Winston-Salem's Class-A Carolina League baseball team is moving to a new stadium next season (hopefully) and in the process they are being re-branded.  Today the team's owner announced that the team formerly known as the Warthogs will now be known as the Dash.  The dash refers to the dash between Winston and Salem in the city's name, which often causes confusion in computer systems and with anyone who's not from the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina.

If you visit the article in the Winston-Salem Journal that I linked above you'll see in the comments that many people find the name less than desirable.  Personally I don't think it's as bad as the Miami Heat, which I consider one of the all-time bad team names.  What's a "heat"?  How weird is it to a call a player a "heat"?  I'm assuming that Dash players will be called "Dashers" but maybe I'm wrong. 

I'm also wondering what the mascot will look like.  They were supposed to unveil it today, but there wasn't a picture accompanying the story in the Journal so I'm not sure if they did.  Perhaps they'll go with a reindeer like, you know, Dasher.  Or maybe they'll go with some variation of the punctuation mark, which leaves the question, "Will it be an em dash or an en dash?"  Or even better maybe they'll go with some variation on The Flash (I'd vote for this one). 

Whatever.  I'm with the commenters on the Journal page: the name is lame, especially when you consider that it was chosen over the Rhinos, Aviators, Wallbangers and Racers.  People probably would have squawked at the Rhinos name because the team's owner, Billy Prim, made his fortune as the founder of Blue Rhino and they would have seen it as too self-promotional, but I would have been fine with it because as the owner it's his prerogative and because I happen to think that you could do some really cool stuff with a Rhino mascot.  The Aviators would have local meaning since Winston-Salem has a rich aviation history, and the Wallbangers and Racers would have been a nice tie to the areas rich car racing tradition.  As I said, though, it's Prim's team and he can name it what he wants. It's just my opinion that he picked the weakest of the five candidates.