Abbott: Strange as it may seem, they give ball players nowadays very peculiar names.
Costello: Funny Names?
Abbott: Nicknames, nicknames. Now on the St. Louis team we have Who’s on first, What’s on second. I Don’t Know’s on third…
They don’t ’em nicknames like that anymore. Oh, sure, Baseball-Reference.com might include a current player’s nom de guerre, but they don’t get the daily usage as say a Dizzy or a Red, Lefty, or Spaceman. And forget about Dummy and Whitey.
A local school had a gigantic book sale recently, one of the best I’ve seen. Collectors item-worthy but I think the original owners were just looking to clean out their closets.
One of the baseball books I came away with was Baseball Nicknames: A Dictionary of Origins and Meanings, by James K. Skipper, Jr. (So if he were a baseball manager, would he be called “Skipper Skipper?”), published by McFarland in 1992.
This fun little volume includes the “etymology” of more than 4,100 “players, umpires, nonplayer managers, officials, sportswriters, broadcasters, owners, fans” as well as the All American Girls Baseball League players. There are also small appendices for “Negro League players, additional umpires, and nonplaying baseball personalities.”
By the way, the Library of Congress has this great essay on the origins and background of the famous Abbott and Costello skit.
is available on Amazon.com,
