What's in a name?

Imagine, if you can, coming to the realization that something you held to be true for four years is, in fact, wrong.

And no, this is not about my personal politics. Slow your roll there, smart alecks.

It all started with a seemingly innocuous Facebook post Wednesday night, July 24, congratulating our baseball boys from Carrington Post 25 on capturing another District 4 championship and advancing to the State ‘B’ American Legion Tournament in LaMoure.

At the bottom of the post, I made an “attaboy” interjection that, as it turns out, would upend my sense of confidence and make me question why I do what I do each week.

“Way to go, Redbirds!”

The next morning, while posting the stories to the online edition, I got a phone call. What was said in that brief exchange is not verbatim, but was the general tone of the conversation (from one side, anyway):

“...They’re not the Redbirds. They’ve always been Post 25. They’ve never been the Redbirds.”

I paused for a second, at a total loss for words to understand why this would be relevant or upsetting enough to call me about it.

In a hurry to justify this heresy, I went to the explanation of the reason why I refer (now past tense) to the local nine as the Redbirds.

Back in 2020, when we were hoarding toilet paper, attaching cloth to our faces, and staying six feet away from each other (in other words, the introvert’s paradise), North Dakota American Legion Baseball made the decision to cancel their season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Teams around the country could still take the field and roll the dice with any inherent health risks, of course, but any baseball that occurred would not be sanctioned or endorsed by that governing body.

This put Carrington in a bind, insofar as their team identity was concerned. Up to that point, they had always been referred to as [John Raymond O’Hara] Post 25.

So, youth baseball and softball underwent a quick rebranding effort. Starting with that summer, all teams playing under the banner of the Central City would be henceforth known as the Redbirds. T-ball, coach pitch, Cal Ripken 10U and 12U, softball, Babe Ruth, everybody.

Yes, even the Legion team was not immune to this. (No pun intended).

In order to get their baseball in, teams around North Dakota played an independent league schedule, with proper public health measures observed, so that we could still maintain a facade of living our American lives.

Once things more or less returned to “normal” the next year, another American Legion baseball season came and went. But I retained the “Redbirds” moniker in my reporting, safe in the assumption that this was a new leaf the program had turned over.

One of my superiors in my first newspaper job 24 years ago in Red Lodge, Mont., was fond of saying whenever young me screwed up (which was often), “You know what happens when you assume something.”

I would say the rest of the quote, but suffice it to say, it involves three letters, “U”, and “ME”.

The thing of it is, during those four years, nobody called the Independent to say I was incorrect.

I might be able to excuse my mistake by saying that in my adopted home state of Wyoming, where I played Legion baseball, I am not exaggerating when I say that nearly everybody had a team nickname.

It would have never occurred to me to refer to my team, the Powell Pioneers, as Post 26, though they leaned into that alternate designation quite a few years later. Our blood rivals, the Worland Indians (now the Chiefs), never called themselves Post 44. And I couldn’t tell you the post name for the Cody Cubs without a Google search.

Only one team to my recollection, Cheyenne Post 6, went by their post name. And even then, everybody called them the Sixers. Around here, you have Fargo Post 2, and in the greater region, one of the legendary American Legion programs is Rapid City Post 22. I guess when you’re that good, you don’t need a name. At least until they adopted “Hardhats”.

Here, Legion program nicknames are a bit more complicated. In New Rockford, all baseball (high school, Legion, Babe Ruth) is conducted under the Black Sox identity. Other teams go by a combination of their post number and high school mascots to keep it simple, such as the May-Port-CG Post 8 Patriots and Cando Post 79 Bearcats, to cite a small sample size.

Where it gets confusing for me is for teams like Kidder County Post 231. Their youth teams wear the uniform colors of the Wolves, a moniker the high school adopted several years back. However, the Legion team still has the colors maroon and gold, a nod to their school’s recent past as the Kidder County (formerly Steele-Dawson) Pirates.

Since we’re on the subject, let me regale you with some history of how much power and influence sports writers used to have, before the proliferation of ESPN, the Internet, Twitter, and what have you.

According to the website saturdaydownsouth.com, the Alabama Crimson Tide nickname began around 1907 when Birmingham Age-Herald writer Hugh Roberts described a 6-6 tie between Alabama and favored Auburn as “a sea of mud”. Repeated usage of the term from local scribes stuck over 100 years, and a famed brand was born.

Others dubbed in this fashion, according to a “USA Today” piece, include the universally-known New York Yankees (headline shorthand for the original name of “Highlanders”; officially adopted in 1913), and the St. Louis Cardinals, when St. Louis Republic reporter Willie McHale remarked on a fan’s glowing review of the team’s socks: “What a lovely shade of cardinal.” Hey, it’s a better team name than Perfectos, wouldn’t you think?

For all loyal readers of the Independent, consider this gratuitous use of column inches to work through my emotions as my mea culpa for an extended misunderstanding. I promise, it will never happen again.

So, before I forget... Go Red—.... I mean, Post 25!