This is a summary of the evolution of names of the current professional Major League Baseball teams in the National League (organized 1876) and subsequent rival American League (established 1901), and also of selected former major and minor league teams whose names were influential, long-lasting, or both. The sources of the names included club names, team colors, and city symbols. The names have sometimes been dubbed by the media, other times through conscious advertising marketing by the team, or sometimes a little of both.
Most sources today, including such authoritative references as The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, The Baseball Encyclopedia, Total Baseball, baseballreference.com, the Library of Congress and even the Baseball Hall of Fame itselfIn its exhibits and catalog; player plaques only list the city and league, not any team name usually adhere to an artificial naming convention, dating from 1951, which conforms references to 19th-century teams to modern usage (City + Plural Nickname), and which is misleadingly anachronistic: few teams before 1900 had names, and adopting them only really caught on in the first decades of the 20th century. Team nicknames like the "Boston Beaneaters" and "Brooklyn Bridegrooms" were never official; they were the invention of inventive sportswriters. A few of these coinages actually did catch hold with the contemporary fan base, such as "Robins" and "Browns," and some remained popular long enough to be adopted officially, like "Giants" and "Pirates;" but many of the others were either ephemeral quips, like "Rustlers" and "Ruby Legs," or never existed at all, like "Pilgrims."
Overview Athletic teams have long used colors and nicknames as a form of team identity. This echoes the use of colors and nicknames in other activities such as heraldry, the military, and the flags of states, provinces and nations.
Baseball teams started using nicknames early in the sport's history, though not all felt the need for one. The purported first recorded game of baseball occurred in the mid-1840s between two teams named "New York" and "Knickerbocker." Both teams were actually based in New York City.
After the American Civil War (1861–1865), interest in highly skilled games of baseball resulted in many hundreds of local organized clubs springing up, many under the umbrella of the new National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) from 1857 to 1870, also sometimes referred to as "the amateur association". These were often with names that were the club's official name, now often erroneously retrofitted as the "nickname". However, all of these club names had the words "Base Ball Club" listed after them ("baseball" was usually spelled then as two words). Examples:
New York Knickerbocker B.B.C. Mutual B.B.C.
Brooklyn Atlantic B.B.C. Eckford B.B.C.
Philadelphia Athletic B.B.C. Olympic B.B.C.
Cleveland Forest City B.B.C.
Although many of the players on these clubs were de facto professionals, the first openly all-professional team was the Cincinnati "Red Stockings", an amateur team that turned professional and began a successful barnstorming tour in 1869. The fame of this team spelled the end of the high-level amateur version of the game. It was followed by a second "National Association", that of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP) during 1871–1875, with an increasing number of local clubs and for the first time, professional franchise teams. The Cincinnati Red Stockings team's newfangled uniform of knee-length "knickers" with bright colored high-topped socks or stockings also inspired the use of team colors serving a dual role as a team nickname for the sportswriters of the day, who could add variety to their prose by referring to, e.g., the Hartford club or "Hartfords" alternately as the "Dark Blues" based on their obvious characteristic clothing. None of these early 'color' nicknames were official or used by the teams themselves, however. According to the Association and then the League, the teams were simply e.g. the "Brooklyn B. B. C."
Examples: Boston: Red Stockings/Red Sox and Red Caps Chicago: White Stockings/White Sox Cincinnati: Red Stockings/Reds Hartford: Dark Blues/Blues Louisville: Grays Mutual: Green Stockings St. Louis: Brown Stockings/Browns and Red Stockings/Reds
Suggesting an awareness of the significance of colors, seven seasons after its 1876 founding, the following National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (later known simply as the National League) in 1882 passed a rule requiring specific stocking colors for each team:Frank G. Menke, The Encyclopedia of Sports, A.S. Barnes & Company, 1955, p. 30 Boston: Red Buffalo: Gray Chicago: White Cleveland: Navy blue Detroit: Old Gold Providence: Light Blue Troy: Green Worcester: Brown
While the 1882 rules prescribed stocking colors according to club, they also prescribed jersey and cap colors, but according to player position rather than according to club. Thus, on a single player's uniform, his cap and jersey would designate his position, and only his stockings would designate his club.
As the news and developing sports media (primarily newspapers) began covering games extensively and assigning specialists to write about them, the inventive scribes might use the established names, or they might invent some new ones. Initially, they often referred to a club in the plural form, either by its city name or by its club name. Examples: Athletics Bostons Chicagos Mutuals
As the writers and reporters became more inventive, they began to refer to teams by some characteristic that made the team or the city unique. Examples: Beaneaters (Boston) Colts (Chicago) Giants (New York) Spiders (Cleveland) Trolley Dodgers (Brooklyn)
When two or more major leagues existed simultaneously in one city, the writers often appended the league name, which occasionally had the chance of evolving also into a team nickname, especially in the then frequent cities of the Northeast with two teams, a representative in each league. (The Encyclopedia of Sports, p. 32) Examples: Baltimore Americans (later "Orioles" – also used by previous NL and AA franchises) Boston Nationals (later "Braves"), Boston Americans (later "Red Sox") New York Nationals (better known as "Giants"), New York Americans or "Highlanders" (evolved into "Yankees")
In some cases, such as the Cleveland Indians, the team actually solicited help from the media in inventing a new nickname.
Some of those nicknames changed over time or died with the team, while some are still in use today. All of the nicknames of the "classic 8" NL teams of 1900–1952 were originally unofficial. But once an unofficial nickname became popular enough, it might be adopted by the team and become official. This practice was already coming into vogue by 1901 and the formation of the American League; four of the upstart league's eight franchises had official team names right from the start.Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers and Philadelphia Athletics. A couple of teams stuck with a name for several years and then changed it to something else, such as the Cleveland Napoleons > Indians, but most teams have never changed their names once officially adopted (other than teams which relocated to a new city). Some teams have had two popular nicknames simultaneously for many years. Examples: Brooklyn Dodgers/Robins Washington Senators/NationalsIn this case, the unofficial "Senators" monicker was far more popular than the official "Nationals," which almost nobody used. The team finally gave up in 1956 and made it official.
In the modern era of sports franchise expansion, nicknames are no longer assigned in a haphazard way by the news media, but rather are chosen by the teams for marketing and advertising purposes. The names are chosen in order to establish a strong team identity, and to have an attractive logo to encourage sales of merchandise to fans, such as caps and shirts. Often the nickname will have some sort of historical, geographical, cultural or economic symbolic connection or representation of the city and more recently, the surrounding state.
Nonetheless, fans and media sportswriters may still apply informal tags in the old manner, such as the "Redbirds" (St Louis Cardinals) "Birds" or the "O's" (Baltimore Orioles) "Bronx Bombers" (New York Yankees) "Friars" (San Diego Padres) "Halos" (Los Angeles Angels) "Tribe" (Cleveland Indians).
Atlanta For years the minor league team in Atlanta was called the Crackers.
Atlanta Braves The Braves nickname originated in Boston in 1912. (See the Boston, Massachusetts, entry below.) The Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee before the 1953 season and were known as the Milwaukee Braves from 1953 to 1965. The team moved again to Atlanta before the 1966 season, and have been known as the Atlanta Braves since.
Baltimore Baltimore Orioles Earliest official adoption: 1901
The team's nickname is taken from the Baltimore oriole (Icterus galbula), a small blackbird of the passerine family of fowl in the eastern United States. The bird received its name in about 1808 from the fact that the male's colors resembled those on the coat of arms of Sir George Calvert (1579–1632), the first Lord Baltimore, who was senior of the Calvert family that established the Province of Maryland colony in the 17th century. The Baltimore oriole is also the state bird symbol of modern Maryland.
Most of the professional baseball (and a few other sports) teams in Baltimore have been dubbed the "Orioles", with a few exceptions.
The earliest Baltimore clubs, in the early 1870s, were called "Lord Baltimore" and "Maryland" respectively. These clubs were short-lived. The "Lord Baltimore" team chose the unusual team color of yellow or a variation of gold, and was often called the Canaries or the Yellow Stockings. The Maryland club was simply called the "Marylands", in the pluralized style of the day. The names and colors were also used by other local jurisdictions and schools/colleges/universities.
The first club to be called the Baltimore Orioles was a charter member of the old American Association in 1882. When the AA league folded after the 1891 season, four of its teams were brought into the expanded National League (organized previously 1876), including Baltimore. This club became a dominant team in the older league during the 1890s under player-manager Ned Hanlon, in part because of their innovations and their tough, relentless play. The nickname "Orioles" first appears in the Spalding Guide in the 1895 edition which covered their first championship season, 1894; notably, the previous year's Guide never used the name at all. The term "Old Oriole" is sometimes used to describe a player whose aggressive style fits the legacy of those 1890s teams. The competitive famous team's fortunes took a downturn in 1899 when many of its stars were transferred to the Brooklyn Superbas/Dodgers, and Baltimore was one of the four teams contracted out of existence in 1900 when the NL reduced from 12 franchises to just 8, an arrangement lasting for over a half century.