Baseball, Sports, and Cryptids

I am a lifelong baseball fan. No denying it. I’ve been a card-carrying member of SABR for decades (if you don’t need to ask what SABR stands for, well, you understand). My two sons inherited the passion and they have become successful players. One is a winning leftie relief pitcher, now a junior in high school; my other son is the starting third baseman, a sophomore, on a college team, after being the MVP at that same high school, as their starting shortstop and relief pitcher.

Gladly, I see a lot of all kinds of games, and read a good deal about teams, their names, and their mascots. Of course, it intrigues me the most when cryptozoology and baseball overlap.

Minor league hockey has it’s Lowell Lock Monsters in Massachusetts. I’ve always wondered about the wisdom in teaching kids that Louie the Mascot (an obvious bipedal Lake Monster) is a “Lock” Monster, versus the correct spelling, “Loch Monster.” I guess someone along the way thought it was cute.

Meanwhile, out West, you have the British Columbian “Duffers League” in hockey that has a championship team called the Sasquatch, who have jerseys with a Sasquatch footprint across the front. Middle-aged guys playing like Bigfoot in hockey outfits. Okay, that sounds like fun. I understand there are a few soccer teams on the West Coast that use the Sasquatch name for their monikers too.

The NHL’s Colorado team formerly had “Howler.” It’s a sad story of cryptid misbehavior. Howler the Yeti was the mascot of the Colorado Avalanche hockey team, but he was fired by the team after he assaulted a fan. They still retain a Yeti footprint on their sleeves and on their Zephyr Colorado Avalanche Shootout Fitted Hats. Unfortunately, this alternate logo for the team shows a four-toed, not a five-toed, track. Still, it, no doubt, results in a lot of sales to cryptozoology fans. (Yes, I have one of their caps.)

Of course, the NHL’s New Jersey Devils team makes good use of their mascot, the “NJ Devil.”

Minor league baseball use to have the Champs, but they recently changed their name to the Vermont Lake Monsters. They did keep Champ, nevertheless, as their mascot.

There are others, and I look forward to people mentioning their favorite cryptozoo-related mascots and team names, from the school-based ones to the major leagues, in comments below.

Anyway, what I wanted to bring to your attention today is that there is an opportunity for some cryptid recognition from Major League Baseball. Well, seriously, it is doubtful, but the media in Florida are going to start having a field day in this direction, so I thought I would alert you.

As it transpires, the down-in-the-cellar Tampa Bay Devil Rays met Major League Baseball’s March 31, 2006, deadline for considering a name change in time for the 2007 season. The team has until the end of May 2006 for a final decision.

Mark Lane at the Daytona Beach News Journal has come up with a humorous list of suggestions, and one deserves our attention:

The Florida Skunk Apes — Florida has many contributions to cryptozoology, or the study of animals that don’t exist but people keep spotting anyway. The Skunk Ape foremost among them.

None of these cute Sesame Street-style mascots for us. We want something fierce and Bigfoot-like. Nobody would refer to a team as “the hapless Skunk Apes.”

The Florida Skunk Apes? I don’t think so, because if they stink as much as the present team, I imagine the sports reporters would have too much fun with that name. As readers of Cryptomundo know, there are plenty of choices among the many local variations on Skunk Ape, Sasquatch, Yeti, and Bigfoot.

And, oh ya, on a personal proud dad level, as to my sons’ teams, one is a Bulldog, and the other is a Judge. The Bulldogs have a great chance for a state championship with 14 seniors on the team, as most of those guys were on last summer’s American Legion State of Maine championship team (including my oldest son who was their winningest relief pitcher). And don’t knock the Judges because of that name. You may hear about them in the NCAA Division III tournament later in the spring. They are having a great winning season, so far.

As to the town in which I live, it’s where Portland’s Red Sox AA Baseball Team is named the Sea Dogs, a term that may be based on cryptids reportedly seen in nearby Casco Bay, literally “sea monsters.” There’s artwork by Laurier Stripes showing a good illustration of one version of what such a “Sea Dog” cryptid might look like. There are many other descriptions for Sea Serpents, of course.

The mundane explanation is that “Sea Dogs” is the alternative name for either seals, sharks, old salty sailors, pirates, or, for the really boring, dogs that go to sea. The Portland Sea Dogs adopted a family friendly logo (below).

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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