You would think changing a pejorative team name is a 21st-century issue, but that may not be the case. It is not a new phenomenon; one would have to go back to 1907 when a baseball team in Jacksonville, Illinois, was scrutinized to make a name change. That team was the Jacksonville Lunatics.
It was not a decision made by team owners to adopt the Lunatics nickname but by the newspapers of the late 19th century who linked the players to the Jacksonville Developmental Center, which opened in 1851. It would be called the Jacksonville State Lunatic Asylum in the newspapers.
Its creation was to shift the economic burden of the mentally ill onto the state, which paid all of the patient’s expenses. Newspaper articles referring to the asylum described the residents as raving maniacs, insane, crazy, and lunatics. Other stories reported on residents escaping, locals committing, and former residents committing suicide in a fit of insanity.
Not surprisingly, when the Jacksonville team took the field in the Illinois-Iowa League for the 1892 season, the cigar-chomping sports writers couldn’t wait to slam down on their typewriters about the boys from Lunatic Town. All through the season, visiting newspapers added mischievous jests at the town known for its state hospital and residents.
One would only have to look up the first month’s stories from April and May to see the descriptive words used to describe the ball club. It did not take the local Jacksonville newspaper, the Illinois Daily Courier, long to notice what the other league cities were printing in their papers about the Jacksonville Ball Club.
“Nulton was the next man to face the twirler from lunatic town”
“As he stood eyeing the pitcher from insaneville a few in the grandstand who hadn’t got their money’s worth began to give him a little roast by calling him baby.”
“The Lunatics got the way the insane asylum at Jacksonville operated.”
“When the demented creatures attempted to strike back their poor, weak efforts showed the lack of proper nourishment…”
“When the demented creatures attempted to strike back their poor, weak efforts showed the lack of proper nourishment and indicated that the good things of life were for the managers only”
“Eight of them wildly beat the ambient air and went back to their benches, not particularly wiser but considerably madder men.”
Much of this research was conducted by the University of St. Mary, Dr. Joe Squillace, associate professor at the University of St. Mary in Leavenworth, Kansas. He conducted extensive research on the baseball club that resulted in his journal entry entitled “Changing Community Perceptions of Baseball Team Names: The Case of the Jacksonville Lunatics”.
He joined me on a recent episode of the Ballpark Hunter Podcast to discuss the history of the club and its peculiar nickname.
“If you are a sportswriter, you are all about sarcasm, quips, and jabs at the enemy team. It was no different than what you see at the high school level between two football teams on a Friday night. You always want to take a jab at the opposing school.”
The team would cease operations after three seasons and return for a brief 7-week period in 1900. In 1906, a new Jacksonville team joined the Kentucky- Illinois-Tennessee League (Kitty League), returning the Lunatics name used 12 years earlier. The following year, the local newspapers began thinking about using the name.
Right before the start of the 1907 season, Jacksonville joined the Iowa State League, and the Jacksonville Daily-Courier newspaper opted for a new name, referring to them as the Kittens due to many players being on last year’s Kitty League team. The paper issued the following words on May 7, the opening of the season.
“By the way, don’t you think that Kittens is a much nicer name than the Lunatics? And besides it’s much more appropriate, as we are former Kitty leaguers and youngsters, and then it seems real horrid to call the boys Lunatics. We’ve promised never to do it again, so there.”
Jacksonville Lunatics team photo from 1908 when they joined the Central Association.
It would lead to the Waterloo Courier agreeing to call them the Kittens since “the Jacksonville Courier is not in favor of having the baseball team from that city go through the summer with the Lunatic attached to them.”
The Quincy Daily-Herald, Burlington Evening-Gazette, and the Waterloo Daily-Courier also agreed to print the new name in newspaper articles. However, the Oskaloosa Daily-Herald, Waterloo Times-Herald, and Jacksonville’s second newspaper, the Daily-Journal, continued to refer to the ball club as the Lunatics throughout the season.
“What you see by 1907 is the town struggling with the name Lunatics,” added Squillace. “They were trying to respect the medical community, and clearly, the language was becoming more pejorative. People in the community did not want to use that name anymore, but in the same year, other newspapers still called them the Lunatics. It is clear that the community wanted a change.”
To add further confusion, the papers from Marshalltown and Ottumwa referred to the club as the Jacksonville team. Does this sound like a particular NFL team from Washington?
By the end of the year, the Quincy paper began calling the ball club the Lunatics. Quickly, the old nickname fell back to fold, and the team went back to it in 1908. That’s the way it would be until baseball folded in town in 1910.
Minor league or summer collegiate baseball would not return to Jacksonville, and the Lunatics name is long forgotten, along with a list of other former names, but what if baseball had persisted and the town grew? How long could the name have survived in the following decades? Could the name be used today for a new ball club?
Squillace added that a name lasts as long as the community or culture lets it or until there is enough outcry for a change:
“The Lunatic name would be shunned today by many due to the language and things we associate with the word from the past. It is not sports writers embracing the names; it is the corporate end that asks for input from the community. Language does change over time.”
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Follow all of Marc’s stadium journeys on Twitter @ballparkhunter and his YouTube channel. Email at Marc.Viquez@stadiumjourney.com
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