By Bart Moss / For the FCT

Minor league baseball is coming back to North Alabama in 2020, and the team name could have a Franklin County origin – if enough people vote for it.

The team, currently named the Mobile Bay Bears, will soon call Madison home. With the relocation comes the need for a new name. Team owners said they wanted a name that would fit the area and be unique. The community was invited to suggest possible names – and uniqueness is guaranteed.

More than 1,000 submissions were sent in for the team name contest, and the list of nominees has been narrowed down to the top 10.

The 10 names, and their explanations, are located on the voting site at www.northalabamabaseball.com.

The one that stands out for Franklin County is the GloWorms. As the MiLB explains it, “GloWorms are rare tiny bioluminescent creatures that call the caves at Dismals Canyon in North Alabama home, one of few places in North America!”

If the GloWorms name was to win out, that would certainly lead to cool uniform and merchandise colors and probably a neat mascot, as well as put some of the spotlight on Phil Campbell and Franklin County

Voting is open through Aug. 16, when the names will be narrowed down to five.

Here is the full list below, minus the Franklin County tie-in, the GloWorms:

• Army Ants: Sound off! The Army’s Redstone Arsenal serves as a center for missile and national defense programs and employs more than 40,000 members of our community.
• Comet Jockeys: “Rocket City” was put on the map for its cutting-edge aerospace development. Comet Jockeys is a celebration of our brave astronauts who explore outer space.
• Lunartics: We are home to some of the wildest mad scientists facing today’s challenges in space and technology. You’d have to be a “Lunartic” to do that!
• Moon Possums: A scavenger at heart, these local critters are known for hanging around and having a good time with their family – just like going to ballgame!
• Puffy Head Bird Legs: No joke! It’s lingo coined by our astronauts for body fluid moving from feet to head in outer space due to the lack of gravity!
• Space Chimps: A tribute to Miss Baker, one of the first animals safely launched into space. She is buried on the grounds at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.
• Space Sloths: A nod to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, the Space Sloths is up there with classic Minor League Baseball names like IronPigs, Flying Squirrels, Chihuahuas and Jumbo Shrimp.
• ThunderSharks: Mix the powerful thunder of North Alabama’s storms with the ultra-strong, sleek determination of the shark and you end up with the personality of our community: willing to attack any problem. Visiting teams won’t mess with ThunderSharks.
• Trash Pandas: (Slang for raccoon) Our community is known for engineering, and no creature in our galaxy is as smart, creative, determined and ingenious a problem solver – dedicated to the challenge at hand – as our local raccoons!

The team is currently a Double A affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels. The Bay Bears compete in the Southern League with the Birmingham Barons, Chattanooga Lookouts, Jackson Generals, Montgomery Biscuits, Tennessee Smokies, Biloxi Shuckers, Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, Mississippi Braves and Pensacola Blue Wahoos.