Fifteenth Year of SL Bees
Celebrating a Timeless Game
Shortly after purchasing the Triple-A baseball
team in Salt Lake City in 2005, Larry H. Miller
knew that one of the first things on his agenda
would be changing the name from the Stingers back
to the Bees name of his youth.
“We are excited to bring Salt Lake baseball
back to its roots,” Miller said in a 2005 press release
announcing the name change. “The Bees are a
significant part of baseball history in Utah, and
it’s our hope that the change will bring with it the
nostalgia baseball is known for.”
The roots of Bees baseball date back to 1915,
when the Pacific Coast League’s San Francisco
team relocated from the bay to the mountains.
A name-the-team contest was held to change
the name, and “Bees” was chosen as a nod to the
Beehive State. The original Bees lasted until 1926,
when they packed up and moved to Hollywood.
They stayed in Southern California until the
Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, in 1958, and
the team returned to Salt Lake City, where they
remained the Bees until 1969.
Baseball remained a constant in Salt Lake
over the next 35 years, but the name of the team
was anything but. The team played as the Angels
for a few years before changing to orange and teal,
becoming the Gulls. The Gulls moved to Calgary
in 1984 and were replaced by the Trappers, a rookie
league squad that moved in and played ball on
Derks Field until 1992. Triple-A baseball would
return in 1994, when Joe Buzas shuffled his club
to Salt Lake and brought back the insect theme,
naming the team the Buzz. The new name was short
lived, however, when a lawsuit forced a change and
the franchise came out the other side as the Stingers.
Following the passing of Buzas, in 2003, Miller
bought the team and began the motion to return
the team to its original state as the Bees.
However, changing the name wasn’t as simple
as just deciding on a name and ordering new
uniforms. Miller and the general manager, Marc
Amicone, had to negotiate use of the nickname
with another minor league team in Burlington,
Iowa, which was already called the Bees. Burlington
agreed to share the name in exchange for an ad in
the game program.
The switch to Bees resurrected a cartoon Bee
logo that was updated from a version used in the
’60s, and that was combined with a ligature logo of
an interlocking “SL” that had been used in different
variations since the early 1900s. The change also
brought back the classic black and yellow colors
after years of Angels red, which was worn by the
Stingers.
In 2015, the logos received an update and
refresh by designer Ben Barnes that maintained the
integrity of the original marks. In another case of
the logo coming full circle, Barnes would later find
out that his aunt’s father had drawn the original ’60s
logo that the new Bumble was based on.
The change from Stingers to Bees proved to be
an immediate hit. In 2006 the Bees ranked in Minor
League Baseball’s Top Twenty-Five for merchandise
sales, and in 2019 the team made the Top Twenty-
Five list for the thirteenth consecutive year. ◆
14 LHM Winning Spirit May/June 2020