Even local feminist groups are laughing a little at how spectacularly the branding of a new London Ontario baseball team has failed after it was revealed the team would be named for a man who raped and murdered women. The London Rippers were announced today, along with their mascot - an owl-eyed creeper named Diamond Jack who dresses in a black cape and top hat with a bat that is seriously coming straight at your head. Diamond Jack has a back-story that totally isn't Jack the Ripper, but no one cares because it seems like it was tossed off by a third grader.
When asked “Are you joking? How did this make it past the design stage?” team President David Martin defended his branding choice on the grounds that part of the quintessential North American baseball experience is dodging your ten-year old asking what rape is.
Subsequent questioning revealed that David Martin thinks that when we are wandering around London and decide to watch a baseball game, how edgy the cartoon on the jersey is always factors into whether we will drop $9 on a ticket. Lifelong Londoner and James Betty friend Danny agrees. “He's right, it's most of what I think about. That's why I went to 40 more Tiger's games than my 0 Major's games. It has nothing to do with me growing up and suddenly having better things to do. It's because the London Major's have a big L on their jersey.” Adding, “Maybe I could get behind a Q or the screaming face of a military Major type person, but an L? Fuck you. L's are for pussys and I can't be associated with them. Lets be serious here, the only way to make baseball edgy is to fill the balls with gasoline and cover the bats with whatever makes a match strike up. No one cares what the logo looks like.”
Public Relations specialist Ovaltine Goose-Shredder said, “Martin, clearly being a man that doesn't like to second guess himself, failed to address an important question, namely at what point does a historical figure become a caricature and therefore palatable for the public? The answer is when the character becomes harmless. Jack the Ripper has never been about anything other than rape and murder and it's hard to construe disembowelment into harmless ballpark fun.” He then continued the masters course in public relations, saying “The definition hasn't shifted and it won't. Why he continues to stand by his decision is more baffling than him thinking it was a good idea in the first place. It's also important to bear in mind that the most vocal Londoner in support of changing the logo is Megan Walker, someone who fronts a group that gives support to women who are running away from the men that beat them with whatever pieces of their lives they can fit in a grocery bag. After you see the consequences of violence against women the public display of a cartoonish rapist doesn't sit the same with you. Certain words will immediately conjure the face of the victim the your head. Now when I hear London Rippers I think of a friend of mine who went through some shit no person should ever have to deal with. A name change won't save them, I'll never shake that association. They might as well cut their losses and fold.”
Since the shitstorm broke, David Martin has been wandering around Labatt Park repeating the age old logical fallacy “Any news is good news.” over and over to himself, wringing his hands like a man who knows the prospective investors in his next venture googling his name will find this spectacularly bad idea first. And then see the quotes in press clippings of him pissing off a whole city by assuming it's populated by idiots. And then him plastering on a shit-eating grin and saying “Any news is good news”. Ovaltine has analyzed the new strategy, “No one knows what the good news is, unless he likes the fact that he probably destroyed his business career.”
While the status of the name change now hangs in the balance, the only certainty remains that like all the other teams that have tried to take the field in London over the years, it's assured that the entire city will completely forget about them just in time for the season opener.
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