Cubs’ South Bend affiliate will be named…. Cubs

It starts to look like a trend. Parent clubs naming their farm teams after themselves.

Instead of keeping the old name that the team had during the liaison with the Arizona Diamondbacks (Sout Bend SilverHawks), the new parent opted for the name Cubs.

The Cubs have named more teams after themselves. Until last season, they had an affiliation with the Daytona based baseball team (called the Tortugas since yesterday) and they named it the Daytona Cubs. The Cubs’ AAA farm team in Iowa has the same name as well.

Joe Hart, president of the South Bend Cubs said the following about the new logos: “This was an important feature to us. We’re incredibly excited about bringing the Cubs to South Bend, but we’ll never lose that connection to our local heritage. And I think it’s really good to know that the Chicago Cubs like this design that integrates some of our Studebaker heritage as much as we do.”

Studebaker heritage? Studebaker had several logos through the years, but I cannot discover any resemblance between the new Cubs logo and those of the former car brand.

Like the Daytona Tortugas logo, the logo of the South Bend Cubs was designed by Studio Simon from Louisville KY.

The jersey and the caps of the new team will look like this:

The team just threw away a great brand with great logos. A brand that had a link to the Studebaker car factory for sure. The Silverhawk was a car model produced by Studebaker.

Once again I think that this rebranding is a missed opportunity. The Cubs (Chicago or South Bend) could have saved a lot of money by sticking with the old name and logo.