Hochman: Logos say a lot about teams

Stan Hochman...hey, at least he dislikes Frank Crosetti.

They talked softly because Manny Ramirez totes a big stick. They patiently explained that the team was called the Isotopes, and that an isotope is any of two or more species of atoms of a chemical element with the same atomic number and position in the periodic table and nearly identical chemical behavior but with differing atomic mass.

Manny was OK with that, especially when they told him the air was thin and the fences cozy and the pitching mediocre. And yo, testosterone-breath, the team logo was cool, an abstract A with no crossbar. Just two of those slanted circles featuring an atom or a proton or a neuron, whatever.

It is a cool logo because it refers to the secret place outside of Albuquerque where scientists perfected an atomic bomb that blew away huge chunks of two Japanese cities and brought a swift end to World War II, making the world safe for democracy once again.

...We’ve had our share of woeful logos in the city. Take the A’s symbol, an elephant perched on a ball with a bat in its trunk. Ugh.

It was bad, but not as awful as the Red Sox, represented by a pair of red sawx, appropriate for a laundromat but not a big-league baseball team.