General Forum

I've noticed a couple of oddities with respect to team names in the database, and I was wondering if there was an explanation.

First, from 1954-1958 the Cincinnati Reds changed their name officially to the Cincinnati Redlegs.  Topps cards from this era clearly show them as the Redlegs, but their team name here is the Reds.  My favorite example from the era is the iconic 1957 Ted Kluszewski card, showing off his sleeveless uniform.

http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/38/cid/7166/1957-Topps-165-Ted-Kluszewski

I wonder why this card is assigned to the Reds and not the Redlegs. This seems as legitimate a name change as the Colt .45s becoming the Astros, and both of those teams are in the DB. Also, I thought that a rule of thumb here is that the card is always right, so we should go with what the card says, which is Redlegs.

On a similar note, the Senators of the time were (unofficially) known as the Nationals, and this is reflected on Topps cards in 1955 and 1956.  Harmon Killebrew's RC is an example.

http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/36/cid/6565/1955-Topps-124-Harmon-Killebrew

Using the info on the card itself as the rule of thumb, shouldn't these be classified as Washington Nationals cards, rather than the Senators?

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.  I don't have an answer, but I can't wait until some other answers start to appear here!!

I don't collect baseball....but I like watching the team name debate.

One could also argue that technically the Toronto Blue Jays were called just the "Jays" from 2004 to 2011, when they used the fugly black, white, and graphite color scheme and removed the word "Blue" from all it's branding. 

BTW, I had forgotten about those old "muscle shirts" of the Reds! Thanks for the reminder!

FWIW, as far as I know the Blue Jays didn't officially change their name during that time, and also as far as I know the cards for the Blue Jays during those years all said "Blue Jays".  It's an interesting observation that I had not heard about, though, and thanks for that!

The Redlegs have a TID in the database.  Whomever uploaded the checklist didn't assign the correct team.  The Washington Nationals was the official team name until 1956, but they were referred to as "Senators" since 1905.  This was quite common for teams to have an official name and a different name used by fans and sportswriters.  Eventually many teams adopted the unofficial names used by fans.

WRT the Redlegs.  Wow!  I am not sure how I missed seeing that!  Thanks for pointing it out. I would assume that updating these would be better handled via a bulk db update by Admin, rather than changing all the cards individually.

What's your opinion on how the cards that say "Nationals" should be classified?

Also, I would guess that the Redlegs TID is a very recent addition.  (TID=2298 vs TID=7 for the Reds.) This would imply that maybe when the Topps cards were uploaded, the TID didn't yet exist so the uploader did the best they could with the DB at the time.  Still, now that the Redlegs TID exists, I think the cards should be moved over.

I think many of the older set are locked down now, so it will take Admin to get it done. Besides, I would check with Admin before doing any changes like this.

I wasn't planning on doing the changes myself.  If there appeared to be a consensus that changing the teams was the right thing to do, then I was planning on notifying Admin and letting them do the work.  (It's a lot easier to do a mass update thn a bunch of individual updates.)