Cookie Rojas has worked on the business side of baseball long enough to know a marketing opportunity when he sees one. In 2016, it came across with his introduction to Austin Nola, the former LSU baseball player and then-infielder with the Miami Marlins organization.
Nola had already completed his first season in New Orleans playing for the then-Zephyrs. Rojas, brought aboard as the team general manager that offseason, immediately identified the Nola name -- the N-O-L-A aspect of it -- for how the name on the back of the jersey could be the same the city abbreviation on the front.