The Talk of New York Here Come the Hitmen By BOB YAMPOLSKY	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
新しいアメフトリーグ誕生 新しいアメフトリーグ誕生 今月初め、アメリカに新しいアメフトリーグが誕生しました。筆者の住むニューヨークを拠点とするチームの名は Hitmen （殺し屋）。なんとも物騒な名前ですが、アメリカのスポーツチーム、特に地域に根づいた球団の名前にはそれぞれ由来があります。今週は、いろいろな名前にまつわる由来を筆者が紹介します。

Yet another professional sports league had its debut earlier this month: the XFL, or "the Extreme Football League."

Our local team is called the New York/New Jersey Hitmen. This name is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, that New York/New Jersey part. As far as I know, this is the first time that a U.S. sports franchise has claimed a dual home base like this. The Hitmen play in New Jersey, at a stadium a half-hour drive from Midtown Manhattan. New York's two other professional football teams, the Giants and the Jets, also play at the same stadium.

It annoys New Yorkers (most notably, the mayor) that its two football teams don't play in New York (they used to play in the city), and it annoys New Jerseyites that the Giants and Jets don't admit that they're actually New Jersey teams. New Yorkers, in general, feel infinitely superior to New Jerseyites (think of Tokyo and Saitama), and New Jerseyites have a corresponding inferiority complex. The New York/New Jersey Hitmen, bless their souls, are apparently trying to bring us all together.

Now the second interesting part of their name is the Hitmen part. A hitman, in American slang, is a professional killer. I suppose this is an extreme name for an extreme league, but it seems to me to be in extremely bad taste.

The names of sports teams in America generally fall into one of two categories. One is a general name, like the Lions or Tigers, that could fit just about any team anywhere. The other, more interesting type, is the name that has definite local roots.

Let us take, for example, the Super Bowl, which was played a week before the Hitmen made their debut. This year's game was between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Ravens. Now the Giants are an example of a general, superhero type name: We have Giants in New York, San Francisco and Tokyo, and there is nothing odd about any of these. But the Ravens are a very locality-specific name, coming from the poem, "The Raven," by Edgar Allen Poe, who was a Baltimore native (even though, ironically enough, Poe actually wrote "The Raven" while living in New York).

I like these local names. We have the Detroit Pistons, because cars are made there. We have the Houston Astros and the Houston Rockets, because Houston is where NASA's space command is. We have the Pittsburgh Steelers, because Pittsburgh is a steel town. We have the Colorado Rockies, the Texas Rangers and the Philadelphia 76ers (as in 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia).

Sometimes, though, you get strange combinations. For example, there is the basketball team called the Los Angeles Lakers. Now as far as I know, there isn't a lake anywhere near Los Angeles. It's dry as a bone out there. Why this odd name? The franchise used to be the Minneapolis Lakers, and Minneapolis is in the state of Minnesota, "The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes."

We also have a basketball team called the Utah Jazz. Now Utah is famous for one type of music, the music of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which is a lot of Mormons in robes singing religious songs; this is about as far away from jazz as you can get, while remaining in the realm of music. Why this odd name? The franchise used to be the New Orleans Jazz, and New Orleans, of course, is one of the homes of jazz.

And sometimes a name can have an unfortunate ring. For example, the Washington basketball team used to be called the Bullets, but with all the shootings going on in the city, it became a sadly appropriate name, and the team changed its name to the Wizards.

Closer to home, our basketball team is the Knickerbockers, which refers to the Dutch settlers of Manhattan. A Yankee is an inhabitant of the U.S. northeast. The Mets are short for the Metropolitans. The football Jets used to play in the same stadium as the Mets, right near an airport, so the name fit.

To continue in the rhyming scheme, there was a basketball team called the New York Nets, and in the 70s, when there was professional team tennis, we even had the New York Sets, but that tennis league, thankfully, quickly folded.

Which brings us back to the Hitmen. I have no doubt that the XFL, too, will fold in a year or two. In a fit of channel surfing last Saturday night, I managed to catch the first game for the Hitmen, and they were awful. True, there were a lot of nearly naked cheerleaders bouncing around, and true, the rules have been changed to make the game more violent, and true, one of the broadcasters was none other than the current governor of Minnesota, the former pro wrestling star, Jesse "the Body" Ventura (God help the people of that state), but none of these frills could disguise the fact that it was very mediocre football.

Shukan ST: Feb. 23, 2001

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