But Is It A Baseball Name?
“I never have really become accustomed to the ‘John.’ Nobody ever really calls me John… I’ve always been Duke or Marion or John Wayne. It’s a name that goes well together, and it’s like one word—John Wayne.”
— John Wayne
Every season, new guys come up from the farm leagues to play major league baseball. They have names like Tim Smith, Lee Washington and Windsor Guerrero. They’re looking to be the guy, the dude, the hitter, the fielder, a star, the greatest, perhaps, of all time. They could have their faces on Wheaties, sports drinks and sweat bands. They could even have a mediocre career.
But do they have a baseball name?
There are a lot of great players who don’t necessarily have a baseball name. Mike Trout is a great player, but he doesn’t have a baseball name. Mike Trout is the guy down the street you grew up with who can come over and help you fix everything in the house. He’s great—you’d even let him marry your sister—but Mike Trout is the name of a competitive fisherman, or a stand-up comic.
A baseball name is a name that sounds like a baseball name. Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente; these are all baseball names. And they are names without a gimmick. That is, they are pretty standard first and last names with baseball fame later imprinting them.
Eventually, names begin to possess some element of the previous generation’s monikers, like an embedded clown fish in an anenome, often a nod to action. Prince Fielder, Chase Utley and Buster Posey all have this kind of name. Can you imagine coming up in the league running around with names like that? Is it an advantage to have a baseball name? Does it perk your batting average?
I write this then to propose a kind of game. Any baseball fan can play it.
What baseball player has a baseball name and what player doesn’t? And who (Bryce Harper) has a basketball name or who (Eli Whiteside) has a football name or who (Bob Feller) has a golf name? Jerry Mulligan could have played infield with Pete Rose, but he was a saxophonist.
Having a good career does not a great baseball name make. Joey V0tto, doesn’t have a baseball name—a guy on the Sopranos, yes, a cowboy movie extra, sure.
Aubrey Huff? When I first heard his name at the stadium, I thought it was a put on. Aubrey Huff is the name of a 19th Century British novelist not a baseball player, from Texas no less.
Nomar Garciaparra is a great name, why of course, from Whittier, CA. It even has an Aristotelian reversal in it: Nomar is his father’s name spelled backward. But as much as he was a solid player and married to a star athlete as well (soccer player Mia Hamm), I have to say that his name is that of a South American novelist, even a Nobel Prize winner for literature.
I could go on. And I will.
It would be too easy to go way back in the earlier history of baseball to find baseball names. The Rusty Kuntz and Johnny Dickshots of the world were everywhere (I’m not making those up). Cannonball Titcomb, Lil Stoner and Snuffy Stirnweiss would leave any ESPN announcer cracking up.
By the early to mid-20th century, baseball names straightened out a bit. Pre-war, war and post-war names were mostly standard first and sir names: Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle (MM belonging to the family of alliterative names). These were the standard bearers of the sport, the Guys. No one on the field would dare give them a nickname—they were likely the ones handing them out. Only a journalist could bestow a nickname to a Brahmin player: There is nothing diminutive about being the Bronx Bomber.
Anyone could have had their names, except anyone who came after them. Have you ever met anyone named Lou Gehrig or Mickey Mantel? Can you imagine running around all your life named Ted Williams when you are not Ted Williams? The crackerist of names could be the name of an African-American player from a turn-of-the-century league, to be sure, but once someone aces their name in the world no one comes afterwards. There’s only one Miles Davis.
Eventually, these names were joined by more Spanish and Japanese names. Many ball players have adopted Arabic names.
Are they baseball names?
Let’s see.
Back to our new guys: Tim Smith, Lee Washington and Windsor Guerrero. All are great names. And they could be great players, but they are not currently on the roster of any major league baseball team. They are, in fact, made up names of made up players. But they could be baseball names.
Perhaps.
Some players just come around wearing it. You wonder, did Buster Posey know he had a great name? Out of nowhere a young man starts a hall of fame career with an outlandish moniker, and you wonder how does that happen?
Buster Posey as a baseball name fits a lot of criteria. There is action: he is busting it (up, out, in), swinging a bat. He is a posey, a little flower, a word that shows up in a child’s ballad, “a pocket full of …” He’s also posing as a buster, the posies busting in Spring. There is an innocence, the fresh farmer hair cut, the infinite stare, his presence. Hard and soft at the same time, the name Buster Posey is a perfect baseball name.
I say that as if there is a criteria.
With the late 1950s and early 1960s, baseball names began to be slightly self-referential, the way a name like Prince Fielder is. How did the parents know? He could have been named Sculptor Clay and gone on to be a ceramicist.
Let’s play the game. I know I’m missing plenty. It’s your time to pitch in. Add a comment.
The Originals
Ty Cobb. He’s like corn on the cob, a high can of corn. His tied up shoes and cleats.
Joe DiMaggio. It’s practically macaroni and cheese on the spot. North Beach Fishermen, San Francisco Seals. New York Yankees. That swing. Marilyn Monroe, coffee makers, a private gentleman.
Yogi Berra. How can you beat that? A long living human, a baseball legend that sounds like a kid’s cartoon. He’s Italian-American and Hanna Barbara at the same time
Mickey Mantle, Manny Mota, Sammy Sosa. The alliterative names, having a phonetic boost built into their utterance. Mickey Mantle also has milk on his mantle.
Babe Ruth. A pitcher, a hitter, a candy bar (not named after him), a term of endearment for a grown man. A deadly sin.
Whitey Ford. Well, it’s all built right into that one.
Willie Mays. Mr. Mays is Mr. Mays or Willie Mays. He’s never Willie.
Lou Gehrig. Nobody’s named Lou G. anymore. Gary Cooper played him. The streak, the speech, the life. I’m not cryin’, you’re cryin’.
Hank Aaron. Like hearing the name of a god. Hammering Hank, the hank of the bat, the air of an Aaron airing it out.
Casey Stengel. Sounds like baseball sounds. The one and only, full of lore, Joe Walsh singing, “Bases are loaded and Casey’s at bat . . .”
The New Originals
Sandi Koufax. Sand, a fox and a slender guy throwing strikes, his work prescient enough to know the fax machine, which he delivers to batters.
Don Drysdale. Alliterative name but cool like ball park pilsner; the word slider is in his last name.
Maury Wills. Maury is not a big name anymore, maybe ever, but the will to have it, to do it, speedster whose name and self are mimicked by Dee Gordon.
Ted Williams. Ultimate cracker name, cracker mythology, strange guy, half Mexican but named Ted Williams, the greatest hitter of all time, the real John Wayne. WWII prop plane and Korean War jet fighter pilot, Ted Williams did everything a soundstage stole from him.
Tom Seaver. A heaver.
Johnny Bench. Well, there is a bench. Universal, first name the querido of a “gift from God,” in Hebrew. He’s strong and reliable as that pine plank
Boog Powell. Just plain sounds like he could hit the hell out of a ball. The bat plus his name equals homers. Perhaps Wade Bogs closes in on the sound of the name.
Will Clark. Like a saltine cracker, yet a Black American could have that name. Is it a basketball name? Football name (wide receiver)? It is basic enough to be all three: baseball, football, basketball. Lewis and Clark?
Lou Brock. Lou and Brock sounds like brick, in the yard, can’t get a ball by him.
Thurmon Munson. Who has ever met a person with that name? He owns it. He could be the baddie in a monster movie. A Munster. Keeping temperature with a thermometer.
Goose Gossage. Parents just don’t go around naming their kids that anymore. I know he’s baseball but the name smacks of car racing.
Bucky Dent. Of course. He bucks up and down in the pastoral pursuit, making a dent, likely in the bat or the scoreboard.
Tommy John. A pitcher, a patient, a surgery. Two first names to make a name, a pitcher’s name as well.
Vida Blue. How can you beat that? There is no one in the universe with that handle. He could very well have been the name of a David Bowie creation.
Madison Bumgarner. Sounds like a political correspondent. Such a fuddy-duddy name for a tough guy.
Coco Crisp. An alliterative one finds itself crisp with coco, a cereal stealing second base in crisp fashion.
Nick Swisher. Swished his bat around, swishing away, like a two-seam swashbuckler.
Dexter Fowler. Who the hell is named Dexter and Fowler at the same time? He fouls balls off but is woke. More like Inspector Dexter Fowler, Columbo’s rain coat.
This list could go on. And it should! Please feel to grow it in the comment section.
As for Tim Smith, Lee Washington and Windsor Guerrero?
Tim Smith sounds like the founder of a tech company; Lee Washington is a football name; but Windsor Guerrero from the Dominican Republic sure seems like a baseball name. What’s his batting average?
