ANIMAL KINGDOM

Baseball is back, and the new season is full of promise. We at Dartboard will be watching closely as Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr. chase Roger Maris' home run record, the Milwaukee Brewers get acquainted to the National League and the Yankees look to justify their astronomical payroll with a return to the World Series.

Still, we can't quite get used to the two newest additions to the Majors, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It's bad enough that the quality of pitching in the Bigs will be further diluted by expansion, and that retirement states like Arizona and Florida will get teams while real cities such as Washington, D.C., remain without baseball.

It's the names of the new franchises themselves that really cheapen the national pastime. The Diamondbacks and Devil Rays just don't deserve to be in the same box scores as the Yankees or the Red Sox. True, the teams followed an animal-name tradition that has served the game well. After all, what would Detroit be without its Tigers or Chicago without its Cubs?

Yet the classic names are short and catchy and refer to creatures that can be found in any local zoo, creatures we grew up with as kids. Tigers, we all know, are fierce and cubs cuddly.

What is a devil ray? We at Dartboard aren't quite sure, but the name reminds us of a New Jersey hockey player submerged somewhere in the New England Aquarium. They may be lovely fish, if they exist, but do we need to hear about them every night for six months on Sportscenter?

As for the Diamondbacks, we've heard they're snakes native to the Arizona desert. Nice to know, but who wants to root for a bunch of scaly, slithering beasts? Ecological diversity is a good thing, but when it comes to baseball, we'll take the familiar.