What's in a name?"

Boston has always prided itself on being a City of Champions. Who would have thought that sentiment would stretch all the way to a small plastics company in China?

When Baird Capital Partners Asia invested in Boston Plastics on Dec. 19, Mergers & Acquisitions looked into exactly why the target, an injection molding and sub-assemblies company with manufacturing facilities in China, would be named after Beantown, especially with none of its executives being American.

Turns out, Boston Plastics took its name from the city's championing in the world of sports. However, it wasn't the Celtics, who have won 17 National Basketball Association Championships, nor was it the National Football League's three-time Superbowl champions the New England Patriots that inspired the Singapore-based company.

Eddie Chia Eng Kay, the founder and chief executive of Boston Plastics, who is Singaporean and has been working in China for many years, took the name from Major League Baseball's Boston Red Sox after the ball club's historic 2004 season. That year, the Fenway Sports Group-owned team embarked upon an unprecedented comeback, at least for baseball standards, from a three-game deficit to defeat the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series and proceeded to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series since 1918.

Alas, the Red Sox, founded in 1901, had to wait 86 years before the team's sixth World Championship win in 2004. Will Boston Plastics have such longevity and replicate that same fighting spirit? Let's just hope "the Curse of the Bambino" doesn't haunt M&A the way it did baseball.

Boston Plastics manufactures products for the automotive, consumer electronics, imaging and industrial markets.