Rome Emperors

80

When I first started reviewing baseball logos fifteen years ago, there were four teams that were owned by (and obviously affiliated with) the Atlanta Braves who were using their parent team's nickname: the Gwinnett Braves of the AAA International League, the Missisippi Braves of the AA Southern League, the Rome Braves of the Low-A South Atlantic League, and the Danville Braves of the Rookie Appalachian League. (The High-A affiliate, should anyone care, was the Myrtle Beach Pelicans of the Carolina League, who were not owned by the Atlanta Braves.) All of the teams called the Whatever Braves used the Atlanta Braves logo with some minor modification to stand out. In the case of the Rome Emperors, they had an ancient column behind the name.

At this point I should probably say which kind of column: Doric, Ionic, all that nonsense. For reasons that weren't particularly clear to me at the time, when I was in school (sixth grade if I remember correctly, but I wouldn't swear to it), it was pounded into my head precisely what the distinction between all these types of columns was. Exactly why it was important for me to know that wasn't clear even at the time. I was never the sort to complain about "When am I ever going to use this?" the way some of my classmates were, but for real, when was I ever going to use that? But it was horribly important to my teacher that I know this. Almost as important as knowing what a flying buttress was (I never figured out why I needed to know that, either.) So which type of column was it? Hell if I know. I must have learned it as some point because I don't recall failing any tests around that time, but clearly it was a case of "learn it for the test and forget all about it," because reader, I have absolutely forgotten all about it. Fortunately, there's a thing called the internet, so let me go find out...

Yeah, there's a surprise. It doesn't actually correspond to any of them. The base and capital are in the style of Tuscan columns, which I don't remember at all from school, but Tuscan columns didn't have fluting running up and down them like the one in the logo does. I'm guessing whoever designed this logo didn't have the same teachers I did and thus never had to learn this crap. Or maybe they did, and the deliberately inaccurate column in the logo is their passive-aggressive way of letting these teachers know what they thought of this nonsense. Given my opinion of my sixth-grade teacher, I can only say that if this is what's going on, I heartily approve.

Anyway, it would be real easy to just take the old Rome Braves logo, get rid of the tomahawk and change the word Braves to Emperors, and you'd have a pretty decent logo for this team. Not necessarily what I would suggest, but definitely workable. So of course they did nothing of the sort. Instead, they give us a penguin. Yeah, I get it — it's an emperor penguin. But as a Washington Capitals fan, I do not approve of seeing penguins in any sports logo. At least this one doesn't look anywhere near as ridiculous as Pittsburgh's. I mean, it's pretty damn ridiculous, but it's not that ridiculous. Anyway, this logo also has the name is in front of the penguin, with the initial E and final S made into—

Aw, jeez. More freakin' columns. Hold on... okay, apparently these are Ionic columns. At least, the base and capital look like the base and capital of an Ionic capital. I can't really comment on the shaft because there's a letter in the way.

I suppose I should be thankful there's not a flying buttress in the damn thing.

Final Score: 80 points.
Penalties: Wordplay, 23 pts; Equipment (egregious), 27 pts; Humanoid, 30 pts.
Bonuses: None.