The biggest story of the Minor League Baseball season does not involve a can’t-miss prospect offering a glimpse of a superstar career, or a tear-jerking story of an underdog reaching the majors, or even a veteran proving he can still play in one last comeback attempt.
The biggest story is a British comedian using his television show to rebrand the name of an American baseball team while giving the team zero control over the outcome.
That’s how the Erie SeaWolves became the Erie Moon Mammoths.
It all started on May 4, when “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” on HBO did a segment highlighting why minor league baseball is “incredibly special and inescapably stupid in the very best way.”
Oliver highlighted out some of the zany theme nights, outrageous team names, the occasional promotional mishap — and how fans love it.
At the end of the episode, Oliver gave an open invitation to every team that his show would do a full rebranding of the team.1
"We are willing to use all of our resources and stupidity to give one minor league baseball team a total rebrand," Oliver said. "We will give you a new team name, a new mascot, we will even throw you a theme night. It will be personalized and it will be bespoke. I promise, we will put just as much time, energy and research into this as we do exposing the dark underbelly of America's criminal justice system – arguably more. And we will do this in the spirit of your team, city and the league to which you belong."
It included one huge catch:
"You can't ask us any questions, give us any notes, and you have to do what we come up with."
Despite this strict rule, or maybe because of it, 47 of the 120 full-season affiliated minor league teams volunteered to let Oliver’s show do a rebrand.2
A few weeks later, John Oliver announcing the winning team was the Erie SeaWolves.
The SeaWolves listed 11 reasons why they should be chosen, including because they “play baseball nowhere close to the sea.”
John Oliver and his staff did not tell the SeaWolves they’d been chosen in advance. They found out when the rest of the nation did, when it was announced on the program, which airs on Sunday night at 9 pm Eastern. Again, they had zero control over what the rebranded name would be or any of the details.
Oliver’s staff went to work, researching Erie and came up the following name: the Moon Mammoths.
Why the Moon Mammoths?
Because in 1991, an Erie resident named George Moon was scuba diving in nearby Lake Pleasant and discovered the shoulder blade of a wooly mammoth and 80% of that mammoth’s skeleton was recovered.
Here is the brand reveal, as voiced by Bob Costas.
The first Moon Mammoths game was played last week. John Oliver and his staff were there to revel and orchestrate their creation. It was, yes, a mammoth success.
Oliver was all over the ballpark, throwing out the first pitch to none other than George Moon, who is very much alive and absolutely loved it. Oliver was a vendor, a batboy, led the crowd in singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and spent one inning in the broadcast booth.
Sam Lebowitz tried to teach Oliver how to do play-by-play announcing. We had Lebowitz join us on “Crafting the Call” to breakdown what it was like when a comedian joins you during a live baseball game.
Here is the full episode:
Crafting the Call is a YouTube series that I developed along with Jesse Goldberg-Strassler. We examine different aspects of baseball play-by-play announcing, offering our perspective as working professionals for fans, and advice for fellow broadcasters. To help support our work, subscribe, like, comment, or send us a suggestion for a future episode.One of the best moments was when Sam and John discussed “the key to the city” that Oliver was given. That clip is at the top of this post.
Lebowitz told me3 and Jesse what it’s been like for him and his coworkers the last three months as their small town became a national media story.
The game was completely sold out. The team sold four years worth of merchandise in three weeks. The SeaWolves will wear the Moon Mammoth uniforms against on Aug. 19, then Sept. 12 and 13.
I thought Lebowitz was outstanding. He made John Oliver laugh multiple times. One of the questions I asked him was, “how amazing is it to make a famous hilarious comedian laugh at one of your jokes?”
What’s interesting is that Lebowitz is the #2 radio announcer for the SeaWolves. The #1 announcer Greg Gania is a regular fill-in for the Detroit Tigers and he was working MLB games that weekend. That allowed Lebowitz to broadcast the game and enjoy the interactions with Oliver.
I think you’ll enjoy the episode. It’s part podcast with all the details about the back story, plus you can hear/watch the entire inning with Oliver in the booth.
If you want to watch the original segment of “Last Week’s News Tonight with John Oliver,” you need to be an HBO Max subscriber. It’s the May 4 episode. The main segment of the show is about Deportations, which is the only segment that’s available on YouTube. The minor league story is the “moving on” segment.
My team, the Albuquerque Isotopes, were not one of the 47 that volunteered for the rebrand. Between the Mariachis, the Green Chile Cheeseburgers, Duke City and Dukes Retro Night, I think we have enough brands already.
I wore a shirt in the episode that says Brody. It was created for the late Brody Stevens, a very funny man who brought a lot of positive energy to the world. He was taken from us too soon. Easily, half the celebrities I met when I worked on the Dodgers Radio Network were introduced to me by Brody, including when he got me front row tickets for a taping of Chelsea Handler’s show on E! Brody would have loved the Moon Mammoths and probably traveled to Erie to be there.
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