St. Louis Humidity receives local press

What's in a softball team's name?

By Elizabethe Holland
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
07/15/2008

ST. LOUIS — Softball team manager Brennan Hartin's game-winning strategy isn't based on defensive mastery or batting prowess. It's rooted in simple deception.

His team is Bye-Week, an innocuous enough sounding name … until you stop to consider what Hartin's opponents must think when looking at the schedule.

"I've had teams that play them that call me up and say, 'Wait a minute. Are we playing this weekend? It says Bye Week,' " said Roger Berry, commissioner of the St. Louis Softball League, one of the area's largest softball leagues with some 8,000 players this spring/summer session. —…'No,' I say, 'you're playing a team called Bye-Week.'"

The name is one of the increasingly clever monikers that come across Berry's desk each new season...

Though competition in the name game is fierce, what with tags such as St. Louis Humidity, Satan's Ponies and the Rat Batsters, Berry's favorite this season is the Ice Devouring Sex Tornadoes.

(Editor's note: Elizabethe Holland is player-manager of a coed softball team of past and current Post-Dispatch employees. The team's name: Media Circus.)

eholland@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8259