grays” is a nice idea but the name is incredibly dull and, as noted, the team mostly played elsewhere.
See this Michael Wilbon story for an explanation of the Cropp issue mentioned in the first sentence.
Update: See also –
Washington Nationals Get Guillen from Angels (Nov. 19)
Washington Nationals Logo (Nov. 22)
