Ranking All 30 MLB Teams By How Intimidating Their Name Is

All but a handful of Major League Baseball team names fall into one of three categories: birds (three), socks (strange, I know; three), and humans (15 or 16, depending on how you classify giants), and, amazingly, only seven or eight cut a figure one wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.

Here’s all 30 MLB teams, ranked from least- to most-threatening name. (If this is weirdly your thing, also check out our similar rankings of all 30 NBA teams.)

30. Houston Astros

Not only is an “astro” not a thing, it’s not even an imaginary thing. It’s a goddamn prefix indicating relation to stars, appropriate because Houston is home to NASA’s Lyndon B. Jonshon Space Center.

Everything on this list, including the three teams that are named after socks, can beat up a prefix.

29. Chicago White Sox

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Originally called the White Stockings for obvious reasons, the Chicago Tribune used the White Sox name to fit it into headlines.

It’s a shame they didn’t change it to something a little more threatening — of all colors for socks to be, white is by far the least dangerous, not to mention the most susceptible to stains.

28. Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox are just barely more intimidating than the White Sox for the simple fact that red is the color of blood and Bostonian’s faces when you tell them their city is garbage because everything closes at midnight. The only thing a red sock scares is a load of whites.

27. Cincinnati Reds

No, they’re not named after communists, rather “Reds” is a shortening of “Redlegs,” a name they switched to to avoid such an association. They get domain over the Boston Red Sox because Cincy had the name Red Stockings before Boston, all the way back in 1882.