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Minor League Baseball’s Multi-Personalities: How Teams are Connecting with Fans Through Alter-Egos

The road to The Show, the nickname players use to describe Major League Baseball, features many stops. Beginning in the early stages of Little League Tee Ball, learning the fundamentals and getting better with age through school until hopefully, your name gets called in the MLB Draft. Yet, there’s still more stops to make along the way. For someone drafted to the New York Yankees, one of those stops will include Wappingers Falls, New York, where the Hudson Valley Renegades play in the High-A South Atlantic League, a couple of tiers removed from Major League Baseball.   

The Renegades play home games at Heritage Financial Ballpark; a typical minor league stadium dotted with the team’s logo: the letters HV with a racoon tail. The scent of apple cider donuts throughout the place, however, suggests that the team has more than one identity, including one that features a frolicking donut holding an apple with baseball seams in its right hand and a jug of cider in its left hand. The donut’s jersey has the name Cider Donuts in a red outline emblazoned on the front, 

Welcome to Minor League Baseball (MiLB), where the show means literally that. A show that keeps fans entertained and maybe even buying more merch than they had planned. 

There’s the Hartford Yard Goats, Akron RubberDucks, Binghamton Rumble Ponies, Lansing Lugnuts, Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, El Paso Chihuahuas and more teams that cover the five levels of the minors for all 30 MLB teams. 

The unique names and identities helped minor league baseball recover from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and in the years afterward. The plan? Keep fans engaged at all times in all innings with all kinds of new stuff including fresh names outside of their anchor identity. 

Why – “It started many years ago with the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs who did the first kind of alternate identity,” said Beloit Sky Carp vice president of entertainment Maria Valentyn. “They started calling themselves the bacon and then they did a cheesesteaks concept and so every team then realized ‘OK wow hey there’s like there’s a lot of potential’” 

 

Of course, who wouldn’t support a team named after one of the most common breakfast items in the world? A professional sports team calling themselves bacon? Fans can go and buy a hat, a T-shirt, a hoodie, or even a jersey with a strip of bacon on it and not look completely out of place? It was such a success that the Iron Pigs even went as far as playing every Saturday home game under the bacon moniker. 

On the surface, anyone can say that the root of these ideas is to find new ways of generating revenue. That’s the point of a business, providing a good and/or service that creates revenue and profit. But the number one factor for every other aspect of minor league baseball’s business is how to create excitement and engagement from the fans and community. 

“Sales metrics are of course the main method,” said Somerset Patriots senior director of sales and marketing Hal Hanson, whose team was honored by MiLB for it’s “Best Alternate Identity” of the 2024 season across all levels. “But there’s also that overall buzz. When the popularity of the Jersey Diners was peaking, our employees couldn’t go anywhere without colleagues, friends and even total strangers paying compliments. For me personally, I found that type of validation more satisfying.” 

As silly as they can be, each team name means something. The Yard Goats pay homage to Hartford’s railway history where the slang for a small locomotive that acted like a tugboat would for barges was in fact a “yard goat”. The High-A affiliate for the San Diego Padres, the Fort Wayne TinCaps is a nod to folklore legend Johnny Appleseed who is buried in town. 

 Some team names emerged from contests designed for fans to select a team’s identity. The name of the Beloit Sky Carp, for example, came from fans of the Wisconsin team. The second-place name? Supper Clubbers.  

What started in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley with the Bacon, has evolved into a movement where creativity, community history and fan engagement have meshed almost perfectly. This year has seen new alter-egos like the “Supper Clubbers” from Beloit as an ode to what’s considered to be a Wisconsin staple meetup on Friday nights. The Yard Goats, meanwhile, unveiled “Leaf Peepers” to honor the thousands of people who visit New England to admire fall foliage, and “Thunder Chickens” to recognize the slang term for turkeys raised in Connecticut for Thanksgiving dinners. 

 

Building – These ideas don’t emerge from a whim, and it’s more than just having an idea. Branding, copyright and arguably most importantly, a why. Why should this be the name? Why should fans care? Why is this the identity that the team will change to every so often? Theme nights and identities stretch beyond the taking a new name and logo. They can also connect with pop culture, what’s trending and what people commonly like overall. For the theme nights as opposed to alternative identities, the only thing that changes is wearing uniforms that reflect the night’s theme. 

“We meet as a team several times in the fall and throw out all sorts of ideas,” said Hartford Yard Goats general manager Mike Abramson. “We think about big movies being released, trendy music or fads, tv shows that are popular. We whittle those down to a few new ones we try each year. For alternate identities, we try to research interesting things tied to the area with historical value or uniqueness, and fun unusual names.” 

 

For a front office, the offseason doesn’t exist the same way it does for players as it carries the traditional five-to-nine workplace environment. For new initiatives to take place, the planning has to start right away, even before the season ends when thinking about the next. 

The schedule for the following season in MLB and MiLB is released in August. Some start times may not be finalized yet but the placement of who plays who on what day and where is cemented, step one in the process. Next, everyone gets together to brainstorm ideas. Everyone. If you’re employed full time with the team, you have a say. 

“I like to get everybody involved because I think you’re remise to just assume that the only people who are going to have good ideas come from the creative team,” said Valentyn. “If you talk to pretty much anyone who works in my league baseball, some of the best ideas have come from the most unlikely of people so we like to get the entire team involved. Essentially, what we do is like brainstorming sessions. We take a couple hours over two different days and we sit down, we look at the past season’s promo calendar we go ‘OK hey what was like, awesome? What worked really well and is it something that we should do again?” 

Once decided on the what, members of the front office will begin to come up with ways they’ll turn this idea into an experience. Branding, jerseys, off-field entertainment, appearances, mascots even and more. A lot goes into it and minor league operations are typically smaller than their major league affiliates, collaboration on these grand ideas comes from all departments and even from other teams.  

During the 2024 season the Sky Carp were looking to have a dinosaur theme night. How to make the night different when traditional uniforms would be worn? For Valentyn, she knew that the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers had done one themselves before and it featured working with a company that actually had dinosaurs. Not blow-up costumes or mascots and images but animatronic dinosaurs. The result of the night was a sellout with fans eager to see dinosaurs that moved and roared, with the first pitch thrown out by a velociraptor. 

 

The collaboration can come beyond just providing contact information for ballpark experiences but can even become a collaborative theme and alternate identity. At the High-A level, the Jersey Shore Blue Claws and Renegades are coming together this year to recognize the Jersey Shore culture and tourism attraction. On June 20, July 19 and August 21, the teams will assume the identities that represent the two sides of a Jersey Shore summer: the Locals and the Bennys, recognizing the areas of tourists every summer in Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark and New York.  

“The tourism industry generates 10s of billions of dollars each year around the Jersey Shore and we’re excited to celebrate that in this fun, unique way,” said Bob McLane, BlueClaws General Manager on the team’s site. “Just as the Bennys come down the Shore each summer, so do the Renegades, and we’re grateful for their support in putting on this promotion!” 

 

Building out these alternative identities and themes collectively requires the creativity for something that can attract people’s attention, but it’s important to stay on-brand as well and not have something so extreme and out there that people forget the respected team’s image. 

“We know there’s a lane for us where we need to stay true to the brand and be cognizant of our history,” said Hansen. “But as a minor league baseball team, there is also a built-in expectation of our creativity by our fans and ownership, so we’re given a lot of room to explore different ideas that could be interesting and fun.” 

A full collaboration within an organization in early September can help lead to a potential sellout in July, with seats filled, hot dogs served and merchandise flying off the shelves. Attracting fans of baseball, history, pop culture and even capturing the hearts of people who can appreciate a fun gimmick, the planning and ideas are sometimes too obvious to ignore or a shot in the dark. With every hit in a successful theme, there are sometimes misses. Figuring out what to continue has ultimately been more important for the business of baseball than creating the ideas themselves. 

What works and doesn’t – The Minor League Baseball season lasts for five months. At times, a home team may play against the same team over a six-game series, with perhaps a Monday off. The duration and lack of variety in the names on the field with players the common baseball fan wouldn’t know can make for a rather stale product. Littered throughout the season, teams are trying to spring their fall plans into action and trying to bring something new to those who are almost regulars to the stadium and to get more people to show up. 

Just because a new identity or promotion is announced, it doesn’t mean they last forever, or even past one season. It can be chalked up to execution, attendance, even what’s in the budget for the year.  

“It can be challenging in minor league baseball because we have so many home games and so many things to promote throughout the season,” said Hansen. “Sometimes certain promotions just aren’t that successful because we couldn’t devote as much time and publicity to them as we should have. Or maybe the idea wasn’t fully thought out in the first place. The key is to learn from those situations and be able to see the potential in something despite the lack of immediate success.” 

Sometimes, an idea that seems good in theory can be a bust and in the case of the Sacramento River Cats, spark public outrage. Ahead of the 2025 season, the San Francisco Giants Triple-A affiliate wanted to honor the city’s role in California’s gold rush. With the name “Gold Diggers”, the alternative identity and its promotional material was met with criticism. With what a gold digger might refer to today, the video which has been deleted since (but can still be viewed here), depicts two women with their male partners, one in a relationship with an older man, notice a man in the Gold Digger uniform and they appear to be enamored with him as dollar signs fill their eyes. Essentially what a gold digger refers to today. Most of the backlash from that came from nearly every woman who saw the initiative, especially from women in local office. Calling it disrespectful, misogynistic, sexist, demeaning, offensive and even comparing it to a 1950s-era Mad Men promotion and advertisement. 

As soon as the Gold Diggers were rolled out to the public, it vanished, almost erased from River Cats adjacent media with a public apology to local publication SFGate stating: “Our recent marketing campaign for an alternative identity clearly missed the mark. Our intention was to creatively reference the rich history of Sacramento and gold country, but our approach was wrong, and we are sorry for the mistake. We will no longer be using this identity.” 

The Yard Goats have fallen on both sides of the of the line with what works and doesn’t work during the 2024 season alone. Named as Minor League Baseball’s 2024 Organization of the Year, Hartford hosted theme night flops like AI and anime night yet had some of the most successful campaigns in MiLB as the Steamed Cheeseburgers (a staple since 2018) which inspired continuing the food theme and become the Bouncing Pickles, named as Best Theme Night of 2023. 

 

“We’ve had success playing as the Hartford Steamed Cheeseburgers in the past, so we wanted to come up with a new food identity for this season,” said Abramson in MiLB.com’s article on unveiling the Pickles identity. “So, we decided to look through some old blue laws and came across the bouncing pickles law and it was just perfect. 

 

Copa de la Diversión™ – The unique charm of Minor League Baseball is its charm and staple to the community it resides in. Some of the players that play in the minors aren’t from America and are thousands of miles away from home. Hispanic heritage and players are important to MLB and MiLB as the leagues look to make baseball become more of a global sport the way soccer is, and basketball is becoming. In an effort to embrace the Latino cultures that play an important role in baseball, 2017 saw the minors introduce “Copa de la Diversión™” or “Fun Cup”. According to milb.com, the series is based off of four ideas: increase awareness, authentic engagements and attendance with U.S. Hispanics in their local communities; embrace a culture that is passionate about baseball, family and fun by updating the ballpark experience to match the values these fans cherish most; create and employ culturally relevant on-field personas that authentically connect teams with their local U.S. Hispanic communities; amplify MiLB’s continuous efforts including to diversify the game and business of baseball nationwide. 

Map – @MiLB/X 

Copa aims to accomplish these goals through competition, but not through baseball games. When the season concludes, the 92 participating teams are evaluated on different topics such as ballpark experience, community engagement and charitable impacts. During Copa games, teams will wear unique uniforms that celebrate Hispanic heritage like the San Jose Giants becoming the San Jose Churros, Brooklyn Cyclones becoming the Brooklyn Jefes and more. And if any of those 92 teams face of each other on their respective Copa de la Diversión night, the visiting team might pack their heritage jersey’s as well. 

 

The initiative has proven success for the past eight years when it started with four teams, now over 400 games in 2025 will be Copa games as teams can play as many as they would like to schedule, commonly each team will have three to five over the course of the year. 

The Future – When Minor League Baseball reorganized in 2020 and saw the system go from 160 teams to 120, the remaining and even new teams found themselves in a position of survival and uncertainty. There was a need to find ways of engaging fans to keep them in affiliation. There was always a place where the traditions of baseball and creativity blend together in the 5,000-seat stadiums that host the stars of tomorrow. With food themed jersey’s, dinosaur invasions, Star Wars takeovers and celebrating Hispanic cultures, promotions and alternative identities in Minor League Baseball is growing as quickly as their fan bases. 

What makes these initiatives important is that it isn’t only about selling tickets – it’s about honoring the communities that they have embedded themselves in and creating exciting moments. Fans and even players may not remember the score of a July afternoon game, but they will remember the jersey’s with “Udder Tuggers” across the chest with an angry cow on the hat, or the lightsaber battle with Darth Vader as the team wore uniforms that looked like Bobba Fett’s armor. 

Tapping into the local history, pop culture, social trends and feedback from fans, there are endless possibilities for what the next promotion can bring. From Copa’s celebration of culture or capturing the next viral trend like “A Minecraft Movie,” minor league teams are finding bold and exciting ways to make baseball fun again. 

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