Are our professional sports teams names — Steelers, Pirates and Penguins — the original names?
Of the three, only the Penguins have played under the same name for their entire existence. The fact that they’ve played crappy hockey in recent years — just like they used to in the good old days — is also a nice retro touch. Of course, the Penguins haven’t been in existence as long as the other two teams, having only been around since 1967, while the Pirates date back in the 1800s and the Steelers — fittingly enough — got their start during the Great Depression. Given shifts in marketing strategy and economics, in a few years we might be calling the Pens something else entirely. Like, say, the Nashville Penguins. Bob Grove’s official history of the Penguins notes that the team’s management had to come up with a name other than that of the existing minor-league squad, the Hornets. (Coaches apparently assumed that, for the first few years at least, people wouldn’t recognize that the expansion squad was a pro team just by watching it play.) The new name was picked by the wife of tea
