The McHenry County K-Nines-Really?
Baseball is coming to McHenry County! That’s the good news. The bad news is that the infant team has been saddled with a horrible moniker-The McHenry County K-Nines. This is like naming your first born son Ichabod Sue. Nothing good can come of it.
The owners of the Frontier League franchise picked from submissions of a “name the team” contest. Amazingly, they claim that four different people came up with it. They even named the guilty parties and awarded them season tickets, caps, and other licensed logo gear. Admittedly the most popular names-Coyotes and Mustangs-were lame. The Groundhogs harkened to Bill Murray’s made-in-Woodstock cult classic film Groundhog Day. It would have come complete with a cuddly, built in mascot. The team brain trust wanted a name that would be would be more inclusive of the entire county instead of just Woodstock.
But the K-Nines is simply a head scratcher and too clever by half. According to the Northwest Herald account by Brian Slupski, “The ‘K’ is the letter used to denote a strikeout when keeping score. ‘Nines’ represents the number of innings in a game and the number of players on the field.”
The trouble is a “K” is only a good for the pitcher. It is woe, misery and humiliation for the batters. So the K-Nines literally means “the Team Where Everyone Strikes Out.” Is it just me, or does this fail to inspire confidence?
The team mascot, of course, will be a dog-nudge-nudge, wink-wink-another pun. Despite the desire not to link the team too closely with the county seat, the mascot will be named Woody. Whether that’s for the bats, sticks the mutt will retrieve, or the morning condition of the post-adolescent short stop remains to be seen.
Now the Frontier League is an “independent” minor league baseball. Meaning the teams are not “farms” for the majors. It is the bottom rung of professional baseball where the players have few real hopes of being scouted even for a Rookie or Class A affiliated team. Play is a few steps above American Legion Ball, maybe on the par with mid level college teams, or the rough-and-tumble semi-pro leagues of years gone by. Teams playing at this level feature the blazing 83 mile per hour fastball, dropped pop-ups, busted double plays, and comical base running errors. But there are relatively few strike outs and lots of action. The play is pretty entertaining if you are not looking for All-Star precision.
Like the name or not, I will be in the crowd in the new team starts playing in their new ballpark just outside Woodstock, hopefully in the 2011 season. Given that that a trip to Chicago to see my beloved Cubs is now so expensive that I have to mortgage a grandchild to catch a game, it will be great to relax at a game just down the road from my house at movie ticket prices. Concessions prices are expected to be reasonable. And these kinds of minor league teams provide all sorts of special promotions and “family entertainment” bonuses as part of the package. If they can keep the mosquitoes from the adjacent “wet lands” down to a minimum, I might even buy a K-Nine ball cap. God help me.