Syracuse Chiefs Metsmerized

Little did we know when the New York Mets bought the Syracuse Chiefs to become their AAA farm team. Little did we know about the name change that would be coming up. Yesterday the New York Mets announced the new name, colors, and uniforms of their new AAA farm team.

The Chiefs will adopt a new moniker: Syracuse Mets… Yes, Syracuse Mets. Quite a lack of originality. The home uniform the new team will wear is a poor apology of the uniform the parent club wears.

The Syracuse Mets branding was unveiled at the team’s NBT Bank Stadium on Tuesday, during a press conference that included New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

With the exception of the 1997-2006 season when the team was named SkyChiefs, all Syracuse teams since 1934 were named Chiefs so this name change is rather rigorous. You may wonder why the team adopted the parent club’s moniker as the Binghamton team (AA Eastern League) left it to become the Rumble Ponies.

Sure the reason behind this name change will be to spur the sale of merchandise but then again, the fans in Syracuse were used to the old moniker so you may wonder if they will embrace this abrupt change.

From Syracuse.com:  “While traditionalists may not like the name change, such sentiment now takes a distant back seat in these decisions. The Mets want a fresh, new look in 2019 to juice merchandise sales and fuel excitement. Changing names and logos is part of the takeover, especially since New York owns the franchise. The Mets are also gambling that baseball fans in Syracuse will get behind forming a strong geographical loyalty to the major league club instead of clinging to decades of local identity.”

No matter what their motives are, name changes like this are never good as they cut the team loose from its own identity, from a link the moniker has with the local history or habits.

Too bad that all that is lost now. We can only hope the Mets will realize someday they made the wrong move.