New Minor League Phillies Team Wants Nothing to do with Phillies

The New England Collegiate Baseball League is more than just another baseball organization you’ve never heard of.

“Bigger.” Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Today, it is, I mean.

Meet the Keith Rogers and Dan Scaring, two businessmen with the acumen and intelligence to use the name “Phillies,” but without the respect and intelligence to want to be connected to the Phillies.

They’ve been setting up shop in the New York Collegiate League, before moving their team, the Saratoga Phillies, to Oneonta, NY, and changing their name from the “Phillies” to the “Outlaws.”  Had they just committed a string of swashbuckling crimes that warranted a name change?  What a spectacular, most likely untrue, thought.

For whatever interest, “men on horseback robbing a moving train” was a cooler image than a word that sounds like the word that means “baby horse” but doesn’t.  So Rogers and Scaring made the switch, only to find themselves yearning for that old Saratoga feeling, which according to Wikipedia, probably means they have some sort of enthusiasm for the American Revolutionary War.

Regardless, they are back, and they aim to start a brand new Phillies franchise.

"“One thing to note: despite the use of the Phillies name, the team is not affiliated at all with the Philadelphia Phillies. We are wondering whether that will be an issue.”—Ballpark Digest"

Well, I’ll tell you what will be an issue:  this.

Nobody can just use the Phillies’ name without a fork lift full of money or a bus full of young, promising, talented ballplayers who have no idea they’re about to be traded for an old man with a glove or bringing Charlie Manuel like a big-ass sandwich or something.  This will certainly be trouble in the near future, which means something rather important:  Money.

If this lawsuit goes the way a lawsuit like this usually goes; some ambitious, independent partnership using a name like they like being financially obliterated by a faceless professional corporation that happens to already have that name; then the Phillies look to fatten that bank account!  Which means more signings of players to complain about!  Which we can all agree is the life blood of this city.