Every Minor-League Club with “Cat” in the Team Name
There are six affiliated minor-league clubs with the word “cat” in the team name. Some of those clubs are named after real types of cat; others, less so. What follows, for the benefit of (a) the readership and also (b) the abstract concept of Truth, is the authoritative list on teams named after cats, real or fictional.
Club: Carolina Mudcats (Zebulon, NC)
Level: High-A League: Carolina
Affiliation: Cleveland Indians
Real Thing? Yes. Common name for catfish native to the Mississippi Delta.
Club: Lynchburg Hillcats (Lynchburg, VA)
Level: High-A League: Carolina
Affiliation: Atlanta Braves
Real Thing? No.
Club: New Britain Rock Cats (New Britain, CT)
Level: Double-A League: Eastern
Affiliation: Minnesota Twins
Real Thing? Sort of.
Club: New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Manchester, NH)
Level: Double-A League: Eastern
Affiliation: Toronto Blue Jays
Real Thing? Yes. The fisher, or fisher cat, is a member of the weasel family found most often in the northern part of North America.
Club: Sacramento River Cats (Sacramento, CA)
Level: Triple-A League: Pacific Coast
Affiliation: Oakland A’s
Real Thing? Maybe? There’s a wild cat known commonly as a fishing cat (note: different than a fisher cat), although it’s both (a) native to South and Southeast Asia and also (b) endangered.
Club: Tri-City ValleyCats (Troy, NY)
Level: Low-A League: New York-Penn
Affiliation: Houston Astros
Real Thing? No, although there are cat clubs in the Fox River and Chippewa Valleys.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
When I was three, my favorite thing at the zoo was the fishing cats. Usually my dad would take me, but one day my mom and her friend took me instead. I kept asking to see the fishing cats, “Fish cats yes see!”, and they kept refusing to believe they existed, much less were in the zoo. Finally, we happened upon them. Again, I was three, so I only have vague memories of this, but I have to imagine I was one smug little bastard.
Does this have more than a fleeting connection to the article? No, most certainly not. But I will take every fucking opportunity I can to talk about fishing cats.