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Albuquerque May Name Team After 'Simpsons' Baseball fans in Albuquerque, N.M., want their new minor league team to be called the Isotopes -- which has the city's mayor saying "D'oh!"
The Isotopes name comes from a 2001 episode of "The Simpsons" in which Homer stages a hunger strike to prevent his hometown team, the Springfield Isotopes, from leaving town for Albuquerque. Around the same time as the episode aired, Albuquerque was in real life preparing to vote on whether to spend public funds to renovate its ballpark and lure a team there. The city was home to a minor league team called the Dukes for a number of years before the club was sold and moved to Portland, Ore., in 2000.
In a poll run by the Albuquerque Tribune to pick a name for the new team, Isotopes was the clear favorite, with 57 percent of the vote, beating out names such as Dukes, Roadrunners and 66ers. Team officials, aware of the possible merchandising bonanza, support the offbeat name.
"From a sales point of view, I think it would be easier to see Isotopes across the nation than Dukes," general manager Mel Kowalchuk says. Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez is less enthusiastic. He's lobbying for the team to take the Dukes name long associated with baseball in the city. "I love Bart Simpson. I'm a 'Simpsons' fan," Chavez says. "But the team name is fundamental to how we see ourselves and how others see us." Mike Scully, a "Simpsons" writer/producer, is behind the Isotopes idea. "I think everything should be named after cartoons," he tells the paper. "We think it's very flattering. The controversy is kind of funny. It must be a slow news day in Albuquerque." Related Shows
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