Baseball Names

Red Bird Nation has a great piece about the state of Names in baseball. He hits on just about all I could think of.

Stubby Clapp is just about my favorite name, period. He was always a favorite visiting player whenever he came to Nashville. In fact, we made a point of going whenever Memphis was in town the past couple to three years.

And I've always felt the former Sound Emil Brown had a nice ring to his name. And to me, the name Sammy Sosa seems to fit the baseball diamond. I'm not sure a guy with the name Sammy could make a serious go at much of anything else.

He speaks of nicknames, as well, and that's something baseball's just not done a good job of handing out the past few years (the Big Unit and the Big Hurt being a couple of the obvious exceptions). Nicknames nowadays are generally variations on the player's name. Mark Grace was always Gracey. Ryne Sandberg was Ryno. None of these have the same ring as a Stan "the Man" Musial, or even an "Oil Can" Boyd--I never knew his name was Dennis until I looked at the back of his baseball card.

I would like to point out that not once have I referred to Antonio Alfonseca as "the Octopus."

Around Casa de Big Stupid Tommy, he's generally referred to as that Big, Stupid, No-Talent, Six-Fingered Freak.

Or, in what is yelled in times of anger and distress: That Stupid Motherfu.......