Doing the Twist: The Story Behind the Omaha Storm Chasers

There are a lot of sports teams named after severe weather or natural disasters—Avalanche, Hurricanes, Quakes, Storm, Thunder, etc. But very few teams are named for the people who actually head out into the world in intentional pursuit of extreme weather events.

The term storm chasing is most commonly associated with people who track tornadoes in the American Midwest, though it can apply to anyone who pursues extreme weather, either recreationally or for science. It is also commonly associated (in my mind, anyway) with the 1996 movie Twister featuring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton and a bunch of flying cows. As we know from the movie, people who chase storms have to be brave and a little bit reckless and ruggedly attractive, in a mussed-hair, ruffled-clothing sort of way.

“Being a storm chaser, I wouldn’t say is the most safe thing in the world,” said Martie Cordaro, president and general manager of the triple-A Omaha Storm Chasers. “It takes a special, unique individual that’s trained to be a storm chaser.”

Omaha’s minor league baseball team had been called the Royals after its parent club for nearly its entire existence, beginning in 1969. (There was an ill-fated three-year stint from 1999 to 2001 when they were the Omaha Golden Spikes, a reference to the transcontinental railroad that had more to do with Utah than Nebraska.) But with the big league Royals mired in longterm mediocrity and the name Royals not applying to the local Omaha community, the team asked itself some soul-searching questions.

“Are we Omaha Royals because we always have been, because we were affiliated with Kansas City, or is there really a connection there?” Cordaro asked. “The Royals had lost for a number of years, plus the Royals were in Kansas City. The Royals were not in Omaha.”

When the rebrand process began in 2010, a name-the-team contest turned up a consistent theme.

“We got over 1,500 unique name suggestions, 5,000 total names,” Cordaro said, “and there were a lot of weather-related ones in there, from hail, wind, rain, storms, flooding, you name it. Anything that had to do with weather, it was in there.”

The thing that makes the Storm Chasers’ name-the-team contest unique among all the others I’ve written about in this series is that the fans genuinely selected the team name. The organization chose 24 appropriate entries based on their own market research, conducted in concert with the design firm Brandiose, then known as Plan B, then a series of fan votes narrowed down the options to nine, three, and the final selection. Unlike most minor league baseball name-the-team contests, which are basically farces intended to generate publicity, in this instance, the name that got the most votes was what the team would be called.

With fan voting actually selecting the team name, it seems that Omaha might have circumvented the normal cycle of annoyed traditionalists horrified at the new identity who then almost immediately turn around and start loving it. But it was not to be.

“Any time you have a change, you’re going to have frustrated people. We dealt with those as any team does when they make changes,” Cordaro said. “We didn’t have a lot of, ‘I can’t believe you’re not the Royals anymore.’ We did have some of, ‘I can’t believe you’re the Storm Chasers.’”

Of course, the new look has afforded the club opportunities that being named after their Major League affiliate did not. “We actually have a brand,” Cordaro said. “We can tie in with meteorology and weather programs. There’s a lot of things we’re able to do now that we weren’t able to do prior to the rebranding.”

The most popular element of the new logo set is a tornado named Vortex with a baseball bat for a nose. He exists as a three-dimensional, inflatable character (above) and is featured on the home cap, seen at right on catcher Francisco Pena.

Other design elements include what Cordaro called the O-bolt, featured on the team’s road caps, and alternate logos with the letters SC—presumably for Storm Chasers, though there are competing theories.

“It does stand for Storm Chasers,” Cordaro said. “I will tell you, the county we’re based in is Sarpy County. People do feel that it is for Sarpy County. It was not intended to be that way, but yes, it is both for Storm Chasers and for Sarpy County.” (Cordaro also pointed out that his wife, Sarah Cordaro, has her own theory about what the SC stands for.)

The Storm Chasers’ rebrand coincided with a resurgence of Kansas City’s farm system, which has translated to success on the field for Omaha. The Storm Chasers have made the playoffs all four years that they’ve existed and they’ve won not only the Pacific Coast League title, but the one-game triple-A championship game against the International League champion each of the last two seasons.

Not only that, but Omaha will host the triple-A All-Star Game this July in Werner Park, the Storm Chasers’ new home as of 2011.

So with consecutive championship seasons, the fifth anniversary of their ballpark, and the impending All Star Game, there’s a fair amount going on in Omaha. You could even say—or better yet, let Martie Cordaro say it for you, “It kind of was the perfect storm. Pun intended.”

The most interesting thing about the Storm Chasers’ name is that it connects the team to extreme weather without actually being specifically named for extreme weather. A sports nickname that conjures the people who pursue tornadoes rather than the tornadoes themselves is a twist (as it were) on the traditional approach. The Storm Chasers have had early success with their new look, which, combined with success on the field, has made them one of the more recognizable brands in the minors.