SCRAPPY SCRAPPLEMEN:

Hamming It Down in Japan (SETH STEVENSON, 11/30/03, NY Times Magazine)

The Nippon-Ham Fighters are the ''Fighters,'' not the ''Ham Fighters.'' That is, Nippon-Ham is the owner of the team, which plays in the Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan. It's simply a bit of misfortune that the organization's full name suggests lunch-meat gladiators.

As it happens, the Fighters are no strangers to misfortune. They are perennial doormats in Japan's major league. They have been awful for decades on end, with exceedingly rare exceptions, and -- as if to highlight their ineptitude -- they play in the same city and stadium as the legendary Yomiuri Giants. While the Giants draw 50,000 passionate fans to the Tokyo Dome for each game, the Fighters are lucky to get 10,000. One Japanese sports executive says the team's image is so dismal that the team ''could actually devalue the ham brand.''

Is it any wonder Fighters management ached for a change? So this off-season the team is moving far, far away from Tokyo and the Giants in order to establish a brand-new identity on the northern island of Hokkaido. There the Fighters will play in the Sapporo Dome -- a gorgeous modern stadium named for Hokkaido's largest city -- and they won't even have to share it with another baseball team.

New city, new stadium, with luck some new fans -- perfect time for a total image overhaul. And that includes the most important element of all, the key to any brand and, above all, to any sports franchise: the logo.

To not feature a seething pig in their logo is to waste one of the truly great sports names.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 29, 2003 10:25 AM