There was a professional slow pitch softball league from 1977 through 1982, and Louisville had a franchise. The team was called the Kentucky Bourbons, and featured slugger Bill Gatti. I don't remember Terry Davis, and yet there he is, pictured on the magazine cover (photo credit).
The reason why this popped into my mind was eavesdropping on a Twitter conversation with WDRB's Eric Crawford, who observed that any future NBA team in Louisville almost certainly would be called the Kentucky Colonels, not so much because of any historical symmetry with the city's long departed ABA team, but owing to Yum Brands! as a corporate sponsor.
(Colonel Sanders, don't you know. At least we were spared The Bucket as formal arena name, although I digress.)
Catbirds was the name of Louisville's short-lived CBA team in the mid-1980s, and a few years later, there was the Shooters of the forgotten Global Basketball Association.
While I like Colonels just fine, Bourbon (without the "s," in the fashion of Heat and Thunder) strikes me as a better choice. It's quintessentially Kentucky, with an appreciation for corn liquor uniting the disparate collegiate sports programs.
Forget the Cats and Cards. Have some Bourbon. Or something like that.
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