Consider the Lobster
March 26, 2010
Colby College adopted the White Mules mascot in the 1920s, after the Athletic Department grew tired of having the school's football team continually referred to as a "dark horse" to win the division crown.1, 2
The mule, for most, conjures up images of stamina and hard work, characteristics with which any sports team would want to be associated. On second thought, however, when considering the larger athletic world in which the Colby White Mules must operate, it may well have been more realistic for this Maine school to have searched its nearby coastline for inspiration.
The cold hard fact of the matter is that Colby plays in a conference near the bottom of the college baseball ocean's food chain. They're basically a sea insect of the baseball world.3 As Jeff previously outlined in an article at The Hardball Times, it’s possible to deduce how specific Division 3 teams and conferences stack up against the mighty D1.4 At the risk of getting too technical on people, the results are...not pretty.
Alas, just as the Laws of Nature are universal for either the lobster or the lion--eat, sleep, kill-or-be-killed--so too are the Laws of Baseball for either the White Mules or the Sun Devils--hit, pitch, field.
This weekend, we’ll take a look back at how this year's Colby squad fared in their first week of trying to work their way up the baseball food chain.
1 According to Colby magazine it was Joseph Coburn Smith, editor of the school newspaper The Colby Echo, who hatched the idea. "Why should we not have a mascot, and what would make a better mascot than a little white mule?" he wrote, calling it "the antithesis of 'The Dark Horse.'"
2 It's unlikely that Smith considered the ramifications of a direct matchup with Southern Arkansas University, home of the Muleriders.
3 Lobsters date as far back as the Jurassic period. So, at least what they lack in ferocity they make up for in longevity. Much like Jamie Moyer. Or Jay Leno.
4 It turns out, in fact, that a very good D-3 team (with a win percentage of .900) could be a middle-of-the-pack competitor in Division 1.