Last Star Wars Day, we took a dive into the history of the Evil Empire moniker for the New York Yankees. Despite its closely-knit association with the organization, the nickname is fairly new, coined by Red Sox team president Larry Lucchino in disgust after the Yankees signed Cuban defector José Contreras a week after adding Japanese superstar Hideki Matsui in December 2002. Six years later, the Yankees and Major League Baseball filed a trademark objection against Evil Enterprises, Inc., who had attempted to file a trademark for “Baseball’s Evil Empire”. Citing newspaper articles using the term to refer to the Yankees and noting the fact that the team played Star Wars music to announce the lineups, the team successfully argued that the only Evil Empire was, in the eyes of law, the New York Yankees.
Can the Yankees still claim to be baseball’s Evil Empire?
