Salem RidgeYaks

135

The Salem Red Sox were sold a few years ago to new ownership, and that new ownership quickly decided they would rename the team. But picking what the new name would be was not so quick, as two full years passed before the team announced the new name. That sort of delay generally means one of two things. Either they wanted to get it right and didn't care how long it took, or they procrastinated until it had gotten embarrassing and they just grasped at any straw they could to be done with it. I can't say with absolute certainty which is the case here. But with a name like RidgeYaks, I know which option my money's on.

To hear the team explain it, this is one of those names that has multiple meanings. Yak is a slang term for home run, they say. And sure, that's true. They also say that Yak is also short for kayak, which represents the various waterways in the area. I'm not so sure about that (from what I can tell there's only one waterway in the area you could actually go kayaking in), but sure, why not. And finally, the yak — and here I'm quoting the team's general manager — "personifies strength, resilience, and hard-working spirit that our players, and our community are so well known for". Sigh. Okay, yaks are big and presumably strong. The rest of it just sounds like a load of boilerplate marketing B.S. I don't know about you, but I don't associate yaks with resilience and hard-working spirit. Truth be told I don't associate them with anything. I've never seen a yak. I'm not sure if there even are any yaks in North America outside of zoos. I also can't say that the community of Salem is well-known for its hard-working spirit because, much like the yak, I'm not sure the community of Salem is well-known for much of anything.

The logo...you know, I really feel like this logo should work better than it does. As I've said many times before, the head-on view of the creature in a logo is usually an effective one. But here it just isn't working. I'm trying to figure out why. Is it too symmetrical? Does the baseball inexplicably impaled on one horn just make the whole thing too goofy? Does the fact that the yak is in a kayak just make the whole thing too goofy? Is there something else that just makes the whole thing too goofy? What I'm saying is that the whole thing is too goofy, it's just a matter of finding the specific culprit. The yak's hair (which has a hidden rendering of mountains hidden in it, one of the few details in this logo I actually like) definitely looks silly, but yaks really do have silly-looking bits of hair hanging over their eyes like that, so maybe I should forgive them that. Or maybe I should call it one more reason they shouldn't have named the team RidgeYaks.

Now that I look at some photographs of actual yaks, I see that that's it. They just shouldn't have called the team the RidgeYaks because yaks look ridiculous. And that's before you give them human arms and stick them in a freaking kayak.

Please tell me this was the result of the team procrastinated on picking a name and panicked when they realized how long it had taken. Please tell me they didn't spend two years carefully, methodically considering all the options and came up with...this.

Final Score: 135 points.
Penalties: Reference, 10 pts; Software, 27 pts; Compound, 34 pts; Scenery (the mountains in the hair), 11 pts; Equipment, 13 pts; Humanoid, 30 pts; Name, 10 pts.
Bonuses: None.