Goodbye, Winnipeg Goldeyes.
Did we get you?
On Wednesday (also April Fool’s Day, coincidentally), Winnipeg’s pro baseball club made an appropriately timed announcement that it would be taking on a pesky and all-too-familiar alternate identity for one game this summer.
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Winnipeg Goldeyes general manager Andrew Collier said the single-game rebrand to the Manitoba Mosquitoes is a good fit for the club since the summertime pest is jokingly referred to as Manitoba’s unofficial bird.
The Manitoba Mosquitoes will take the diamond for a weekend series-opener against the Lincoln Saltdogs on July 31, with hopes of being equally irritable to their opponent.
“It’s a pretty big trend in Minor League Baseball, just to have a little bit of fun for one game or three games, and that’s what we were trying to do here,” said Goldeyes general manager Andrew Collier.
Alternate identities have long been a part of MLB affiliate leagues, but have gained even more steam in recent years, with teams across all levels of the minor leagues creatively designing an ode to their host city for a day or a series.
It’s become an established promotional strategy at this point, so much so that fans can vote on which minor league club sports the best alternate uniforms each year. The Arkansas Travelers (Double-A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners), who converted to the Barkansas Dizzys — a salute to a popular local English cream golden retriever named Dizzy — for five days, won the award last summer.
“We probably had a list of 10 different names — I don’t want to say them because you never know if we’ll use them in the future — but Mosquitoes just seemed very on-brand for our sport,” said Collier. “Since we play on grass, they can appear quite prominently in the ballpark, and mosquitoes have often been referred to as Manitoba’s unofficial bird, so it seemed like a good rebrand to try this year.”
The trend is gaining traction across the American Association. The Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks will become the Fargo Woodchippers for five games, debuting against the Goldeyes on June 12. The Woodchippers are an ode to the popular film Fargo, which infamously included a wood chipper as a central part of the movie’s plot and celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
“It’s a pretty big trend in Minor League Baseball, just to have a little bit of fun for one game or three games, and that’s what we were trying to do here.”
Also getting in on the fun are the Lake County DockHounds, who will briefly rebrand to the Wisconsin Dive Bars for three contests to celebrate the state’s renowned selection of places to pull up a stool and grab a cold one.
It’s plausible — and perhaps even likely — that more will follow.
“It’s a wait-and-see thing,” said Collier. “We hope people think it’s kind of funny and think the merchandise is cool. We’ll see how it goes, how Goldeyes fans embrace it, but I’d love to do it every year and keep coming up with new and unique rebrands, and keep having fun with it.”
The announcement of the Goldeyes’ alternates came a couple of hours after the American Association played an April Fool’s joke on media and fans, releasing a farcical news release that stated the league would implement a complete overhaul of its rules for the first game of the season.
The release claimed that Opening Day (May 14 and 15) would be renamed “Banana Baseball Day,” and teams would follow the unique rules of the Savannah Bananas — a popular team based in Georgia that is best described as the diamond’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters.
The league even stated that if the rule changes proved successful, it would look at making permanent changes as early as next year.
“I think Logan and the coaches have done a nice job to bring back the key pieces and supplement them with new guys.”
“I’ve learned long ago, on this morning, to not take anything at face value,” said Collier. “That certainly would’ve been big news, for sure.”
Collier hopes the Fish make headlines with their play again after a disappointing campaign last summer that saw the club finish last in the West Division with a 41-58 record.
Third-year skipper Logan Watkins has been busy assembling the roster all winter with the goal of returning to the playoffs for a second time in his tenure.
With some familiar faces — including Max Murphy, Landen Bourassa and Adam Hall — and some new, intriguing pieces, the Goldeyes are sitting at 24 players on the roster and have room to carry as many as nine more when spring training begins on May 3.
“I think Logan and the coaches have done a nice job to bring back the key pieces and supplement them with new guys,” Collier said.
“Last year wasn’t where we wanted to be, but going 10-24 in one-run games, we were in it, just couldn’t get that extra run or extra two runs. I think that’s something he looked at going into the off-season — putting the team together is getting over that hump and getting back to the playoffs.”
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The Winnipeg Goldeyes announced Wednesday its single-game name and jersey change for the club’s July 31 matchup against the Lincoln Saltdogs.
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Josh Frey-Sam reports on sports and business at the Free Press. Josh got his start at the paper in 2022, just weeks after graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College. He reports primarily on amateur teams and athletes in sports. Read more about Josh.
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