The great Charlie Slowes’ early home run call — “Bang! Zoom! go the fireworks!” — was rendered obsolete  by the Washington Nationals management this year.

Could his glorious winning-game-ending catchphrase — “Another Curly W goes in the record books!” — and the logo that engendered it be endangered, also?

Well, Walgreens is clearly out to stake a claim on the “W.”

Lawyers for the drug store chain recently pummeled the grocer Wegmans into submission for using a capital W in its logo.

From the Asbury Park Press:

Walgreen Co., the nation’s largest drugstore chain, sued Wegmans last October, accusing the Rochester, NY based supermarket company of trademark infringement.

Walgreens began using its name in a script logo, as well as a stylized W logo, to promote its drug stores since 1951, the company said.Wegmans adopted its own script logo in 2008, a version of a logo first used in connection with its grocery stores in the 1930s and 1940s, Wegmans said in court documents.

It has used a W logo on its Wegmans’ brand soft drinks since at least 1992…

“The cost of making relatively minor changes to a limited number of products was much less than the cost of litigating this case to the end,” Wegmans spokeswoman Jo Natale said in a statement. “We wanted to return to a logo we had used many decades ago. There was never any intent on our part to make our products or logos resemble those of Walgreens.”

 

What if Wegmans’ quick caving emboldens the druggies to go after other W lovers?

After all, as seen above,the Nats’ logo looks a whole lot more like Walgreens’ symbol than Wegmans’ ever did. And, with what we’ve learned in recent years, baseball and pharmaceuticals are linked in the public’s mind as much as the food and drug store chains were.

So, you want a piece of the Nats, Walgreens?