{"id":44673,"date":"2017-05-22T21:51:01","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T01:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44673"},"modified":"2020-09-23T10:36:47","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T14:36:47","slug":"the-gwinnett-barves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44673","title":{"rendered":"The Gwinnett Barves"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A little bit of backstory: the Atlanta Braves are one of the few organizations in baseball that owns the majority of their minor league affiliates.\u00a0 It\u2019s why all the teams they own are called \u201cBraves;\u201d the Danville Braves, Rome Braves, Mississippi Braves and Gwinnett Braves.\u00a0 At one point, they stressed the importance of naming all their teams Braves, so that they could really reinforce brand awareness and strengthen their identity to all parts of the Southeast in which they resided in.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was a stark difference to the vast majority of the rest of Minor League Baseball, who had team names that were often more whimsical and often identifiable to their specific towns\/regions, like the Montgomery Biscuits, Modesto Nuts, Las Vegas 51s, Buffalo Bisons and Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp just to name a few.\u00a0 It was almost a rite of passage for young players to work their way up the ranks, through teams with less than prestigious names, before they had the chances to hope to play for one of the 30 Major League Baseball franchises.<\/span><\/p>\n

Personally, I\u2019ve always felt the Braves were an organization of squares, to name all their minor league franchises Braves, in such a calculated and serious-business manner.\u00a0 Like their 18-year old rookies in Danville might be able to close their eyes and imagine that they\u2019re in a 35,000 attendance ballpark in Atlanta and suddenly translate playing like a major leaguer in their rinky-dink park that maybe 35 people are actually at.\u00a0 Or that their fans will automatically love the Atlanta Braves solely because their favorite players in Jackson, Mississippi were ultimately traded to the White Sox or Diamondbacks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, what prompted this post was this news that I saw that the Gwinnett Braves are taking suggestions for new names for them to use<\/a> in starting in 2018.\u00a0 The Atlanta Braves are finally opening up to the idea of naming one of their Jesus affiliates something other than \u201cthe Braves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My knee-jerk reaction was kind of like a lion jumping into a herd of gazelle, but being so excited and overwhelmed, it can\u2019t zone in on a single target, runs around in a frenzy, all the gazelle get away, and the lion ends up hungry and disappointed.\u00a0 I wanted to come up with a laundry list of sarcastic and snarky suggestions for what the future Gwinnett Braves should be named, but I\u2019m actually having a hard time coming up with any good zingers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taking a page out of disgruntled Gwinnett residents, who are on the hook for the stadium whether or not they wanted in the first place, names like Gwinnett Tax Burdens<\/strong> was a good one I saw in the comments of the aforementioned link.\u00a0 And as succinct as it is in tone and intent, it lacks any alliteration or finesse.<\/span><\/p>\n

Going the route of trying to use a name for what Gwinnett is known for, I came up with Gwinnett Gridlock<\/strong>, because there\u2019s no denying the fact that where Coolray Field, their ballpark, is located, is at the northern split where I-85 divides from I-985, and is often times a point where there is massive gridlock, both north and south.\u00a0 Sure, it connotes negatively with the frustrating traffic that the county is notorious for, but if sourcing from the area is a common place to derive names from, the Gwinnett Gridlock isn\u2019t bad.<\/span><\/p>\n

But then in the article, one of the reasons for the name change was cited that it was potentially confusing for Braves fans that a minor league team would be so close to the parent team:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFast forward nine years later, we\u2019re in our ninth season, and our reality is a lot of confusion in the market with which team is which. It\u2019s moreso for us. \u2026 We\u2019ve had folks, on multiple occasions, who had tickets for a Gwinnett Braves game and showed up at Turner Field. Folks have turned up at Turner Field for a fireworks show and it turned out it was our fireworks show night. It\u2019s more to clean up confusion on the marketing side, mostly from our end.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The brass cites that people have actually<\/em> managed to mistake Gwinnett Braves tickets for Atlanta Braves tickets and vice-versa.\u00a0 Now I don\u2019t deny that such may have happened once or twice in the nine-year history of the organization, but not to the frequency to warrant an organizational name change.\u00a0 But such a story in itself, made me think that perhaps the team should be called the Gwinnett GEDs<\/strong>, since the Braves seems to think their fans are complete and utter morons.\u00a0 This would also be a great opportunity for the GEDs to pair up with a local educational testing service where the stupid fans could get their GEDs to hopefully prevent mistaking Lawrencevile from Atlanta and vice versa.<\/span><\/p>\n

And speaking of Lawrenceville, the actual town in which the Gwinnett Braves play in, with Gwinnett being just the county that the team is named after, why not think a little bit outside the box and use ol\u2019 L-ville to derive a name from?\u00a0 And considering the Braves value very little the AAA-level, preferring to hoard prime prospective talent in A-ball or AA-ball, stashing reserve players, washed up has-beens and rehabbing players in Gwinnett, needless to say, they lose a lot.\u00a0 The Lawrenceville Losers<\/strong>.\u00a0 Or perhaps just the Lawrenceville L\u2019s<\/strong>, so that it\u2019s not as obvious to those without GEDs that we\u2019re talking about losers losing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ironically, this isn\u2019t really that big of a revelation, to anyone who kind of follows baseball.\u00a0 The Braves might own the most of their affiliates, but they\u2019re far from the only organization that owns at least one.\u00a0 And amongst most that do, and at one point did have their affiliates named after the parent club, and changed it, they\u2019ve never been to magnitude of change that would really be groundbreaking or revolutionary.\u00a0 That\u2019s why you get shit like the Reading Phillies turning into the Reading FightinPhils and other similar garbage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, the whole basis for this whole name change stems from one thing, and one thing only:<\/span><\/p>\n

The G-Braves apparel will disappear from the team store as well, replaced by hats, shirts and other items with the new team name. That change will offer a nice initial spike in sales of team gear, but Johnson stressed that had nothing to do with the name change. However, it is a nice bonus with the switch.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If anyone thought this whole transition was anything other than a grab for potential money, then they\u2019re out of their mind.\u00a0 To no surprise, Gwinnett Braves merchandise probably doesn\u2019t sell well.\u00a0 Why should it?\u00a0 Aside from being completely sterile, uncreative and unappealing, most people who live in Lawrenceville and Gwinnett county who like baseball all probably Braves stuff \u2013 Atlanta<\/em> Braves stuff.\u00a0 Why would they need more shit that says \u201cBraves\u201d on it?<\/span><\/p>\n

By changing the name and changing the identity, they\u2019re basically creating more potential to move merch, plain and simple.\u00a0 And considering how disillusioned people like me, and I\u2019d guess many other Braves fans are getting, I think distancing themselves from the Braves name might not be a terrible idea, considering just about every single ballpark in the Braves organization was built in the exact same manner: swindling local tax payers by buying out bureaucrats, and leaving everyone on the hook except themselves while they can pocket all the checks.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that modus operandi, should really be the name of the future team: The Gwinnett Barves<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little bit of backstory: the Atlanta Braves are one of the few organizations in baseball that owns the majority of their minor league affiliates.\u00a0 It\u2019s why all the teams they own are called \u201cBraves;\u201d the Danville Braves, Rome Braves, Mississippi Braves and Gwinnett Braves.\u00a0 At one point, they stressed the importance of naming all … Continue reading The Gwinnett Barves<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,66,79,45,64],"class_list":["post-44673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-braves","tag-cashmoney","tag-fail","tag-minor-leagues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44673"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44675,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44673\/revisions\/44675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}