The 2025 Minor League Baseball season will see one fewer affiliated team named for its parent club. After this season, the Mississippi Braves will relocate to Georgia to become the peach-themed Columbus Clingstones, the new affiliate of the Atlanta Braves in the Double-A Southern League.
The nickname draws on Georgia’s slogan, “The Peach State,” which it earned by being the third-most prolific producer of the pitted fruit in the US, behind California and South Carolina. Peaches were first planted in the state in the 1700s. Clingstones are a particular variety of peach, named for the way the flesh of the fruit sticks to the pit.
“Not only is the clingstone cute and tasty, it’s also very stubborn as it clings to the pit of the peach, much like our ballclub’s going to cling to the community here in Columbus,” said Clingstones GM Pete Laven, quoted by Ben Hill on MiLB.com.
The suite of logos, created by Dan Simon of Louisville-based Studio Simon, features an anthropomorphic peach character, a cap logo C that evokes the shape of the fruit, and a roundel with a peach tree made of a baseball bat trunk and baseball-shaped peaches. Not surprisingly, the logos and uniforms are set in a color palette that evokes a peach tree, peach and green.
According to Simon, one of the challenges associated with developing a brand based on a peach was finding a name that steered clear of peaches’ tenderness and vulnerability, but rather accentuated a kind of strength. The name Clingstones (as differentiated from freestones, where the peach flesh separates easily from the pit) was the solution—after a certain amount of digging.
“I had not heard of the terms clingstones and freestones prior to finally unearthing them in my research,” he said. “It was a challenge because I didn’t come across that information at the outset—it was only after lots of fits and starts.”
Another challenge in developing a comprehensive suite of logos based on a peach was finding subjects for secondary logos.
“When it came to secondary logos, not a lot of ideas came to mind,” Simon said. “There are no accoutrements that are associated with peaches.”
After experimenting with secondary marks based on peach baskets and pies, Simon and the team decided to he focus on the character himself. To that end, the suite of logos features multiple versions of the character.
“That’s how we fleshed that out,” Simon said. (Pun intended?)
The character is not yet named—that will likely be determined by fans—though Simon indicated that he would advocate for the name “Fuzzy.”
The color palette is both kind of obvious and unique at the same time.
“The colors all worked together nicely,” Simon said. “I don’t think I’ve ever done a brand identity where peach was one of the colors. Because of colors I was going to use, peach for the peach, green for the leaf, those colors grew out of that.” (Pun intended, maybe?) “They just ended up looking really good together and feeling fresh.” (Really just not sure about the puns now.)
As a journalist, I felt compelled to ask an important question about the development of this identity: Were there internal conversations about the fact that peach emojis are associated with part of the human anatomy?
“So you’re telling me I should not anthropomorphize an eggplant either?” Simon asked, laughing.
But seriously…
“It came up that that’s what a peach emoji is sometimes used for,” Simon said. “And my answer to that was, so? It did not negatively affect this identity. C’mon, it’s butts!”
The Clingstones are one of 35 Minor League Baseball teams owned by Diamond Baseball Holdings, which purchased the Mississippi Braves in 2021. The move away from the Braves nickname leaves just 10 of 120 affiliated Minor League Baseball teams named for their parent clubs.
The Clingstones will play at Synovus Park in downtown Columbus, with their home opener April 15, 2025.