Giants' Double-A Richmond club to be named the …

Posted by Andrew Baggarly on October 6th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

OK, I've got to share this:

The Giants' Double-A affiliate is moving to Richmond, Va., as you've probably heard, and they're holding a competition to name the franchise.

This is a tough one, because Richmond is known for pretty much two things - the tobacco industry and being the capital of the Confederacy - and neither one of those scores too high on the ol' political-correctness scale.

So these are the five finalists: Flatheads, Flying Squirrels, Hambones, Rock Hoppers, Rhinos.

Seriously.

But this saga doesn't end there. Apparently, the choices were so, uh, out of the box that CNBC's Darren Rovell, a terrific sports business writer and a friend of mine from college, offered to take the search nationally and make room for a sixth entry. Richmond club officials said, aw, why the heck not.

Here are the instructions, as posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch's Web site:

To submit an entry, e-mail sportsbiz@cnbc.com on Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. EDT. CNBC will choose its wild-card suggestion (Thursday) morning. Rovell projected that CNBC would receive about 200 submissions.

About 200? Nonsense. Feel free to swamp Darren's inbox.

Me, I'm going with the Menthols.

Maybe we should ask Virginia native and likely Double-A shortstop Brian Bocock for his opinion. I'm guessing Bocock wouldn't want to be a Hambone.