Fresno Grizzlies Purchase Taco Emoji

The Fresno Grizzlies just took owning a look to a whole new level. The Astros’ Triple-A franchise, which has spent some home games the past two seasons playing as the Fresno Tacos, announced on Tuesday that they’d acquired the rights to the official taco emoji that is used all over the Internet on a daily basis.

“It’s really part of the culture here in the Central Valley,” Grizzlies general manager Derek Franks said at the press conference announcing the acquisition, which was streamed on Facebook Live. “We think that we clearly are the taco capital of the world, and we’re very proud of that.”

The purchase, the team said, was made via a $5,000, tax-deductible donation to the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit organization that produces emojis and, in its words, enables people around the world to use computers in any language.

Taco Bell began a petition to have the taco emoji produced in 2014, and in 2015 it was added to the emoji keyboard available on most mobile operating systems. The Grizzlies say they are open to selling the taco emoji to Taco Bell, but only for the price of $1 million.

“This is another flag in the ground to pay homage to taco culture in the Central Valley, and cement Fresno as the taco capital of this country,” Franks said. “We will be very good keepers of our newly adopted emoji—in fact, we encourage as many people as possible to use it. It’s available to borrow from us for free at all times, forever.  We wouldn’t have been able to live with ourselves if Taco Bell had ended up adopting it. Now it’s home where it belongs in Fresno.”

Additionally, the Grizzlies announced that anyone who came to the team store and produced a tweet with a #FresnoTacos hashtag and the taco emoji would receive 15 percent off of merchandise.

The Grizzlies aren’t the only baseball team to lay claim to an emoji. The Athletics, according to the Unicode Consortium’s website, own the baseball emoji, the elephant emoji and a fruit bearing-tree emoji. The San Jose Earthquakes, which were run by current A’s president Dave Kaval, own the soccer ball emoji.

“We’re here in the taco capital, and the taco emoji looks like a legit taco truck taco now,” Grizzlies director of marketing Sam Hansen said. “While it’s thrilling to preserve the emoji for the Valley, if someone wants it back for a million bucks, we’d sure put that money to good use in the place that does tacos better than anywhere else on Earth.”

The Grizzlies on Tuesday also announced that they’d continue their Taco Tuesday tradition and unveiled their new jerseys for the season. This year the team will wear zarape-print jerseys, a theme that was introduced on jerseys hats and other merchandise last season.