New York Boulders

70

NOTE: This review incorporates text from the previous review for this team when it was known as the Rockland Boulders, published on 2017 July 23.

I feel like I'm caught in an episode of The Flintstones here. Seriously, doesn't Boulders sound like the name of a sports team from that show? I actually checked on Wikipedia to see if they mentioned any sports teams on the show, and it turns out they did. Oddly, the team nicknames never referenced rocks, although the city names did. The teams mentioned on the show include four baseball teams (the Bedrock Broncos, Bedrock Dodgers, Boulder City Giants, and Sandstone Sluggers) and two football teams (the Bedrock Brontos and the Rock Bay Pachyderms). But if anything, the "Boulders" nickname simply means this team name is more Flintstones-esque than any team actually mentioned on The Flintstones.

And it doesn't stop there. The logo isn't so much a baseball as it is a baserock. This strikes me as a supremely bad idea. First of all, if you think too many pitchers wind up damaging their arms as things are, just imagine what it would be like if the baseballs were make of solid rock. And don't even get me started on how much more dangerous being hit by a pitch would be. Indeed, this would really change the entire dynamic of the game. Hits probably aren't going to go nearly as far. There's probably going to be a lot more broken bats. There's also probably going to be a lot more broken bones. Did they deal with things like that on The Flintstones? Almost certainly not. Television wasn't likely to deal with that sort of thing in the early 1960s. Which is a shame, because it probably would have been a lot more interesting if they had.

Incidentally, if you're wondering why the team is called the New York Boulders in the first place, here's why. Obviously the New York comes from being located in New York (State...although the stadium is only about 30km/20 miles from the northern tip of the Bronx, so it's not completely unreasonable to think they're actually named after the city). And apparently there's a lot of boulders to be found in the area where the team plays. And I mean a lot. The original name of the team was the Rockland Boulders, because they play in Rockland County. And the county is called Rockland County because the place is full of rocks.

Naming a team the Boulders because the place is full of rocks strikes me as...uninspired. It's basically the team-naming equivalent of the term paper you started writing the night before it was due. At 11 p.m.

"So the press conference to announce the team name is tomorrow, right?"

"Yep."

"You wanna tell me what it is before then?"

"What? I thought you were coming up with the name!"

"I thought you were!"

"Oh, shit. This can't be happening. Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit!"

"It'll be okay, we just gotta brainstorm."

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,"

"Will you cut that out? Just look out the window and tell me what you see."

"Um, the parking lot?"

"Gee, thanks. We can't call the team the Rockland Parking Lots!"

"Well, there's the baseball field beyond it."

"You're not helping."

"Well, there's a bunch of guys with shovels still trying to dig all those damn rocks out of the field. Tell me again why we decided to put the field there when the area is filled with rocks?"

"Because there's rocks all over the damn place around here. To have a field where we didn't have to do that we'd probably have to move all the way to Albany."

"Seriously?"

"Can we focus on the naming thing?"

"Well, I'm sorry, but all I see is a field with a bunch of freaking rocks in it!"

"THAT'S IT!!!"

"Huh?"

"The New York Rocks!"

"No."

"No, you're right. Wait, it's coming to me. The New York Boulders!"

"You can not be serious."

"You have any better ideas?"

"Um, no."

"All right, then. New York Boulders it is!

<sigh> "Fine."

"So we're done here. Let's go get a beer."

"Wait, weren't we supposed to reveal a logo, too?"

"Oh, shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit."

"Now you're doing it."

"THE REVEAL IS TOMORROW AND WE HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED ON THE LOGO!"

"Of course not! We didn't have a name until fifteen seconds ago!"

"What the hell are we gonna do?"

"Hell, just make a baseball that looks like a rock or something."

"Is that the best you can do?"

"Says the man who just came up with New York Boulders..."

"Fine. Draw it and we'll reveal it tomorrow."

I can only say so much. I wrote a lot of papers that way in college, and I got good grades on them. But then again, I got good grades on them. Criticize the approach if you want, but it worked for me. You only have to look at this logo to realize it didn't work for them.

Final Score: 70 points.
Penalties: Region (egregious), 17 pts; Equipment, 13 pts; Letter, 24 pts; Name, 10 pts; Logo, 12 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.