August 11, 2005
Atlanta Braves Change Name
(ATLANTA) – In a bold move stemming from years of protests, the Atlanta Braves baseball team announced today that this would be their last season as the Braves.
“We believe that while there is a long history associated with the franchise nickname, the name is not as important as the game. We can no longer be a party to oppression,” said a piece of paper handed out by nameless Time-Warner functionaries.
In a separate press release, the Time-Warner committe on departmental internal and external nomenclature reported the team will internally be referred to as the Atlanta Division for Live Performing Sports Events Marketing, Promotion and Merchandising.
“Externally we’ll call them the Committe Regarding Actual Corporate K Event Reality Systems or ‘CRACKERS’,” said the second piece of paper.
The abrupt change was originally attributed to the controversy caused by a San Francisco radio announcer referring to the San Francisco Giants players as “brain-dead Carribeans.” Many Carribean players as well as the Giants manager took grave offense to the racial slur especially since some the worst players on the Giants are non-carribean. The families of many brain-dead patients have also protested over being compared to the Giants considering how they’ve played this year.
However the controversy had no affect on the Time-Warner decision as corporate marketers had been meeting far too often to have heard about the story.