Top Ten nickname finalists for new baseball team revealed

MADISON — The 10 finalists in the BallCorps LLC “Name the Team” contest have been revealed.

Ballcorps is the owner of the Southern League baseball franchise to be relocated from Mobile to Madison for the 2020 season. All names were nominated by residents of the Tennessee Valley.

Working with Brandiose of San Diego, the Minor League Baseball industry’s premiere branding partner, 10 names were selected based on uniqueness and how each name relates to the characteristics of Madison and surrounding communities.

In a press release, the BallCorps said the names were chosen to further its goal of providing affordable fun to families in North Alabama and southern Tennessee.

Voting on the finalists will extend through noon Aug. 16, after which five names will be eliminated, and the five leading names will be open for voting. The team name will be announced at a public event on Sept. 5.

To vote, visit www.northalabamabaseball.com

The top 10 names in alphabetical order are:
• Army Ants The Army’s Redstone Arsenal serves as a center for missile and national defense programs and employs more than 40,000 members of our community.
• Comet Jockeys “Rocket City” was put on the map for its cutting-edge aerospace development. Comet Jockeys is a celebration of our brave astronauts who explore outer space.
• GloWorms Glow worms are rare tiny bioluminescent creatures that call the caves at Dismals Canyon in North Alabama home, one of few places in North America.
• Lunartics We are home to some of the wildest mad scientists facing today’s challenges in space and technology.
• Moon Possums A scavenger at heart, these local critters are known for hanging around and having a good time with their family.
• Puffy Head Bird Legs No joke! It’s lingo coined by our astronauts for body fluid moving from feet to head in outer space due to the lack of gravity!
• Space Chimps A tribute to Miss Baker, one of the first animals safely launched into space. She is buried on the grounds at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.
• Space Sloths A nod to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, the Space Sloths is up there with classic Minor League Baseball names like IronPigs, Flying Squirrels, Chihuahuas and Jumbo Shrimp.
• ThunderSharks Mix the powerful thunder of North Alabama’s storms with the ultra-strong, sleek determination of the shark and you end up with the personality of our community: willing to attack any problem.
• Trash Pandas (Slang for raccoon) Our community is known for engineering, and no creature in our galaxy is as smart, creative, determined and ingenious a problem solver – dedicated to the challenge at hand – as our local raccoons.