Say it ain’t so, Hartford Yard Goats or River Hogs or Hound Dogs or ...

As a baseball fan since 1941, when my grandfather inspired me to root for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the first of many World Series they’d lose to the Yankees, I guess I’m a baseball traditionalist or, if you prefer, a grouch.

And we, the traditionalist and grouch, were not amused by the list of dopey names announced last week as the finalists in an alleged vote by fans to name the team that will open the 2016 season at the new, $56 million Boondoggle Field in Hartford’s North End. The team, formerly the Hardware City Rock Cats, defected from New Britain to the greener fields and brighter lights of poor old Hartford, thereby requiring a new name. A New Britain guy suggested Hartford Stealers, but it was rejected.

The marketers who will eventually pick the name, have narrowed the possibilities to 10 — the Yard Goats, Screech Owls, River Hogs, Blue Frogs, Hedgehogs, Praying Mantis, Hound Dogs, Honey Badgers, Whirlybirds and Choppers. They are serious.

Some are supposed to be Hartford associated. The Whirlybirds and Choppers are a tribute to Hartford’s pioneering development of the helicopter, which took place around Bridgeport. The Blue Frogs are a reference to Mark Twain’s “Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” which is in California and to Hartford’s 19th century major league baseball team, the Dark Blues. 

The Hedgehogs is amusingly called a tribute to the staid insurance industry though it brings to mind the more edgy hedge funds and the River Hogs refers to the Hog River which unfortunately has been buried under Hartford these past 75 years. This would inspire unpleasant sports page comparisons, if the team should be comparably located in the standings.

So why the goofy, dumbed down names for a team once known as the Senators and Chiefs, not to mention the late, lamented big league hockey team known as the Whalers?

“It’s all about the kids,” admitted the team’s minor league consultant, the aptly named Chuck Domino, who will probably pick the name. “Obviously, that’s what we’re marketing to, are the kids. If the kids like the product, the parents are going to come and bring the kids to the game.” And I always thought it was the other way around; you learned about baseball from your father or your grandfather and you liked the game and wanted to go because they did.

Consultant Domino (“he delivers!”) tells the heartwarming tale of getting the Allentown, Pa., team to select Iron Pigs as its name over the opposition of fans until they quickly came to love it. 

“Within a matter of months, we had grownups, grandfathers, wearing plastic pig snouts to games,” and who could argue with that kind of success.

I guess what offends the traditionalist and grouch that coexist in me so well is the slickness/sleaziness of it all, the blatantly staged “voting” that was supported by the boosterish media — “go to our website and vote” — with no results announced and the team picking the 10 names it liked best. I wonder how many of these outlandish names were actually picked by the gullible voters.

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The Courant’s excellent sports columnist, Jeff Jacobs, wrote the other day that his colleague Dom Amore had suggested a name that had the virtue of kid appeal and Hartford history, the Hartford Huckleberries in honor of Mark Twain’s greatest American novel, “Huckleberry Finn.”

But listen to marketer Domino’s reaction: “A lot of people wanted us to be Twains,” he said. “We weren’t going to be Twains. It just wasn’t exciting enough.”

At any rate, we’ll know the name next week, followed by another press conference to unveil the logo. Then we’ll have the always exciting contest to choose a mascot and a uniform fashion show. I imagine once the important stuff is out of the way, they’ll pick a manager and some coaches and even players.

The name of the ballpark will be sold to the highest bidder. It isn’t really “Boondoggle Field.” I made that up. 

You may have noticed that selling stadium names has become the way to go with no concern about the appropriateness of the selection or its appeal to the kids or any other living thing beyond the accounting department. And so we have baseball played in two parks named for orange juice, Tropicana in Tampa and Minute Maid in Houston, and one for a chain of pet stores, Petco Park in San Diego. 

There’s a term for all of this, “bush league.”

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.