london-rippers

David Martin, president and general manager of new independent baseball Frontier League team the London Rippers, doesn’t understand why people think he named the team after Jack the Ripper, the infamous serial killer who raped and murdered prostitutes. I mean, this is London Ontario, not London England, for crying out loud, and the mascot in the logo wearing a 19th-century top hat named “Jack” for your team called the “Rippers” is purely coincidental. And the prostitute who had her abdomen sliced open and uterus removed by Dave Martin during the team’s first press conference? Well now you’re just reaching for straws!

He said any association with Jack the Ripper is all a misunderstanding.

“I could have made it another fluffy animal that every other teams seems to do,” he said, adding he wanted to do something “edgy.”

The team logo shows Jack wearing a black top hat and trench coat that covers most of his face, except for his eyes. Martin says the connection to Jack the Ripper never came up when the logo was designed.

The best part of Jack the Actual Ripper never coming up during the creation of his team is the slogan at the top of their promotional posters: “Lurking in LaBatt park this spring …”

Come on, Dave, seriously? You can take the “we wanted to be edgy” route and name your team the Rippers as a statement against the extreme sensitivity of the modern sports attitude, but those posters might as well have Troll Gaze on them. They should reprint them with “Literally gutting you and removing your entrails in a dark alleyway because you’re a woman this spring …”

I’m going to start a Minor League team in Austin called the “Dahmers”, put a frozen cat head with a human penis jammed in its ear on my logo and spend the next six months issuing press statements that read, “heh, come on, get a life”.

[via London Free Press, h/t to Fark Sports]