When the Mobile Baybears, the Angels’ Double A affiliate, move north to suburban Huntsville, Alabama, in 2020, they’ll have a new name.
Rocket City was the runaway favorite in fan voting for the regional identifier (with 67.4% of the vote), beating out North Alabama and Madison. It’s a nod to Huntsville’s home of NASA’s rocket-building operations.
Fans were given 10 team nicknames to vote on as well, mostly with space references: Comet Jockeys, Moon Possums, Space Chimps, ThunderSharks, Trash Pandas, Army Ants, GloWorms, Lunartics, Puffy Head Bird Legs and Space Sloths.
The Trash Pandas nickname is also apparently a winking reference to the character Rocket Raccoon from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.