Whose bright idea was THIS?

What kills me about this “Players Weekend” business is the fact that MLB probably paid beaucoup bucks to some enterprising lads or lasses  to come up with these?

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Nope.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the fun part, generated mostly by the players being able to put whatever (clean) nickname they like on their jersey. But let’s be real: the fun is getting fans to shell out for the replicas unis. Some of the nicknames are cool. Pete Alfonso, the Mets’ wunderkind first baseman who’s already reached the franchise’s home run record with more than a month left to the season, is called the Polar Bear, so example. We can all agree, though, that they ain’t what they use to be.

Sure, we had Babe Ruth (who was a nickname cottage industry all to himself), Leo “The Lip” Durocher, Ted “The Splendid Splinter” Williams, Lou “The Iron Horse” Gehrig, Mickey “The Commerce Comet” Mantle, Ty “The Georgia Peach” Cobb, Bob “Rapid Robert” Feller, Ernie “The Schnozz” Lombardi, Jimmy “The Toy Cannon” Wynn, just to name the first guys off the top of my head

Here are just a few you young pups might never have heard of, along with their Baseball-Reference pages:

• Death to Flying Things
• Harry the Horse
• The Man Nobody Knows
• Turkey Mike
• Buttermilk Tommy
• King Kong
• The Flying Dutchman
• The Big Train
• And not one, but two Hammerin’ Hanks

If that’s going back too far, here’s something a bit more contemporary.

Here’s the classic on nicknames. There have been several versions of “Who’s on First,” but this is the one I grew up with, from The Naughty Nineties:

As an “older person,” I often think about how sensibilities have changed over time. I love old movies and ponder about what used to pass for suspense and intrigue. It’s since been replaced by explicit scenes full of special effects with lots of explodies. So I thought to include the following, which I came across while googling for the above.

Timeless. More of my earlier jottings on “WOF” here and here. Caveat: These were posted in 2012, so some of the links might no longer be valid. Not even the internet is forever.

Needles to say, there are books on the topic, including

• The Anatomy of Baseball Nicknames
• Baseball Nicknames: A Dictionary of Origins and Meanings
• From Abba-Dabba to Zorro: The World of Baseball Nicknames
• The Low Self-Esteem Club: The Stories Behind Baseball’s Most Unflattering Nicknames
• Baseball Nicknames 1870-1946. This one was published in 1946 and is current;y unavailable, but wouldn’t you love to see a copy?

Teams also have their own sub-genre of books, such as The Story Behind the Nickname: The Origins of 100 Classic, Contemporary, and Wacky Minor League Baseball Team Names.

I’ll leave you with one final image:

Because the consensus seems to be that the 2019 version of “Players’ Weekend” was kind of a bomb.

Tagged as: baseball nicknames, Who's on First