>Tin Caps? Well, it could be worse.

So Fort Wayne has yet another new mascot. Gone are the long-standing Wizards (or the Dragons as their logo has suggested now for years) and in it’s place are the Tin Caps.

Wait? The Tin Caps? Really?

And the logo. It’s a semi-angry apple with a pot on it’s head. Wait, we are the Pot Heads? Oh hell.

Whoever thought this one up must be a genius, because there would never be a chance that anyone would take the name and turn it around in such a negative manner (please, note the sarcasm.)

However, drug references aside, I can’t really condemn our new Minor League Baseball team’s moniker. After all, does anybody remember how much the citizens of Fort Wayne despised the name Wizards when it came about in 1993?

“Amazing baseball,” and all aside, most people here actually wanted us to be called the Fort Wayne Twins, due to our then-affiliation with the Major League Minnesota variety.

So now accounting for taste there.

The Tin Caps does capture two things that I think are very important when naming teams in the present days of terrible sporting names:

1) It is different. It’s not the Bobcats or Warriors or Panthers or something that any other professional team or school has.

2) It is localized. The logo points out things that the name doesn’t. Referring to the tin pot that the fabled Johnny Appleseed supposedly wore on his head, the team had an interesting play on one of Fort Wayne’s more legendary persons of lore.

If you like the name Mad Ants, of the one-year old NBA Developmental League, then you cannot in any good faith dislike Tin Caps.

When Jeff Potter and the crew over with the Mad Ants came up with the name, they used the same formula. They took famed General Anthony Wayne, twisted the Anthony part up and there you have it: angry ants.

And it fits in well with not only the Mad Ants, but Fort Wayne’s only other really focused on professional team the Komets. Because Komets with a ‘K’? That’s pretty much just a Fort Wayne thing.

And Tin Caps is oriented specifically to this city. Or for all you old school Wizards haters, we could call ourselves the Fort Wayne Padres!

Or you could shut up.

We could be boring and cliche with usual names or ones that start with a ‘F’ for pathetic rhyming purposes (Flash? Fever? Defunct Freedom?). Or we could break out as we have done.
So me, I will accept the Tin Caps.

Why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t anyone.

After all, we still have this brand new and Tom Henry-rific financially irresponsible stadium to complain about.