This post, originally published on Major League Baseball’s Opening Day 2019, features a fun gallery of photos of the birds commemorated by North American professional sports teams. It would be a pretty brief gallery if we stuck to baseball, since only three MLB teams qualify for this list. So we’re also recognizing teams from the NFL, NBA, and NHL — 11 species in all that inspired the names of 12 teams. The photos are from our Reader Galleries.
Of course, several minor-league baseball teams and a number of college sports programs are named for birds as well. If you’d like to see more galleries like this, let us know!
The Philadelphia Eagles franchise was founded in 1933, and the owner chose the eagle as the nickname "as a nod to the eagle symbol on the National Recovery Act emblem. The emblem was created to give props to President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal National Recovery Act," according to teamnameorigin.com. Photo by Jeff Weymier
Related: The home of the Milwaukee Bucks is the world’s first bird-friendly arena
Originally Published
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