Outdated Law Gives Binghamton Rumble Ponies a Comical Temporary Identity

When are the Binghamton Rumble Ponies not the Rumble Ponies?

Well, in the 2025 season, that’s any game in which the Double-A affiliate of the New York Mets is wearing an alternate jersey and using an assumed identity for the day.

Perhaps no moniker will be more odd – or more rooted in history – than when the Rumble Ponies morph into the Binghamton Bathtub Donkeys for the game. Those days will come June 28 and July 30 at Mirabito Stadium.

Just how did the Bathtub Donkeys come to be?

The Rumble Ponies made a squeaky clean impression dropping a new alternate identity.

Here's how an obscure New York State law begat the Bathtub Donkeys: https://t.co/Jxs1FsKULr pic.twitter.com/fxPx87y02X
— Minor League Baseball (@MiLB) January 24, 2025

Eddie Saunders, the club’s director of marking and promotion, explained it on a recent edition of MiLB.com’s “The Show Before The Show” podcast.

"We began to dig into the kind of laws that are just kind of bizarre and wacky, like Minor League Baseball is," he said. "We found this law that in the 1800s, in Brooklyn … you could not have a sleeping donkey in your bathtub on Sundays.

"The story behind it, there was a donkey that was sleeping in a bathtub and a flood came and washed the donkey and the tub away. And then they had to use a lot of resources … to get the donkey back to its rightful owner and home. So that’s where we went with it."

On June 28, when the Rumble Ponies – err, Bathtub Donkeys – host the Portland Sea Dogs, the Double-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, the first 1,000 fans will receive a Binghamton Bathtub Donkeys beach towel.

If you’re not in the Binghamton area, all is not lost. The team website is taking pre-orders for Bathtub Donkeys merchandise.

The Double-A season begins on April 5.

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