Grind up dried maize or hominy and make a porridge out of it and what do you have? The newest entry in Minor League Baseball’s decades-long food frenzy, the Carolina Grits. The Columbia Fireflies are celebrating the Southern culinary staple with a new alternate identity just unveiled this week.
“Dating back nearly 200 years to its Native American roots, grits … are embedded in the history of our region, our state, and our city,” the team said in a statement. “So it was only fitting for us to make the Carolina Grits our first food identity.”
The logo features an anthropomorphic baseball cap filled with grits and wielding a spoon like a baseball bat. This year at the Fireflies’ home of Segra Park, a specialty concession called “Grits, Y’all!” will serve local grits—based on the logo one can only hope they’ll be served in a miniature plastic helmet.
Grits are synonymous with the South, so much so that they are the state food of Georgia, where the Fireflies’ lived a previous lifetime as the Savannah Sand Gnats. In 1976, a bill was introduced to make grits the state food of the Fireflies’ current home state of South Carolina, though it did not advance.
The Fireflies will play as the Grits for eight games this season, beginning April 26–28 for three games against the Augusta GreenJackets, then again May 16, June 18, July 1, August 8, and September 4.
