Aberdeen IronBirds

188

NOTE: This review incorporates text from the previous review for the IronBirds, which was posted on 2014 May 25.

If you've been following baseball long enough to have seen Cal Ripken, Jr. play, you can probably figure out where this name comes from without my telling you. For those of you who haven't: Cal Ripken, Jr. owns the IronBirds. Ripken played for (and the IronBirds are affiliated with) the Baltimore Orioles, who are informally known as "The Birds". And since Ripken holds the record for most consecutive games played (2,632...just shy of 16¼ seasons), his nickname is "The Iron Man". So the name is kind of obvious.

Cal Ripken is, incidentally, the reason why I do baseball reviews. When I started the Bush League Factor, it was a hockey-only thing. When I got to the point that I was close to having all the hockey teams done, I was trying to decide what sport to do next, and I chose baseball in part because I had really gotten into baseball over the previous few years. The reason I had gotten into baseball? The Baltimore Orioles (then starring Cal Ripken, Jr.) and the fact that I worked third shift at the time. My schedule often didn't put my two days off together, so a day off basically meant staying up all night (no point trying to change my sleep schedule for a single day) and staying at home watching TV (because there's not a lot to do at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday night in Raleigh today, and there was even less twenty-five years ago). And since this was long before the days of streaming video or even YouTube, there wasn't also much to watch at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday night. Most channels were just airing informercials. But one of the exceptions to that was Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic, which carried the Baltimore Orioles at the time. Rather than air the game in its entirety at that time of night, they would trim it down by cutting a lot of the stuff that non-fans complain about — the spitting and scratching, the throws from the pitcher to first base to keep the base runner from leading off too much, et cetera. For a lifelong hockey fan, it kept my attention much better than a game in real time would have at that time. But I still probably wouldn't have even given the edited baseball a chance were it not for the fact that the games featured this guy who at the time was still extending the streak for most consecutive games played in the history of Major League Baseball every time he stepped onto the field. So basically, if you hate the Bush League Factor's baseball reviews, blame Cal Ripken, Jr. Also, if you hate the Bush League Factor's baseball reviews, why are you reading this?

Given all this, I don't want to be critical of this team's name, logo, or much of anything else. And for the reasons stated above, they make it easy to not be critical of the name.

The logo, on the other hand...

Look, I get it: teams want to be family-friendly. But some teams go so far in that direction that the result is just goofy, and this is one of them. We have a cute fighter jet — I'm gonna stop right there for a second and let you ponder that phrase: "cute fighter jet". I'll give you a bit to think about it. Let me know when you're ready to move on.

Okay. So we've decided to make military equipment look cute. We've given it eyes and a mouth whose facial expression could reasonably be described as "spunky". Or maybe "corporate", seeing as how the smile includes a little arrow that reminds me of the logo for Amazon. They also put a capital A on the tailfin, and I'm sure they intended it to stand for "Aberdeen" but combined with that smile it really seems like it stands for "Amazon" instead. Has this fighter jet been converted into a delivery jet? If so, did they at least remove the guns first? All I can say is that if they didn't then you'd better tip your delivery driver if you value your life.

In front of Spunky the Fighter Jet Who Could (could what, I'd rather not think about) we have the team name in the usual baseball script, which isn't bad but certainly does nothing to improve the logo overall. There's a bit of a size mismatch if you ask me; I feel like the plane should be bigger compared to the name. I guess they're trying to emphasize the cuteness, which let me repeat is not a word that should be attached to a drawing of a fighter jet.

Okay, there, I said it. I don't want to be mean to the man who got me into baseball or the team he owns, but as you can see, circumstances left me no choice.

Final Score: 188 points.
Penalties: Software, 27 pts; Compound, 34 pts, Script, 7 pts; Humanoid (egregious), 61 pts; Cartoon, 47 pts; Logo, 12 pts.
Bonuses: None.