On Aug. 29, one of the Crescent City’s great nomenclature controversies will come to a conclusion, when the Baby Cakes baseball team plays its last game and the team name and emblem join the Rosenberg Girl and the Uglies Monster in bygone logo limbo. But will New Orleans mourn the passing of the Cakes, as it mourned the loss of Hubig’s pies? Or will the city unsentimentally bid good riddance to the bat-wielding king cake baby and never look back?

I, for one, applauded in November 2016 when the Zephyrs rechristened themselves The Baby Cakes, employing the California-based Brandiose design company to sketch the emblem, which became the best minor league baseball logo New Orleans fans could have hoped for.

Sure, the Baby Cakes management could have called the team the King Cake Babies, a direct, uncomplicated reference to the tiny plastic dolls buried in rings of dough at Carnival time. By adding a slight twist, the team name instantly became a cheeky endearment as well.

But few baseball fans loved the new team name as I did, romantically or otherwise.

At first, many New Orleans baseball fans clung to the name Zephyrs, which had traveled with the team from their original home in Denver in 1993. The term Zephyr referred to a beloved Colorado passenger train and only coincidentally related to the bygone Zephyr roller coaster at Pontchartrain Beach that closed in 1983.

Those rare individuals who recognized the brilliance of the Baby Cakes rebranding argued that the name New Orleans Zephyrs had always been as incongruous as, say, The Utah Jazz … and boring to boot. Baseball fans, who are genetically predisposed to abbreviation, called them the Zs.

Zzzzzzzz, is right.

Nonetheless, on opening night of the first Baby Cakes season in 2017, those of us who recognized the brilliance of the Baby Cakes rebranding were chided by rearguard fans who struck up a Zephyrs chant in protest of the name change.

The Baby Cakes team logo, which featured an irascible infant (who some saw as a cartoon doppelganger for then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu) circled by a purple, green and gold king cake and clutching a baseball bat, seemed to be much more readily accepted than the team name.

The term Baby Cakes was a curve that caught the outside corner. By comparison, the other names that the franchise considered, such as the Tailgators, Crawfish and Po’Boys were fastballs down the middle.

“When we came up with the name Baby Cakes, it’s really taking the whole king cake concept, flipping it on its ear, and focusing on the baby itself, and the cake,” Baby Cakes General Manager Augusto "Cookie" Rojas said in a May 2017 interview with Chris Creamer’s Sportslogos.net website. “Minor league baseball brings families and people together to have a good time, just like a king cake does.”

Unfortunately, not all of New Orleans was ready to connect the king cake to baseball dots. “No one enthusiastically embraces change,” Rojas said in the 2017 interview. “When it came out, the response was crazy; there was anger, there was passion, and it stirred something in people.”

New Orleans Baby Cakes win home opener over Round Rock Express New Orleans Baby Cakes catcher Bryan Holaday celebrates the final strike out to end the game with a 2-1 win during the home opener for the New…

In a recent telephone conversation, Rojas said he is still surprised that local fans didn’t buy into the Baby Cakes vibe, which he described as quirky, unique and fun. And in fact, he said, many fans did. The team saw an upswing in “fan engagement and merchandise sales” after the name change, Rojas said.

If he could do anything differently, Rojas said, he would have taken out a full-page newspaper ad that would have explained the Baby Cakes concept to the public immediately after it was announced. Whenever he had a chance to describe the nuances of the team name and logo to fans in person, he said, they would get it.

Unlike Rojas, Baby Cakes broadcaster Ron Swoboda, a bona fide baseball star, art lover and keen Crescent City cultural observer, believes the Baby Cakes branding experiment had dubious effects.

“I think it was apparent from the get-go that New Orleans as a whole was upset over the name change,” he said.

Swoboda acknowledges that minor league clubs in other cities are known for their wacky names, such as the Hartford Yard Goats, Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp and Biloxi Shuckers.

“They’re designed to get your attention,” he said of the team names, but the Baby Cakes appellation stepped on local tradition.

“In very real terms it monkeyed with the culture,” he said. “It invented something that didn’t exist.”

“If you were from outside of New Orleans and you heard about the New Orleans Baby Cakes, you might think that’s the cutest thing you ever heard,” he said. But here, the name seemed unnatural.

“Mardi Gras is a wholly developed concept,” he said.

Swoboda said the choice of name caused “rejection and outrage” that he tried his best to mitigate. Whenever the topic came up, he called for people to not take it too seriously.

“I’d say, ‘Hey, they changed the name of the team; they didn’t run over your dog,” Swaboda said chuckling. “One person said they liked that Baby Cake name and I said, ‘Oh, so you’re the one.’’’

Swoboda’s description of the Baby Cakes branding as an error is utterly convincing. Yet I remain unconvinced.

I still love the subtle subversion that the Baby Cakes name represented. It was a new team name that matched the new Mardi Gras, where nutty upstart parades and naughty marching groups, many founded by transplants, are putting a twist on old-time tradition. I loved that it pushed us a little off balance and made us a little uncomfortable. In terms of team names, the Baby Cakes was almost as fundamentally irreverent as the Saints. And I especially loved the battling baby who seemed to embody New Orleans' never-say-die attitude.

The last game is still days away, but I’m nostalgic in advance. I shall wear my Baby Cakes T-shirt proudly into the future until it fades and unravels at the edges, as I pray that any minor league club that replaces them on Airline Drive will have the audacity to adopt their contentious name and logo.