The minor league baseball food-based alternate identity multi-verse converged upon itself today when two teams unveiled alternate identities with nearly the same name within hours of one another. Both the Triple-A Lehigh Valley IronPigs, an affiliate of the Phillies in the International League, and the Trenton Thunder, a member of the collegiate summer level MLB Draft League, will play one game each with identities based on the Italian-American delicacy tomato pies.
The IronPigs will rebrand as the Lehigh Valley Tomato Pie for their annual Salute to Philadelphia Night. The team explains that tomato pies, which are square, thick-crust pizzas with lots of sauce and just a dusting of grated cheese, are a specialty from Philadelphia and the surrounding area. In recent years, the Salute to Philly series has included tributes to New Years Day costumed musicians known as the Mummers (2024), iconic Hoagies sandwiches (2023), the frozen confection “Wooder” Ice (2022), and an ice cream topping called Jimmies (2021).
Meanwhile, about 75 miles away in New Jersey, the Thunder unveiled their Trenton Tomato Pies brand. The name is distinct because Trenton pluralized the word Pies while Lehigh Valley used the mass noun Pie, but more importantly, the food item itself is different. In Trenton, the team explains, the regional variety of the tomato pie has a thin crust with cheese and toppings placed directly on the crust before the sauce.
While all of this might seem like an amazing but inevitable coincidence, it seems it’s the result of a friendly rivalry between the two teams. According to the website Tomato Pies Baseball, which features the stories of both teams, the IronPigs and Thunder “decided to have a friendly battle on who has the better Tomato Pie: the Philly area or Trenton.”
Both sets of logos were created by Brandiose.
Lehigh Valley and its thick crust, sauce-heavy Tomato Pie will take to the field May 23, while Trenton and the thin crust, upside-down toppings Tomato Pies will play June 28.
