Minor League Baseball Team Names Its Ball Pig 'Ozempig' And Is Hearing It From The Easily Offended

Major League Baseball got its full slate up and running this week, and that means minor league baseball is getting started too.

However, one club is already dealing with some controversy and it stems from — of all things — the name of their live pig mascot.

The St. Paul Saints are the Triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins. They have one of those goofy traditions that make minor league sports so great, and that is that since the team's inception in 1993, they've employed a ball pig.

Each season they get a new one and its job is to deliver baseballs and an occasional beverage to the home plate umpire.

The names these pigs get usually feature a pop culture/pig mashup. According to Minor League Baseball's website, 867-530Swine, Notorious P.I.G, Ham Solo, Kevin Bacon, and SlumHog Millionaire have all bravely served as ball pigs over the years.

However, the 2024 pig's name is getting some flack. But what probably could anyone have with the brilliant name "Ozempig,"

Ozempic is of course the drug that people — especially celebrities — have been using to lose weight. According to the Associated Press, the team even wrote a backstory about Ozempig's fictional struggles with weight gain.

It's a hilariously perfect name, but of course, some people are humorless and don't see it that way.

Those were just some comments on the team's announcement, but there was enough heat that the team's vice president and media relations director Sean Aronson had to answer for it.

"In today’s world, people don’t want to be diminished, they don’t want to be made to feel a certain way and I’m not going to tell them how they feel is wrong," Aronson told the Associated Press. 

"But I can tell you there was no ill-intent, there was no maliciousness, there was never even a discussion in the room when we were going over the name that hey, this may offend some people."

It's exhausting trying to crawl into the brain of someone who would be offended by this. Do they really think that the Saints brass said, "Hey, with this year's ball pig, let's stick it to fatties?"

Of course not. Ozempic is very much in the news and that's all they had to do was swap out one letter.

Fortunately, it looks like the team won't be caving anytime soon, as the Minor League season opens this weekend.