From April Fools joke to the field: Meet the Hub City Hippos

Everyone knows that there is nothing worse than being on any social media site on April Fools Day. So when the Jackson Generals tweeted out on April 1 last year that they would be changing their name to the Hub City Hippos for the 2017 season, everyone took it with a grain of salt.

ANNOUNCEMENT: We will be the Hub City Hippos starting in 2017! What do you all think? pic.twitter.com/qarUpbQGoc
— Jackson Generals (@jacksongenerals) April 1, 2016

The team slapped together a logo, complete with clipart and the script “Hippos” set in a free font called Ballpark Weiner, and announced the change on Twitter. The announcement was retweeted four times and garnered 13 likes—not exactly a viral sensation—so needless to say, the Generals were surprised when the joke took on a life of its own.

“The craziest thing was, in May we started seeing people wearing ‘Hub City Hippos’ T-shirts,” said Generals general manager Jason Compton, quoted by Benjamin Hill on MiLB.com. “They used the logo that was in our press release.”

It's official! We will be the Hub City Hippos for every Friday home game this year! pic.twitter.com/q6nIQGdW7M
— Jackson Generals (@jacksongenerals) April 1, 2017

Not one to miss an opportunity, the Generals, Double-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks, seized on the momentum. They didn’t adopt a permanent name change, but a year after the initial joke, the team is taking the field for every Friday home game, 11 in total, as the Hub City Hippos. The name comes from Jackson, Tennessee’s nickname, “Hub City,” and the fact that the word “Hippos” also begins with the letter H—not, as Generals assistant general manager Nick Hall said, as quoted on Baseball America, because hippos have anything to do with the local environs:

“We wanted to pay homage to the hippopotamus. Locals know that hippos are a major part of the ecosystem in West Tennessee,” Hall said (jokingly, of course). “The Generals are honored to be the first organization in the region to rightly honor the species.”

The Generals will auction the jerseys off at the end of the season to benefit the Boys & Girls Club of Jackson.