Name Not Changed Just Isn’t the Same

Of all the crackpot theories, logical explanations and decent proposals as to why baseball is supposedly “a dying game,” a friend of mine recently came up with a new one.

“Where have all the great nicknames gone?” he asked.

“Say what?” I asked back.

“The nicknames,” he said. “Joltin’ Joe. Hammerin’ Hank. Stan the Man. The Babe. The Splendid Splinter. The Georgia Peach. Rapid Robert. Iron Man. Big Train. Big Poison and Little Poison. Whitey, Pee Wee, Daffy, Dizzy, Ducky, Rocky, Duke, Big Klu, Little Looie, Mr. October, Marvelous Marv . . .”

I got misty.

“Catfish,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Charlie Hustle.”

“Yeah.”

“No Neck.”

Round and round we went. Mike Hargrove, the “Human Rain Delay.” Mark (the Bird) Fidrych. Bill (Spaceman) Lee. Tug McGraw. Turk Lown. Pudge Fisk. Ron Cey, the Penguin. The recently dearly departed Bubba Phillips. Say Hey, Willie Mays. Frank (Home Run) Baker, who never hit all that many. Piano Legs Hickman. Rabbit Maranville. Gabby Hartnett. Pie Traynor. A century’s worth of handy, dandy handles.

But today?

“Who’ve you got?” my friend demanded to know. “Barry the What Bonds. John the What Olerud. Tony the What Gwynn. The biggest stars in the game. Kirby Puckett is what--Puck? Now that’s imaginative. Ryne Sandberg is what--Ryno? Wow. They must have spent years coming up with that.

“Jose Canseco doesn’t have a nickname. Cal Ripken Jr. Tom Glavine. Darren Daulton. Barry Larkin. Joe Carter. George Brett, even. Some of the best guys in the game.”

My friend contends that another reason basketball is running laps around baseball as the international pastime is that the NBA--and its sponsors--has sold its super-heroes like comic-book characters:

Air Jordan, Magic, Sir Charles, Mr. Robinson, Shaq, Clyde the Glide, Thunder Dan, the Chief.

“They sound like wrestlers,” he says.

You can almost hear that NBC announcer now, practically screaming: “Sunday! It’s Air Jordan vs. Sir Charles in a fight to the finish! Grrrr!”

As opposed to:

“Sunday! See, uh, Doug Drabek pitch against, uh, Jay Bell and Pittsburgh.”

The only guy even attempting to generate nickname fever in baseball is ESPN’s Chris (Pee Wee) Berman, who is going about it in a screwy way. But Berman’s names have almost nothing to do with how a player plays, or how he looks. Instead, they are convoluted puns inspired by the sound of a player’s name, as in: “Bert (Be Home) Blyleven” or “Jim (Two Silhouettes On) Deshaies.”

Clever as he is--and he is--Berman does the public certain disservices.

One, he grinds these nicknames into the ground. (Some were funny the first hundred times.) Second, several are so obtuse that the TV audience needs subtitles. (Even now, someone is turning to someone else and asking: “What does ‘Two Silhouettes On’ mean?”) And third, many players or their families must object to having their surnames made sport of in this manner. (Although Wally Joyner might feel foolish asking a prominent sportscaster to stop calling him “Absorbine Joyner.”)

At least Berman tries.

But these nicknames are nothing but private jokes. None have gone public. Nobody calls John Kruk “I Am Not A” around the batting cage. No writer refers to Dickie Thon as “Tele” in print.

I, myself, might find it funny to think up a Paul (Christian Science) Molitor--once.

But I wouldn’t expect to find it listed in next year’s “Baseball Encyclopedia,” on a page between Johnny (Big Cat) Mize and Walt (Moose) Moryn.

My friend asked, “Which guys today have actual nicknames?”

We made a list.

Andres (Big Cat) Galarraga. Cecil (Big Daddy) Fielder. Frank (the Big Hurt) Thomas. Not bad.

“Sweet Lou Whitaker,” I said.

“No, forget that,” my friend objected.

“Why?”

“Because every jock named Lou ends up Sweet Lou, just like every one named Ray ends up Sugar,” he said.

Roger (the Rocket) Clemens. Mitch (Wild Thing) Williams. Lenny (Nails) Dykstra. Not bad.

“Bulldog Hershiser,” I said.

“No. Lasorda’s spent five years trying to get everybody to call Orel ‘Bulldog’ and the only one who calls Orel ‘Bulldog’ is Lasorda.”

Neon Deion Sanders.

“No. That was his college football nickname.”

Tim Raines tried to change his name to “Rock,” until he went into a slump and changed it back. But in the process he also violated an unwritten understanding, recently articulated by Bob Golic, the football player, who said: “Rule No. 1 is: You can’t give yourself your nickname. Somebody else has to.”

My friend asked me, “Have you ever been called anything?”

Yes, I said, but this is family newspaper.