Describing the origins for the AL East team names
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Here's how every team in the American League East got their name. After moving
00:03from St. Louis in 1954, the Orioles got their name after the State Bird. This
00:08actually wasn't the first time a team was called the Baltimore Orioles, but
00:11we'll talk about that soon. In 1907, the Boston Nationals, later the Braves,
00:16announced that they would stop using the traditional red stockings due to the
00:19fact that the dye in the colored stockings might cause infections to leg
00:23injuries. The very next day, the Boston Americans, the other Boston-based team,
00:28announced that they were going to wear red stockings and be called the Red Sox.
00:33Originally the Baltimore Orioles, the franchise moved to New York in 1903 and
00:38originally called themselves the Greater New York Baseball Club. And because that
00:42name sucked, journalists decided to come up with their own nicknames for the team.
00:45One was a play on the name Americans, which was commonly given to AL teams at
00:50the time. And it just so happened that a Broadway musical called Little Johnny
00:55Jones was sweeping the nation with its hit song, Yankee Doodle Dandy. And thus, the Yankees'
01:00name was born. An expansion team in the 1990s, the Rays, then Devil Rays, were decided by team
01:08ownership, who originally wanted to call them the Stingrays. The devilfish is a type of
01:12ray that's native to the Tampa area, although the team dropped the devil part of their name
01:17back in 2007. The name Blue Jays comes from a name the team contest for the
01:21expansion Toronto team in 1976 when it was randomly selected out of 4,000
01:26suggestions. Now a conspiracy theory is that the team is actually named after the
01:31beer Labatt Blue, due to the team being originally owned by Labatt breweries. Labatt
01:37even sponsored the Blue Jays' TV rights, which would mean at the start of every game
01:41the announcer would have to say, Labatt Blue Jays baseball on TSN. Who doesn't love some
01:47corporate synergy?