Name-a-Day Calendar, July 24: Seton Hall Pirates
Page 260 of 365
Chosen in: 1931
Chosen by: An unnamed sportswriter in Worcester, Massachusetts
Seton Hall College was founded in 18561 and established their baseball program just seven years later. This team went by no official nickname and was most often called by the school’s colors: “White and Blue”. The men’s basketball team did the same when it took the court in 1903. These teams were sometimes also called the “Villagers” (Seton Hall is located in the village of South Orange, New Jersey) or the “Alerts” (I have no idea).
The “Pirates” nickname came from the baseball team. The baseball White and Blue of the 1920s were—to put it lightly—pretty bad, incurring seven straight losing seasons from 1923 through 1929. As the calendar flipped to the ‘30s, they finally began to turn themselves around, limping to a 7-4 record. On April 24, 1931, the White and Blue played a road game at Holy Cross, one of the country’s most storied collegiate baseball programs in that era—one that hadn’t suffered a losing season of their own since 1878.2 During Seton Hall’s seven-year losing-season streak, the White and Blue went 22-46 overall; Holy Cross over the same span went 150-21-1, had a perfect 19-0 season,3 and won three Eastern Intercollegiate titles.4
Suffice it to say that Seton Hall was an underdog in this game, and they sure played like it at first: Holy Cross led 10-6 as Seton Hall came up to bat in the top of the ninth. Then the White and Blue turned the tables, scored five runs in their last at-bat, and shut the Crusaders out in the bottom of the inning to win 11-10. Disgusted, a local sportswriter (unnamed, even in print sources from the time) exclaimed that “this [Seton Hall] team is a gang of pirates!” It stuck and the school began calling all of their sports teams the Pirates pretty much immediately.
Somewhat surprisingly, this nickname wasn’t always popular. Some Seton Hall community members later in the 1930s became upset that their Catholic school was tied to a decidedly un-Catholic moniker. Some sportswriters in The Setonian student newspaper5 attempted to come up with a replacement in 1936, but the best they could come up with was “Kerryblues”, after the Kerry blue terrier (and the school’s blue color). You don’t need me to tell you that fetch did not happen here.
Today, Seton Hall’s costumed pirate mascot can be yours (for a half hour) as long as you have $100, a place to park, a room to change, two bottles of water, and an adult!
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Gained university status in 1950
They only played one game, which they lost. If you don’t wanna count that (or the other time they did that in 1876), Holy Cross didn’t have a true losing season until 1961.
1924
These titles came in 1923, 1928, and 1929. They added another title in 1930 for good measure, making the Crusaders the three-time reigning champs when this story takes place.
This newspaper still exists today.