The Winston-Salem Dash will be sharing its field with a new team this summer — the Carolina Disco Turkeys.
The new amateur team will feature college players from around the region looking to improve their skills. They're using Truist Stadium for home games when the Dash are not playing.
As for the name? Team President Greg Sullivan says the focus was on capturing something fun that would appeal to both youth and adult fans. But he knows not everyone will go for it.
“Sometimes, people saying they don't like the name is building more conversation, which is always a good thing for us,” he says.
Sullivan says disco turkey is a regional nickname for a peacock. The team sold out of its merchandise within a day.
The Disco Turkeys are part of a shifting baseball scene in the Triad. Last year, minor league baseball went through some major changes. Some cities lost their teams altogether.
For our area, it was mostly a realignment. The Dash and the Greensboro Grasshoppers are now competing at the same level and will play each other for the first time in years.
And the Burlington team is no longer affiliated with Kansas City's major league team. That allowed them to ditch the Royals name.
They now go by the Burlington Sock Puppets.
Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the name of the team president.