Brewers' Single-A club set to soar into new digs with high-flying team name in 2026

The Milwaukee Brewers' Single-A team is moving from the water to the air.

The Carolina Mudcats, a team with an iconic catfish logo based in Zebulon, N.C., will relocate 25 miles east and transform into the Wilson Warbirds following the 2025 campaign. This high-flying identity was unveiled Friday afternoon at the Wilson Industrial Air Center, an area originally developed as a World War II naval aviator training center. The Warbirds, a Carolina League team owned by the Brewers, will make their on-field debut at a new ballpark in downtown Wilson in 2026.

The Warbirds name is a reference to retired military aircraft that have been restored and remain operational. Three such warbirds were utilized as a backdrop during the unveiling (one of them was a T-6 Texan Trainer, the plane that the Wilson Air Center's aspiring pilots were trained on during WWII).

Tyler Barnes, Brewers senior vice president of communications and affiliate operations, said the Warbirds name is imbued with "a sense of power, patriotism, Americana [and] the persistence to keep these old planes flying as a tribute to American history and willpower."

It is also a tribute to one remarkable Wilson-area man, a WWII veteran named Vollis Simpson who built idiosyncratic wind-powered sculptures that came to be called whirligigs. Many of his creations, a large source of pride in Wilson, are displayed within the city's Whirligig Park.

"[Simpson] built his first whirligig out of parts of a B-29 bomber," Barnes said. "It was built out of necessity because he and his airmen colleagues needed a washing machine [while stationed] in Saipan. ... Whirligigs Park is visible from and adjacent to the ballpark behind the left-field wall. So you’ll see these giant wind-powered sculptures that are 30 or 40 feet high. It's a perfect view and a lot of them are classic aviation-themed."

The Warbirds identity was brought to life by Scott Starr, founder and creative director of Milwaukee-based design studio Rev Pop. The home uniforms are white with black pinstripes and red trim, while the road jerseys feature two shades of blue. It all adds up to a classic, throwback feel (or, as the team calls it, a "timeless aesthetic").

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"[Starr] wanted to spend time talking with people, exploring the city, understanding the culture and what’s important to the people there," said Barnes. "He put a lot of effort into it, and from that, he came back with a lot of concepts for us to consider. All of them really had good stories behind them, but universally, we all were quickly drawn to the Warbirds name.

"He also came back with some imagery and some branding, in particular the actual Warbird mascot, the red-tailed hawk that’s outfitted as a World War II pilot. It was impressive because for people involved in branding exercises these things can go years. Largely what he had on paper is the foundation of where we are now."

2026 will mark the return of Carolina League baseball to Wilson, which hosted a team on that circuit -- the Tobs -- from 1958-68. The Tobs moniker, short for Tobacconists, was resurrected by a summer-collegiate Coastal Plain League team that has operated out of historic Fleming Stadium since 1997. The Warbirds' ballpark, part of a larger mixed-use development project, will bring a new scope and scale to the city.

"The ability to place this ballpark in the heart of a historic downtown, a very walkable downtown in a relatively small community, it’s going to create significant excitement in and around that area," Barnes said. "The community was already in a resurgence well before the announcement of the ballpark and the team coming to town. The addition of the ballpark helps culminate that transformation."

The team will play its final season as the Mudcats at Zebulon's Five County Stadium next year while preparing for the 2026 debut as the Warbirds. In talking to potential business partners and fans in Wilson in recent months, Barnes said one question was a constant: "When are we going to have a name?"

"Once we landed on it, we thought 'You know what? The city’s embracing this team and it deserves to have a name,'" he said. "And now we have the name, so let’s go."