MLB Naming Rights: Bullying the Kids

Columnist Written on May 27, 2008

"...And the home of the (not the team from Atlanta, Boston, or Milwaukee) brave."

This would appear to be the way Major League Baseball would like us to approach using its copyrighted team names and logos. Another incident has sparked news feeds around the country to buzz with anger about MLB's gestapo-like tactics regulating team names.

Back in March, the independent Cape Cod League was shaken down by Bud Selig's goons for using trademarked team names. Chatham "A's," Hyannis "Mets," and the Yarmouth-Dennis "Red Sox" are just a few of the names that Selig feels belong to MLB.

Because of this, the Cape Cod League should be paying MLB.

This didn't seem like too much of a stretch until another one of the team names was brought in to question: "Mariners." The Harwich team has existed since 1930, pre-dating the Seattle team by more than 30 years. Obviously Major League Baseball got a little greedy here with a semi-professional league that was making money off teams with the same names as theirs.

MLB wanted a piece of the pie.

Today, however, I heard a story about a suburban Chicago little league team that was also being harassed by MLB's Luca Brasi. The league is made up of teams called "Cubs," "Red Sox," "Yankees," and plenty more of Major League Baseball's ever-important team names. The league must now buy its jerseys from MLB-authorized Majestic or use generic names.

For now, the teams are all called "Bulldogs." Seems that MLB should change their name to "Bullies."

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written on May 27, 2008 Opinion

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