{"id":19262,"date":"2019-02-06T22:37:54","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T03:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/?p=19262"},"modified":"2019-02-06T22:37:54","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T03:37:54","slug":"minor-league-team-that-honors-dale-earnhardt-will-change-nickname","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2019\/02\/06\/minor-league-team-that-honors-dale-earnhardt-will-change-nickname\/","title":{"rendered":"Minor league team that honors Dale Earnhardt will change nickname"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

After almost two decades of being named for NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt, the Class-A Kannapolis Intimidators will change their name in 2020.<\/p>\n

The team, an affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, announced plans for a new name on Wednesday and asked the public for help in a one-week campaign which has been called “Branded by You” that runs though Feb. 13.<\/p>\n

Earnhardt purchased a share of the team three months before his death in the 2001 Daytona 500. Years later Dale Earnhardt Inc. sold those shares of the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do recognize how much Dale means to this community,\u201d Intimidators Assistant General Manager Vince Marcucci told NBC Sports<\/a>. \u201cDale\u2019s always going to be the Intimidator. We\u2019re not trying to get away from (it). I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the right way to put it. But, like, own our own brand. Because we don\u2019t own the Intimidators. (Earnhardt\u2019s widow) Teresa has the rights to that. So for speed and flexibility as we try to do creative things in the future, we\u2019re going to need something we own ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marcucci has not fully closed the door on a racing related nickname.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf 80 percent of submissions are racing, it gives us a pretty good idea of keeping it tied to racing,\u201d he said. \u201cIf only two percent of the names that are submitted are racing, maybe we do go away from something like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can look into the city\u2019s past and future for a different kind of name.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After almost two decades of being named for NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt, the Class-A Kannapolis Intimidators will change their name in 2020. The team, an affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, announced plans for a new name on Wednesday and asked the public for help in a one-week campaign which has been called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,788],"tags":[686,708],"coauthors":[675],"class_list":{"0":"post-19262","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cup-series","8":"category-news","9":"tag-dale-earnhardt","10":"tag-nascar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19262"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}