Best Defunct Baseball Team?

Lowbrow Answer: Orlando Juice (Played in the Senior Professional Baseball League from 1989-1990)
"Orlando Juice" sounds like a member of the Wu-Tang Clan or a character on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." It does not sound like a professional baseball team. You haven't even told us what kind of juice it is. Maybe it would be better if it were the Orlando Orange Juice or the Orlando CranApple juice. Then we'd at least know the flavor of the team.

This squad played for just one year in a league for old people. No, seriously. The league age limit was you had to be at least 35. I wonder if they had bathroom breaks every inning or if the umpires were also nurses in case somebody broke a hip. No wonder the league itself only lasted a year and a half; I bet most of the players had died of exhaustion after the first 11 months.


Middlebrow Answer: Cleveland Infants (Played in the Players' League in 1890)
Playing baseball in the 19th century is awesome. It's the epitome of "old-school." Realize for a second that 1890 is only 25 years after the Civil War had ended. That means that all the players still had crazy-ass facial hair like this or this, still hated anybody from south of the Mason-Dixon line, and probably used muskets to lay down bunts. Awesome.

No matter how you look at it, though, "Infants" is a terrible name for a baseball team. The name of your team is supposed to incite fear and terror in the hearts of your opponents, not make them say, "Awwwww. Wook at the widdle baby." What was your mascot? A giant baby wandering around the field, flinging poo from its diaper at opposing fans?


Highbrow Answer: Kansas City Monarchs (Played in the Negro League from 1920 - 1965)
It's pretty hard to argue against a team that had Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, Elston Howard, and Ernie Banks. That would be like trying to convince me that a band made up of Thom Yorke, Bjork, Beck, Trent Reznor, and Michael Stipe played shitty music; I just wouldn't believe you.

The name Monarchs, too, had a nice dual meaning. On one hand, we're talking about kings and queens and the monarchy. On the other, we're talking about a North American butterfly, one of the only insects in the world capable of making a transatlantic journey. Either way, we're talking about some highbrow. Butterflies rule. I want to get a string of them tattooed on me, starting at my ass and ending in my crotch. Then they'll be going from my butt to my fly. Get it? "Butt-to-flies?" I'm hilarious.