a's or athletics -- what a trademark dispute reveals, and why it matters to me

I’ve long been interested in sports franchise movement and name changes, particularly in Major League Baseball. So when I learned that the team formerly known as the Oakland Athletics had been denied trademarks for “Las Vegas Athletics” and “Vegas Athletics,” but approved for “Las Vegas A’s,” it immediately caught my attention.

On its face, this looks like a narrow legal story. But it touches on something much older and more fundamental: what baseball teams are actually called, who decides that, and how those decisions have changed over time.

What I called them — and what the record says

Growing up, I thought of the team simply as the A’s. I knew that was short for “Athletics,” just as I knew the Mets were short for “Metropolitans” and the Yankees for "Yankee-ee-ees." But in conversation, on uniforms, and on baseball cards, they were the A’s.

That impression was reinforced by my father. When we talked baseball, he talked about the A’s. Not the Athletics.

At some point much later, when I started doing more systematic historical work, I needed a single, consistent source of truth for team identities. For me, that source is Baseball-Reference. It’s not perfect, but it is transparent, consistent, and careful about continuity.

Baseball-Reference lists the franchise’s nickname as “Athletics” continuously from 1901 to the present. No alternation. No official back-and-forth. Just Athletics.

That surprised me at first — but I accepted it, because when you decide on a source of truth, you have to live with it.

A childhood lesson in “correctness”

The distinction mattered to me even as a kid.

I remember wanting to show off for my grandpa Ed by reciting all the major league teams in alphabetical order. There were only twenty-four teams then — sometime between 1969 and 1976 — but that detail matters only because I had memorized the list by sorting my baseball cards by team.

I knew there was one potential snag. Did I say A’s or Athletics? It mattered, because it determined whether the team came before or after the Astros.

So I asked my grandfather which was right.

Without hesitation, he said, “Athletics, of course.”

That caught me off guard. I was used to saying the A’s. My father said the A’s. But my grandfather’s answer carried a different kind of authority — as though, whatever fans said informally, there was still a sense that the proper name existed underneath.

I didn’t articulate it that way at the time, but the lesson stuck.

When team names weren’t “official” yet

Part of the confusion here comes from the fact that baseball team names did not begin as formal, declared brands.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, nicknames were often:

• informal,
• media-driven,
• situational,
• and sometimes accidental.

Teams could have multiple nicknames at once, and newspapers freely experimented. The Cincinnati Kelly’s Killers, the Chicago Orphans, the Brooklyn Bridegrooms — these weren’t the result of branding exercises. They were labels that caught on because writers used them and readers understood them.

There was no trademark strategy. No naming committee. No press conference unveiling a logo.

From informal tradition to formal branding

Over time, that looseness disappeared.

As franchises became long-lived commercial entities, names hardened into official identities. By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, naming (and renaming) a team became a major corporate exercise, often accompanied by fan outreach, surveys, and carefully managed rollouts.

A clear example is the Cleveland franchise’s transition to the Cleveland Guardians, a process that explicitly solicited public input and emphasized deliberateness. Expansion franchises, in particular, often lean heavily on fan suggestions when selecting names, precisely because the name is now understood as a long-term asset.

In other words, the sport moved from organic, informal naming to formal, legally protected branding — and that evolution sets the stage for the current trademark dispute.

Why the trademark office cares

Trademark law has little patience for ambiguity.

“Athletics” is an extremely old name, one that predates modern trademark norms and was used by multiple teams in different cities over the decades. It is also descriptively weak: the word does not inherently distinguish one specific commercial source.

“A’s,” by contrast, is distinctive. It is visually iconic, closely associated with a specific logo, and has decades of consistent use on uniforms and merchandise. From a trademark perspective, it cleanly identifies this franchise.

Seen that way, it is not especially surprising that “Las Vegas A’s” cleared a hurdle that “Las Vegas Athletics” did not.

Why I find this funny

Here’s where this circles back to my own work — and why the situation genuinely amuses me.

For years, in my ongoing tracking project (“Stoopidstats,” which I really should trademark), I have listed this franchise as the Athletics, even though I personally thought of them as the A’s. I did that because Baseball-Reference is my source of truth, and consistency matters.

This isn’t cosmetic. I track cumulative wins — and games over .500 — by nickname.

A friend recently noticed this and thought it odd. He was sure that the team’s official name must have alternated over time between A’s and Athletics, and was surprised to learn that, according to my source, it never did.

Which makes the current situation deliciously ironic: after decades of thinking of them as the A’s but listing them as the Athletics, the franchise may now be forced, by trademark reality, to become the A’s.

What this means for my stoopidstats

From a purely statistical standpoint, this makes things interesting.

Adding Las Vegas (or Vegas, or Nevada) as a location already complicates franchise tracking. Adding Nevada as a state does too. And adding “A’s” as a distinct nickname would create something entirely new.

Right now, “Athletics” ranks third all-time in wins by nickname, with 10,302, behind only “Giants” and “Reds.” Fourth place belongs to the “Pirates,” with 10,263 wins. That 39-win margin between them will, of course change over the next few years, but when the "Athletics" name goes away (if it goes away) it is likely to still be third and "Pirates" is likely to still be fourth. But from that point on, "Athletics" will sink, and "Pirates" will likely be the first to pass it. And, of course, I’ll get to watch a new entry (A's) start with zero wins and slowly climb the rankings, passing such memorable but defunct names as "Mansfields," Tip-Tops" and "Quicksteps."

That’s not a tragedy. It’s a reminder.

Names, memory, and authority

This whole episode highlights the tension between:

• how fans remember teams,
• how historians catalog them,
• and how the law insists they be defined.

I grew up saying the A’s. My father said the A’s. My grandfather insisted on Athletics. Baseball-Reference sided with my grandfather. Trademark law may ultimately side with my childhood self. And I still think "Phillies" is a lazy name, but that's a subject for a different post.