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Rock the vote: Help rename the hated Staten Island Yankees

Clones learn quick — hate the Yankees!
The Brooklyn Paper / Tom Callan

We won’t have the Yankees to kick around anymore.

The most hated team in baseball — the Staten Island Yankees — is looking to be hated less, as team management announced this week it is going to change the name of the squad from the moniker made famous by the boys in the Bronx to something more befitting of team the plays on the Rock.

And who better to name the team than the throngs of Islanders with internet access — the Evil Empire of the New York-Penn League will allow fans living in bucolic Staten Island to submit their favorite names for the boys in blue. The best six names will then be voted on by fans, and a new name will be chosen.

Mayor DeBlasio has already cast his vote, announcing the team should be named the “Captains,” because the ballpark where it plays is right next to the iconic Staten Island Ferry Terminal, where Islanders regularly use 19th century technology to travel to Manhattan.

A more likely name for the team will probably have something to do with the now-under-construction New York Wheel, a 660-foot observation wheel akin to the London Eye on the Thames River in England. So we are betting on the “Wheelers.” Of course, also being constructed next door is a new mall known as Empire Outlets, so the “Emperors” is not out of the question.

Other names being tossed around our newsroom are the “Guzzlers,” for Islanders’ love of traveling by car; the “Coneheads” for Islanders’ love of saving the parking spots in front of their houses for themselves; “Killers,” because the Island is home to weird waterways known as “Arthur Kill,” “Great Kills,” “Kill van Kull,” and our favorite, “Fresh Kills,” (which is where the world’s largest garbage dump was); and, naturally, the “Italian Stallions,” named for about 35 percent of the population. Some new fancy team names don’t have an “s” at the end, so we offer the Staten Island “Rage,” as in road rage, a common condition on the Island.

A shout out could also be made to the two Staten Islanders who are now cast members and writers on “Saturday Night Live,” Colin Jost and Pete Davidson, in which case the team would be named the Staten Island “Clowns.”

We could keep going with this, but we are running out of space.

It is unclear what will happen to Scooter the Holy Cow, the team’s beloved mascot named for Hall of Fame Yankee shortstop and “Money Store” pitchman Phil “Scooter” Rizutto.

This is not the first time fans have been asked to name a team. Back in 2000, when the Queens Kings were moving from St. John’s University in Queens to a new ballpark in Coney Island, the public was asked to come up with a name. This reporter, of course, voted for the Thunderbolts — named for the Coney Island roller coaster seen in the Woody Allen classic “Annie Hall” that was illegally knocked down by the city shortly before the team moved in.

Instead the team was named for another famous Coney coaster, mostly because the most important vote went to then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

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