Pomona Island Birthday Beers: The Story Behind the Names

Pomona Island never fail to delivery when it comes to making great beers, and amazing names to go with them. 

I remember that we were lucky enough to have one of the founder from Pomona Island on Zoom with us during our 2020 lockdown virtual beer festival, and I had to ask them how they manage to get such amazing names. 

The reply was simple. 

He said, "We just have a WhatsApp group, and the second we think of something, we just put it in there."

I love the straight forward answer!

Pomona Island have recently turned 4 years old, and to celebrate, they have brought out 4 new beers- and of course, they all have amazing names. 

This time, all the beers are named after players from an old SNES game called "Fighting Baseball" 

According to Dragon Friends, "Fighting Baseball is a 1995 SNES game, the Japanese release of EA's MLBPA Baseball. As a result of the Japanese publisher having no arrangements with US baseball teams - and no interest in making any since the teams would be unknown in Japan - the real names of baseball players that were used in the US original had to be replaced with fake American-sounding names. However, the Japanese team failed entirely to produce convincing American names, and instead took the names of random sports players from other US sports games and changed random letters." 

Here are the players, and their persona: 

• Todd Bonzalez, dedicated hitter for the Cleveland Queens (corruption of Luis Gonzalez)
• Willie Dustice, benched centre field for Atlanta (corruption of David Justice)
• Raul Chamgerlain, benched right field for "Chicago B" (corruption of Wes Chamberlain)
• Bobson Dugnutt, benched right field for Milwaukee (corruption of Ronald Tugnutt, by far the most popular "joke" name, has actual baseball shirts produced)

So what beers did Pomona Island produce for their birthday?