Minor League Baseball Team Axes ‘Nooga’ Shirts Due To Racism Allegations

A minor league affiliate for the Cincinatti Reds have pulled a t-shirt that featured an abbreviated name for the team’s hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee from its website over “racism” allegations.

The Lookouts, the double A affiliate of the Cincinatti Reds, intended to hand out shirts that read “Nooga” combined with a pair of eyes to represent the Lookouts in place of the “O’s” in Nooga. People then complained that the phrase sounds close to a racial slur, prompting the team to remove it from its website.

“Wow, I’m beyond speechless,” said an individual named Melanie Aycock, whose video complaining about the design was shared more than 200 times on social media. “I don’t want to offend anyone not just my community. I’m not sure I want to wear that I have young sons and that’s not the message I would want them to portray I would want them to be more positive and not blasting a message indirectly,” Aycock said.

“Oh no, chattanooga this isn’t gonna work,” one Twitter user named “Dre” wrote in response to the shirt. Other users said the shirt “cannot be real” and called it “hilariously bad.”

Some opted to defend the shirt. “You have to dig really hard and be predisposed to using slurs in your vocabulary to see anything wrong with this shirt,” reads one of the top replies to the most widely shared anti-shirt tweets.

You have to dig really hard and be predisposed to using slurs in your vocabulary to see anything wrong with this shirt.

— Feral Fawcett (@Feral_Fawcett) July 27, 2023

The Lookouts were founded in 1885 and adopted the moniker after a fan vote in 1909. They have played under the same name since then, except for one year, when they were known as the Montgomery Rebels while spending that season in Alabama.

The team’s current logo has been used since 1991.