Modesto Roadsters

217

When this team debuted, the owners were proud to announce they would be known as the Modesto Glow Riders. They even debuted two logos for the team: one featuring a fox driving a low rider convertible with a custom paint job of flames, and another which was identical to the first but replaced the fox with a skeleton, because apparently the logo with the fox didn't look stupid enough.

You will note three things here: One, the name Glow Riders is stupid. Two, so is/are the logo(s). Three, neither the name nor the logo(s) match what's at the top of the page.

That's because the community basically responded to this logo with the immortal words, "Oh, hell no!" The team regrouped and changed the name to the Modesto Roadsters, and replaced the logo with a new (if thematically similar) logo. The team even came out with a statement regarding the change which is worth reading if only for the amusement value:

 

This new team will be an integral part of Stanislaus County and the Central Valley for decades to come, so it was really important that we get the name exactly right. After the Glow Riders were announced, we did a lot of listening and learned a lot about this community, its culture, and its people. I was blown away by the passion and the pride people here have for baseball, their team and their history. We owed it to them to hit a home run with the new primary identity, and with the Modesto Roadsters we've hit a grand slam.

There are a lot of little things I could comment on here (for example, the perhaps excessive optimism in declaring the team will be in town for decades), but let's stick to the basic point: The community hated the name and the team wisely changed it. The team wrote the statement in such a way that implies the name was good-but-not-perfect rather than so-bad-it-pissed-off-the-locals, but when have you ever seen an official statement from any organization where they actually admitted, "Hoo, boy, did we screw the pooch with that one!" rather than try to make things sound like less of a mess than they actually were? This statement is as close to admitting what happened as any team is likely to do.

So they're claiming the new name is a "grand slam". Is it? Well, apparently car culture is big enough in Modesto that the city has actually created a holiday to celebrate it. (It's also big enough that Modesto routinely ranks in the top cities for car theft per capita, but let's not get into that.) And the Roadsters name plays it straight instead of trying to do some cutesy pun like Glow Riders did. So far, so good.

The name also avoids a common pitfall with names, which is being hard to make a good logo for. This is is fairly simple: put a snazzy-looking car (preferably an actual roadster) in the logo. And the team has done exactly that. Specifically, the logo features a Chevy Corvette from the early 1960s — in fact, at the unveiling of the new name and logo, the team owner drove into the room (seriously) in a red, 1960s-era Corvette just to drive home the point. The fox is back, this time drawn to look like a greaser from the 50s or 60s. Indeed the whole thing has a 60s car culture, American Graffiti vibe to it (George Lucas is from Modesto). The car has a pair of baseballs hanging from a nonexistent mirror which I'm sure is supposed to be reminiscent of fuzzy dice. There are flames coming out of the back of the car. For the most part this logo works, with the one flub being the headlights being made to look like glaring eyes. Like everything else in the logo, it's supposed to look cool. Unlike everything else, it fails miserably. Well, the baseball bats in the backseat don't exactly evoke cool, but they do evoke baseball, and this is a baseball team, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

If that was all there was, I'd probably be generous and say that it was at least a home run if not a grand slam. But no, the team had to overdo it. In the background is a grey combination home plate/arch with the official slogan of Modesto ("Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health") on it. For the record, there is an actual arch in downtown Modesto with that slogan on it. I'm not going to criticize the slogan itself (although I certainly could), or the arch itself (ditto), but it really shouldn't be on the logo. It makes the logo look cluttered. And keep in mind that everything else about the logo is supposed to look cool in a 60s greaser sort of way. Is there anything less cool in a 60s greaser sort of way than an arch from the 1910s which was erected to show civic pride? Especially that slogan. I've never seen American Graffiti, but I'm quite confident it doesn't include a scene where any of the main characters looks at that arch and says, "That says it all, doesn't it? 'Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health'...that's what it's really all about, isn't it?" The inclusion of the arch undermines everything else about the logo.

So no, no home run here. But still a hell of a lot better than that "Glow Riders" nonsense.

Scoring Notes: The scenery penalty is for the arch. The Humanoid penalty is doubly-egregious partly because two things earn the penalty (the car and fox) and partly because the car would earn the egregious penalty all by itself. The Equipment penalty may seem a bit much but it checks out as there really are seven pieces of baseball equipment in the logo: three baseballs, three baseball bats, and the home plate/arch combo.

Final Score: 217 points.
Penalties: Script, 7 pts; Scenery, 11 pts; Equipment (sextuply-egregious), 112 pts; Humanoid (doubly-egregious), 93 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.