The Sky Sox soon will transform from a Triple-A baseball team filled with players just below major league standards to a Single-A rookie team filled with youngsters several steps below Triple-A standards.

A massive drop in quality is looming, and it’s massively depressing for genuine baseball fans.

But in the midst of our city’s baseball crisis, we’re talking about the name of next summer’s diminished team.

Have to admit, this is marketing brilliance. Distract from the real issue and instead focus minds on cattle testicles.

I predict our city’s baseball team will be known next summer as The Rocky Mountain Oysters. It’s a divisive nickname, one that infuriates and delights.

And a popular nickname, too. In a vote by the Gazette sports staff, the Oysters stampeded to decisive victory. Online voting at the Sky Sox website runs through Aug. 1. I voted Thursday, and it’s an easy process.

I’m hoping you will join me in a crusade to stop the Oysters. My online vote and my sports staff vote went for Happy Campers, partially because I keep picturing hundreds of mothers and fathers explaining to their young, inquisitive, innocent children exactly what a Rocky Mountain Oyster is. Good luck, parents of Colorado Springs. My heart is with you.

It’s not just a protest vote. Happy Campers would serve as a thoughtful, accurate representation of our city, where most of us are wise enough to realize we live in high-altitude paradise surrounded by mountains, forests and the precious chance to escape noisy, irritating civilization.

Sometimes, desperate while stuck in severe traffic on I-25, I realize a retreat from the all the madness and all the intrusive humanity beckons only a few minutes away, and it’s impossible not to smile. I’ve been a Happy Camper in the Springs for 15 years. I would not trade our city for any other.

Come for a visit, the nickname shouts to the less fortunate living somewhere else, and join us as Happy Campers.

But, hey, the majority of my fellow Gazetteers support cattle testicles.

Those popular Oysters, if selected, will inspire thousands of unhappy campers. I’ve heard from a dozen friends and readers who ask a simple question that goes like this, “Our baseball team is going to be named after fried cattle testicles? Really?” They are appalled this July. They will be even more appalled next July.

I’ve also heard from an equal number of friends and readers who embrace the cattle testicle crusade and wonder about the sense of humor, or lack of it, to be found in the strident Oyster opposition.

This controversy is not the kind to inspire rioting on the streets. If Oysters win the vote, and I expect the nickname to dominate the polls, the opposition will still drive to Security Service Field, even when it’s inhabited by a team named in honor of cattle testicles.

Our baseball team did not take the safe route. The list of finalist nicknames – Rocky Mountain Oysters, Happy Campers, Lamb Chops, Punchy Pikas and Throttle Jockeys – strays far from tradition. The list is bold, weird and, in a couple cases, mildly offensive.

Leaders of the team could have traveled the route of routine. They could have gone with a dog breed — the Daschunds? — or yet another color or variety of sox. Instead, they embraced the fresh and provocative.

Smart move. The nickname list got us talking and bickering and laughing about a future nickname instead of mourning a severe drop in baseball quality.