Buttered Biscuits

Elrod (oh, if only I could link to him; you’d be so impressed) rails today about his animosity toward avian mascots in baseball, most recently scourged by Screech of the Washington Nationals. It prompts me to reflect on our recent, persuasive trip to catch our first game at Riverwalk Stadium for our Montgomery Biscuits.

For my money, there is hardly a better nickname of a professional sports organization in America. The Biscuits are the Tampa Bay Rays AA affiliate, and they are the 2006 and 2007 champions of the Southern League, including minor league powerhouses Chattanooga Lookouts, Huntsville Stars, Birmingham Barons, Mobile Bay-Bears and the Mississippi Braves. The Biscuits thumped the Barons on our outing.

Riverwalk Stadium is new and beautiful. It’s converted from an old downtown warehouse, once a Civil War prison camp and, of course, production facility for, yum, biscuits. They sell some mighty fine biscuits in there, too, with locally produced syrup that will make your children very sticky. The stadium is a block from the Alabama River, the Riverwalk Amphitheater and fountain. A railroad runs parallel to the left field wall, close enough that trains occasionally catch homeruns. It’s a great place to catch a game.

Here is my big gripe: Although the Biscuits is a great nickname, this is a preposterous mascot:

Big Mo has nothing discernibly “biscuit” about him, and he frightens my three-year-old into a panic. Riverwalk is a great stadium, but it can’t stick to a theme: rivers or railroads? You decide, and there are plenty of options. So here we have a perfectly good baseball organization, with a clever nickname and beautiful stadium but no message discipline.
Go Mutant Mastodon Riverboat Railroad Breakfast Food!

This is not unlike my bride’s first college, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Once, they were the Moccasins, with an American Indian mascot who succumbed to racial sensitivity, only to be shorted to Mocs. The Moc evolved into a Mock, and now they are the Mockingbirds, except that the Mockingbird wears a railroad hat and sits on top of a steam engine (Choo-Choo, get it?). So go Mock(ingbird) Railroad Engineers!