Team will now whittle through name ideas
BASEBALL
From special reports

When a baby is born, mom and dad usually spend months choosing just the right name for their child.

East Texas baseball fans tried to achieve the same goal in just a week and a half, and hundreds of proud parents participated in the process.

East Texas Sports & Entertainment introduced a new summer collegiate baseball franchise earlier this month that will play here in Kilgore at Driller Park, and immediately asked for help from the community. A "Name Your Team" contest was launched, and the organization hoped fans would embrace the new franchise.

By the end of the contest, nearly 400 individual entries were submitted online, by email, by phone, and by oldfashioned mail. Fans from near and far participated, with entries from nearby communities like Kilgore, Longview, Tyler, Henderson, Jacksonville, and the Metroplex joined by submissions from as far away as Idaho and South Carolina.

"We couldn't be happier with the contest," said Mike Lieberman, the team's general manager. "We are so excited about how baseball fans in East Texas showed their enthusiasm from the very start.

"But they have made this whole process difficult by submitting so many great names. Now we have to find a way to pick just one!"

More than 225 different names were submitted, many of them taking inspiration from the oil and gas industry that is so prominent in East Texas.

The organization will now cull through the entries and select a name for East Texas' new team. An announcement may not come for several weeks while logo and identity elements are considered along with the team's name.

In the meantime, the team, a part of the Texas Collegiate League, is very busy preparing for its inaugural season. In the near future, fans can expect to hear about season ticket options and pricing, to learn more about becoming a host family during the summer, and to find out the schedule for the team's first season. An announcement will also be made about the franchise's very first head coach. Fans can follow all the news and developments by logging on the team's web site, newbaseballteam.com.

TCL officials had been inter- ested in placing a team in East Texas for some time. Kilgore was a good choice not only because of its central location (the league hopes to attract local fans, as well as fans from nearby cities Tyler, Longview, Nacogdoches and Texarkana), but also because of the historical significance of Driller Park in the state.

The league hopes to give give Kilgore baseball fans affordable, quality baseball during the summer, something that hasn't happened since the Kilgore Drillers played their last game here in 1950.

The TCL features some of the best college prospects in the nation. The players will be housed by host families, and aren't paid. All the players in the league are enrolled in a college program somewhere, and college eligibility is a requirement for playing in the league.

Keep up with Kilgore's new TCL franchise here in the sports section of the Kilgore News Herald.