Here's the Erie SeaWolves' email that won over John Oliver

3:45 AM UTC

On the May 4, 2025, episode of "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver," the comedian put out a call to Minor League Baseball teams: Let us rebrand you! The offer came with one stipulation. The winning team was not allowed to ask any questions or provide any notes, and was obligated to do the idea the TV show staff came up with.

A couple weeks later, Oliver and his producers had made their selection from a field of more than 40 submissions. What follows is the email the winning club -- the Double-A Erie SeaWolves -- sent in to the show.

To the Last Week Tonight team,

The Erie SeaWolves are your team of choice, and we have 11 nearly perfect reasons why.

  1. John said recently that he only knows one thing about Erie, PA. He needs to know more. We can help.
  2. We are the team that had the [guts] to do this Alternative Facts Night promo.
  3. And the fearlessness to pioneer the cotton candy hot dog.
  4. The SeaWolves play baseball nowhere near the sea.
  5. Despite our later successes, we have the least creatively named mascot in MiLB. His name is C. Wolf. Seriously.
  6. We won a contest to be deemed the ”Official” MiLB affiliate of the U.K.
  7. We’re no strangers to working with celebs. We won [Ballpark Digest's] MiLB Promotion of the Year for reuniting the Wonders.
  8. We’re from a city named Erie, which is pretty much the first step to comedy gold.
  9. My work in Bowling Green launched the alternate identity genre, so I’m sort of the OG. We had MiLB’s first alternate identity promotion (“What Could’ve Been Night”), winning 2009 MiLB Promo of the Year for turning the Bowling Green Hot Rods into the Bowling Green Cave Shrimp for a night.
  10. Our local tourism board is headed by someone named John Oliver. It’s kismet.
  11. We are MiLB’s closest team to the National Comedy Center. Find us another team that has a 2025 promotion called “You’ve Got to Be Joking” Night.

Above all, Erie deserves this. It’s a great community, and one that doesn’t get the positive attention it deserves – probably because it’s buried under the 100 inches of snow we get annually. We’d like to do our part to shine a light on Erie and have some fun in the process. If we can do some good too -- even better.

Thanks for putting the spotlight on Minor League Baseball. We’ve enjoyed your storytelling through rat erotica, New Zealand birds, and cabbage marriage. We hope we can play a role in this story.

Greg Coleman | President
Erie SeaWolves | Double-A Affiliate of the Detroit Tigers