Sussex County Miners

119

I know what you may be thinking, because I was thinking it when I first started working on this review, too. Miners? In New Jersey? I've never heard of New Jersey being a major mining center.

As it turns out, the name isn't completely unfounded. This team is located in the northernmost county in New Jersey, in the mountains of New Jersey. Yeah, there's another thing I didn't know New Jersey had. Actually I'm still not convinced. The highest point in New Jersey (oh-so-creatively called High Point) is only 1800 feet/550 meters above sea level. The height from the base to the peak of that "mountain" is just 700 feet/215 meters. Is that tall enough to count? I guess when that's the most you've got you just go with it. I'll be nice and let it slide.

Anyway, those mountains used to be home to a mining industry back in the Nineteenth Century. So it's been a while, but names referring to something that happened a while back are hardly unusual in sports. And it's not like they have many other options. These days Sussex County largely serves as a series of bedroom communities for New York City, which is surprisingly close given how rural this area is. Have I mentioned yet that the village where the Miners play has a population of less than a thousand? Or the fact that the stadium is surrounded by farmland on three sides and a forest on the fourth? It's actually a pretty area, which is yet another thing I didn't know New Jersey had. If you don't mind living in a place that looks like the middle of nowhere then you'd probably like living there. Which of course means that I would hate living there since I would mind living in a place that looks like the middle of nowhere, but that's why I don't live there.

The logo, unsurprisingly, features a miner. This particular miner appears to have a side gig competing in "largest beard" competitions. Seriously, this guy's beard is bigger than his head. His moustache is also oversized, and his eyebrows are somehow bigger than his 'stache. As for his head, he's got it stuffed under his miner's hel— no, wait. That's not a miner's helmet. It's a ball cap with a miner's headlamp attached. Is that a good idea? Even if it's a batter's helmet rather than a ball cap (it's hard to tell), are batter's helmets anywhere near as strong as miner's helmets? Then again, if he's got anywhere near as much hair on the top of his head as he has on his chin, there's probably enough padding stuffed into that cap to protect him from anything less than an ICBM.

The miner also has a pickaxe which if you look closely turns out to actually be a baseball bat with a pickaxe blade attached to it. Between that and the ball cap disguised as a miner's helmet I'm getting serious identity-crisis vibes here. It's like he's a miner who really wants to be a baseball player so he tries to incorporate as much baseball equipment into his job as he can. Or maybe it's the other way around? Maybe he's a baseball player who pines for the good old days when there were mines in New Jersey and so he's cosplaying as a miner using his baseball equipment. This seems sort of backwards to me. It's not hard to imagine someone busting his ass in the mines wishing he could play baseball for a living. But to have the life of a professional athlete, even at the minor league level, and long to work a job like mining? You wouldn't like that job nearly as much as you might think. Stick to baseball. It's easier, it's more fun, and you're less likely to get black lung.

Final Score: 119 points.
Penalties: Region, 8 pts; Equipment (egregious), 27 pts; Diamond (quadruply-egregious), 90 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.