The Asheville Tourists, High-A affiliate of the Houston Astros in the South Atlantic League, will play one game this year as the Snot Otters. The nickname is an homage to the largest species of salamander in North America, the hellbender, which is endemic to the Tourists’ home state of North Carolina.
While Hellbenders would have been a uniquely awesome nickname for a team (one that I’d love to see a minor league team adopt permanently), the Tourists went a step further and took on the hellbender’s nickname, the Snot Otters. Hellbenders earned themselves that moniker because they are covered in a layer of slippery mucus, but the list of the giant salamander’s other nicknames is loaded with opportunities for a minor league baseball team: lasagna lizard, devil dog, mud devil, mud dog, water dog, and leverian water newt, to name a few.
The logo, created by Ryan Foose of Fooser Sports Design, leans heavily into the bodily fluid implications of the nickname. The brand is centered on a dripping hellbender salamander wielding a baseball and a smirk. In keeping with the theme, the typography and uniform design are green and drippy.
The Snot Otters will take the field June 6, after which the jerseys will be auctioned of to support the Western North Carolina Nature Center, a facility in Asheville that is home to 60 species of wild and domestic animals and hundreds of species of plants found in the Southern Appalachians.
