Care for a break from racial inanity, war, recession, looming socialization? In Impromptus today, I have a little fun with names — not just names of people, but names of ball clubs. For example, this minor-league baseball team: the Kannapolis Intimidators (in North Carolina).

A reader writes,

Thought you’d want to hear about another minor-league team with a great name. Used to live in Georgia at Ft. Benning when I was in the Army. One of the nearby cities, Macon, had a minor-league hockey team. The Whoopee — the Macon Whoopee.

Another reader writes,

Being a lifelong (and fourth-generation) Texan, I’ve always loved our high-school mascots. Some of my favorites? The Roscoe Plowboys, the Hamlin Pied Pipers, the Happy Cowboys, the Itasca Wampus Cats, the Mason Punchers (as in cowpuncher), the Hereford Whitefaces, the Amarillo Golden Sandies, and the Wylie Pirates (my favorite).

Wampus cat?

Finally,

I would like to submit the recently re-named team in Fort Wayne, Ind. Previously, the team’s name was the Wizards, and with the name went a ridiculous-looking icon/mascot. Not willing to leave bad enough alone, the team’s owners have changed the name to allude to Johnny Appleseed, whose peregrinations throughout the frontier ended in Fort Wayne, and whose gravesite has been identified and preserved there.
The new name is the TinCaps, an allusion to the tin pan that legend maintains Johnny Appleseed wore as a hat. I suspect that the allusion is lost upon all but some locals, and is likelier to evoke visions of people reputed to wear tin foil in their hats to protect themselves from evil alien rays.

Yes, that is a problem.

Okay, back to bigger — gloomier — things . . .

P.S. This just in: Another reader likes the Butternut (Wis.) Midgets. The Butternut Midgets — that is nice, sort of.