Lansing Lugnuts to Play Two as the “Cap City Olive Burgers”

The Lansing Lugnuts, High-A Midwest League affiliate of MLB’s Athletics, will play two games this season as the “Cap City Olive Burgers.” The geographic signifier “Cap City” acknowledges Lansing’s status as the capital of the U.S. state of Michigan, while the nickname “Olive Burgers” pays tribute to a culinary staple of mid-Michigan: a hamburger topped with a mixture of mayonnaise, chopped olives, and olive brine.

Like the sauce on top of them, the origins of olive burgers are murky. While there is no consensus on their origin, olive burgers have been featured on restaurant menus and in homes for more than a century, with the first documented evidence of their existence dating back to a restaurant chain called Kewpee Hotel Hamburgers in 1923.

With the announcement of the new name, the Lugnuts unveiled logos centred on an anthropomorphic olive burger character, complete with a layer of briny mayo sauce. The burger is swinging a frilled toothpick like a baseball bat, with a green olive standing in for a baseball.

The Olive Burgers will take the field on July 19th and August 14th.

The Lansing Lugnuts began play in 1996, relocating from Springfield, Illinois, where the club had previously operated as the Springfield Sultans. The move to Lansing coincided with the construction of a new downtown ballpark, originally named Oldsmobile Park, which brought professional baseball back to Michigan’s capital city for the first time since 1942. The Lugnuts debuted as a Class-A Midwest League affiliate of the Kansas City Royals, later affiliating with the Chicago Cubs, Toronto Blue Jays, and, most recently, the Oakland Athletics.

LINK: Lansing Lugnuts logo history