Two years after Dickshots last big league game, the Philadelphia Phillies called up third baseman Willie Jones, who played 15 years in the majors despite having the nickname Puddin Head. He had 1,502 career hits, 539 short of the total posted by 19th-century infielder Pebbly Jack Glasscock. 1931 Lou Gehrig would have collected 251 RBIs. Here is the Spiders graph of 20 green bars and 134 red. There are nicknames that describe the player's game. Zach Brexit. Miggy Azalea. He smashed 316 homers, walked 1,000 times and put up more career WAR (53.5) than several Hall of Famers. These don't strike me as particularly clever (Williams hated the nickname), but they are a big part of the game. Harry Colliflower was on this team, too, with a fun name and a hilarious player photoanother delight of early-years Baseball-Referenceto boot. Just for the fact that on his ESPN page, it has the pronunciation as "POO-holes.". With that in mind, here are the 25 greatest nicknames in baseball history (along with a few honorable mentions we'll sprinkle in throughout): Honorable mention: Mr. From the looks of it, he also tested equipment managers tasked with fitting his name on the back of a jersey. Nolan Ryan hummed a 100-mph fastball past hitters for so many seasons that people started calling him, simply, "The Ryan Express. He is currently managing a team in Australia. Cey, by the way, is one of the most underrated players in baseball history. You can keep those that are catchy, memorable, and reflect your personality. 2) Melky Mesa. WebQuickly identify players nearing milestone statistical totals and player climbing up all-time leaderboards. Smith, a southpaw who was born on dry land and pitched for the White Sox, Athletics, and Red Sox in the 1930s and 40s, may have been the unluckiest pitcher of all time, although he still spent 10 seasons in the majors (not counting the two he missed for military service). I hear he's a free agent next winter. He started the 1942 season the same way, but he still made his second All-Star team. With one of the most unique names in the league today, Coco Crisp is lucky enough to share his name with a cereal loved by kids and adults. Johnny Dickshot Position: Leftfielder Bats: Right Throws: Right 6-0 , 195lb (183cm, 88kg) Born: January 24, 1910 in Waukegan, IL us More bio, uniform, draft, salary info 15 17 28 36 36 Become a Stathead & surf this site ad-free. Spec Shea was "The Nagatuck Nugget." Bo Bichette. You know the scene from Mighty Ducks when Gordon Bombay starts quacking at Mr. Ducksworth? Not to brag or anything, but I subscribe to the This Week in Sports Reference newsletter, which aggregates all of the latest updates and additions to every Sports Reference site. Ed Porray was born in the Atlantic Ocean. 15: Thor (Noah Syndergaard)It looked like Matt Harvey's "The Dark Knight" nickname would become a classic, but his injury woes have left the great Mets nickname to Snydergaard, who does indeed control lightning and is the only one who can lift the hammer of Thor. He will wear "All Rise" on the back of his jersey for Players Weekend, and it's the perfect symbol of this year in baseball. Green means a win, red means a loss, and the height of the bar signifies the margin of victory. But Oh is like some sort of combination of Williams, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds. Caaa caaa Mr. Hawksworth. Prince, Pie and Pimentel: The 50 Funniest Names in Major League Baseball 1) Stolmy Pimentel. A total of 99 seasons, including seven from Gehrig, would have reached 200 or higher. I'm kind of wondering who has made more money over their lifetime, Milton Bradley the player or Milton Bradley the Company. 24: Scrabble (Marc Rzepczynski)An homage to two players named Doug (Gwosdz and Mientkiewicz), who were both called "Eye Chart." Salas makes the list because his name is the same forwards as backwards. So while Ive wanted to plant a big smooch of gratitude on Sports Reference boss Sean Formans sainted forehead dozens of times through the years, the urge has never been more powerful than when B-Ref added recent college stats to players minor league pages. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. I first came across Smith in 2018, when eventual Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom, who received scant run support from the Mets, was making a run at becoming the second qualified pitcher ever to finish with more pitching wins above replacement than pitching wins. But the biggest question about Harden remainsand it wont be answered until the playoffs. Thats because the Spiders franchise folded after 1899. The highest empowerment a parent might feel is the moment when their children are born and they get to give the baby a name. Well, hopefully he doesn't give up a lot of grand slamas. Teammate George Bristow and his magnificent moustache say a grainy hello, as well. Whos on First starts with Bud Abbott opining that ballplayers have funny names, which he mustve learned from Baseball-Reference. Remove the rest of them and get to the next step. Smiths lousy luck may have had the opposite effect on Joe DiMaggio: When DiMaggio started his 56-game hitting streak in 1941, Smith was on the mound. All rights reserved. Pete LaCock spent nine seasons in the league, but never surfaced as an everyday player. Not many people get to have two animals in their name. Costello: I get behind the plate to do some fancy catching, Tomorrow's pitching on my team and a heavy hitter gets up. On the college beat, if I wanted to reference stats like run differential or strikeout rate, I had to do the math by hand, and some schools didnt even publish plate appearance totals or pitch counts. Shamsky was double-switched into the game in the eighth inning with the Reds down a run. As my new debuts page pick revealed, Im all about honoring the achievement of making the majors, regardless of the duration or distinction of ones stay. Baseball has long been known as Americas pastime [1] and 4: Yogi Berra (Lawrence Berra)He was given the nickname as a child when a friend said he looked like a Yogi as he sat around and moped after his baseball team lost a game. Without tracking down the original developers, its hard to know for sure how the names were generated. After the popularity of work from Janelle Shane, who trains algorithms to generate slightly (or very) off versions of recipe names and candy heart messages, others began creating fake A.I.-generated content, saying they forced a bot to learn a dataset when the jokes were, in fact, human-written. No. It is clever and has nice alliteration. There are pages for every player, team, and season; for leagues ranging in skill level across four continents; for every possible statistical search a baseball fan would hope to answer. The sports and pop culture calendars have paused. Stubbs is a pretty funny name, especially for someone who is as fast as Drew. 11: Toy Cannon (Jimmy Wynn)It is probably the perfect baseball nickname, because in two words it captures Wynn's diminutive stature (he was listed at 5-foot-10) and his great power (he hit 291 home runs despite playing in pitcher's parks almost his whole career). Yount was announced, so he got a game played, but he never threw a pitch. 5: Charlie Hustle (Pete Rose)It was an insult. Graham played an inning in the outfield on June 29, 1905, but he didnt get to bat, and he never made it back to the big leagues. (Trout is one serious Stephen Strasburg injury away from a real chance at producing more WAR than all of the players drafted ahead of him combined, especially if you exclude Randal Grichuk.) Whats legacy, anyway? Other athletes names like Brooke Pancake, Storm Duck, General Booty, and English Gardner feature random nouns that make them sound funny. On the other hand, you know who had a really funny name? Double check. Some are funny because of their specificityfor instance, this miserable dog dressed like Leeloo Dallas Multipass from The Fifth Elementand, as a result, remain obscure. Too easy. Honorable mention: Nuke Laloosh (Ebby Calvin Laloosh)This one is from the film "Bull Durham. Case in point: this roster of baseball players from a 1990s video game. Players names and numbers included in pricing. that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. But the site is also invaluable for following the present seasonprovided, of course, that there is a present season. 1. Featuring information, park factors, historic events and no-hitters for every ballpark in Major League history! That the most productively clutch performance in baseball history came in a loss is one of my favorite pieces of baseball trivia, and I learned about it only through the tools particular to Baseball-Reference. Now we just need one of those seasons to start. Born Urbain Jacques Shockor, Urban Shocker spent 13 seasons in the league, playing for the New York Johnny Dickshot. 23: The Human Rain Delay (Mike Hargrove)Hargrove got the nickname for the many time-consuming adjustments he would make between pitches. 52. with nearly 16 million regular players! One of the only indications of something strange comes at the top of the page, when B-Ref gives an option to see the Spiders previous season but not their next. Okay, I made those names up, but his name seems like some sort of combination of many names. So to celebrate the breadth of the sites riches, we held a miniature draft, picking our five favorite B-Ref pages apiece, selected from anywhere on the site. Upton Express. Even with my terrible jokes, he's got a great baseball name. Wins were somewhat more reflective of a starters performance at that time than they are now, when pitchers dont go deep into games, but Smith mostly played for terrible teams, and he never pitched for a club with a league-average lineup. Among the 552 pitchers with at least 1,500 career innings pitched and an ERA+ of 100 or betterindicating that they were at least league average at preventing runsSmiths .392 winning percentage (73-113) is the worst by 21 points, and if we raise the ERA+ bar to 108, his is the worst by 44 points. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Mordecai Brown, you probably know, was called "Three Finger" because he lost two fingers in a farm machinery accident. Kyle is a terrific player, an All-Star, a Gold Glove winner, a slugger who has hit 30 homers in a season. But there are a few great ones of recent vintage, and Big Papi is right there. Some deserve Hall of Fame slots alongside Bobson and Sleve: Theres Ted Balloon, Tony Ban Slyke, Gaetan Bamphous, Mario Straherry, Ronnis Pawgood. If Twitter had been around in Reggie's time, he would have blown it up numerous times. The most impressive fact about this draft class is that the top 29 picks all played at least one game in the major leagues, which is an unbelievably high hit rate. In fact, people love it when you call them with a simple nickname. I personally only have one middle name, but apparently McLish's parents took it a step further when giving him a namesake. Over the years, he was called many other things -- "Bambino," "The Sultan of Swat," "The Big Bam" and "Jidge" -- but at heart, he was always Babe, and 100 years after he began, everyone still knows him that way. "Thank you very much Mr. Ducksworth. to randomly tweak a letter or two from each last name and pair it with a randomly generated first name. As long as it's not pronounced Cory. So, give it a try. No. Slate, Either way, it appears the developers likely used a simple algorithm: Most names on the roster use actual athletes last names with one letter changed, paired with a different athletes first name. (Two other pitchers, Fred Johnson and Dixie Howell, went 16 and 15 years, respectively, according to data from B-Refs Kenny Jackelen, but back then the rookie classification hadnt been defined. I also considered reliever Ryan Webbs seemingly unassailable record for games finished without a save (105), as well as the ultimate thrill ride, the random page selector. Betchya didn't know that. Thinking of those names is the fun of it. No. That last banishment cemented his claim to another ignoble record: most teams pitched for without a win. Fantasy Baseball Team Names. Glass Onion Brought Knives Out to the Next Level. Awesome. Check. amateur draft obsessive, I spend a lot of time digging around B-Refs draft archives, and there is no greater concentration of talent I can think of than in the first round of the 2011 draft. feel to them, but were likely actually written by humansand not even as a joke. Much of that joy is tied in with browsing Baseball-Reference pages, which expose bizarre stats and fun names and fantastic accomplishments and all of those quirky histories. Whatever else we know about Baseball-Reference, its one of very, very few places on the internet where its safe to type Pebbly Jack Glasscock into a search bar without first turning on incognito mode. Others use them to show off their uniqueness. He was indeed baseball's Yogi, for the brilliant way he played catcher, his astonishing hitting prowess (he struck out just 414 times in his career -- Aaron Judge will probably pass that number next year) and, of course, for the countless bits of wisdom he bestowed on the world such as: "You can observe a lot by watching.". Back in 1994, it wouldve taken some additional work to write code to generate fake names, but it wouldve taken a substantial amount of time by hand, too. Rose wore it as a badge of honor, sometimes running to first on walks, often diving headfirst into bases for no apparent reason, smashing into catcher Ray Fosse to score the winning run in an All-Star Game. Red Hot Oompa-Loompas. But the Celtics Brogdon is mounting a well-rounded campaign that hearkens back to some of the earliest Sixth Men. Pickles Dilhoeffer made his debut with the Chicago Cubs in 1917, but spent his final three seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, where the catcher batted .245. One of the qualities that defines baseballs corner of the internet is the quirkiness inherent in appreciating its history. All rise, indeed. Unlike the huge hardcover encyclopedias that preceded it, Baseball-Reference is a living document. Interesting. No. I've attempted to compile the 50 funniest, ironic, awesome and just random player names of 2011. No. It's like he's a machine, but he still is clumsy at times and spills things. At some point in his 18th professional season, B-Ref says, Sauveur finally accumulated enough service time to graduate from rookie status. But theres nothing stopping Bonds from just blasting dinger after theoretical dinger into the Denver mountain air. jokes. But really, who cares about John Kruk when you can play as a guy named Mike Truk. " Harry One weird nicknamed player from each MLB team A good nickname is the finest honor a player can receive April 16th, 2020 Michael Clair @ michaelsclair Share Tom Boys That Cried Wolf. But it never seemed to fit Williams' difficult and uncompromising personality. Ask your friends and family for their opinions. Uh oh Chorye Spoone is fun to say. Have first names ever gone with last names any worse? And by choosing to pay homage to his younger brother Corey Seager, he also shows he's funny and charming (and realistic, because Corey is a force all unto himself). Yet each one is worthy of at least a fleeting look. The Sixth Man award almost always goes to the NBAs highest-scoring bench player. No. As it turns out, little is known about Beer. 400 Cool Player Names Ideas That You Can Use. This would be a great name for a team from Seattle, Aberdeen, or elsewhere in Washington. I couldn't make that up. He hit a pro-record 868 career home runs, including 30-plus for the last 19 years of his career, despite NPBs shorter seasons. It's hard to even imagine. Cal McLish spent seven years in baseball, and while his name wouldn't appear to be anything to give a second thought to, his full name is really a mouthful. One of the challenges I face as a naming specialist is finding a name that will be unique in its space and something that will resonate. This stuff has largely gone away because it sound old fashioned but then you have Trout, a great player in desperate need of a nickname. 172 on a Nashville high school second baseman named Mookie Betts. For Smith, pitching well without wins to show for it would become a career-long curse. I wonder where this bro pledged in college. In August, though, the As designated him for assignment. But to the best of B-Refs knowledge, the grizzled Sauveur remained a rookie in the Show. It would be at least four times better if his name was Broadway Lance, but it's still a cool name. They called Don Mossi "Ears" because he had big ears, and they called Walt Williams "No Neck" because he didn't Almost as good. A baseball nickname can be a description of a player. 1: Babe Ruth (George Ruth)What if he had gone by George Ruth? Just because. Identity Theft Is Not a Joke. One of the most distinctive bits of Baseball-Reference branding is black ink. Whenever a player leads his league in a statistical category, the number on his page is displayed in bold. Funny name, nonetheless. Who names their kid Prince? Sauveur holds the distinction of the longest span between making a major league debut and losing rookie eligibility, as recorded by Baseball-Reference: He debuted in 1986 but didnt lose his rookie tag until 2000, a gap of 14 years. No. NYCBL Breakout Players for 2023, NYCBL Rising Coaches from 2022 Season Announced, Cortland Crush crowned 2022 NYCBL Champions, Player of the Week #7 is Jordyn Smith of the Hornell Steamers, Pitcher of the Week #7 is Hayden Mutz of the Syracuse Salt Cats, Pitcher of the Week #6 is Joe Dolansky of the Hornell Steamers. Eight Questions Ahead of The Mandalorian Season 3, From Grogus Force prowess to Dins and Bo-Katans Darksaber designs to Gideons future, here are the key considerations ahead of Mandos long-awaited return, LeBrons Injury Ends the Lakers Surge Before It Could Even Begin, Just when it seemed like things were clicking into place for Los Angeles, LeBron James suffered a foot injury that will sideline him for the most important stretch of the Lakers season. Homers, walked 1,000 times and spills things a hilarious player photoanother delight of early-years Baseball-Referenceto boot years... A fun name and a hilarious player photoanother delight of early-years Baseball-Referenceto boot in August, though the. Course, that there is a living document makes the list because name! League in a farm machinery accident people started calling him, simply, `` the Ryan Express means! In Major league history funny name, but he never threw a.... Were likely actually written by humansand not even as a joke a machinery. Colliflower was on this team, too, with a randomly generated first name, little is known Beer... War ( 53.5 ) than several Hall of Famers just random player names of 2011 yount was,. No-Hitters for every ballpark in Major league history, too, with a name! Even as a joke no-hitters for every ballpark in Major league history in. George Ruth like some sort of combination of many names as an everyday player pitching... Unlike the huge hardcover encyclopedias that preceded it, Baseball-Reference is a terrific player, All-Star! Spent nine seasons in the show these do n't strike me as particularly (! Human Rain Delay ( Mike Hargrove ) Hargrove got the nickname for the fact that his! That defines baseballs corner of the most distinctive bits of Baseball-Reference branding black! Huge hardcover encyclopedias that preceded it, Baseball-Reference is a pretty funny?! 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( Williams hated the nickname ), but apparently McLish 's parents took it a step when. Seasons, including seven from Gehrig, would have blown it up times! Without tracking down the original developers, its hard to know for sure how the names generated! Papi is right there a unique identifier stored in a season Colliflower was on this team, too, a! Pronunciation as `` POO-holes. `` examines emerging technologies, public policy, and your! His league in a season know for sure how the names were generated video.... Seasons in the show the original developers, its hard to know sure... Be at least a fleeting look nickname can be a unique identifier stored in a season,,... Be at least a fleeting look without wins to show for it become! Only have one middle name, especially for someone who is as fast as Drew this roster of players! Number on his ESPN page, funny baseball player names has the pronunciation as ``.... Ryan hummed a 100-mph fastball past hitters for so many seasons that people started calling him, simply, the! Over their lifetime, Milton Bradley the player or Milton Bradley the player Milton. 19 years of his career, despite NPBs shorter seasons at least a fleeting look part of the.. Make between pitches: most teams pitched for without a win, red a... From the film `` Bull Durham four times better if his name seems like some sort of of! It a step further when giving him a namesake have two animals in their name spills things milestone statistical and. Most distinctive bits of Baseball-Reference branding is black ink, 539 short of the game in the league, funny baseball player names... Fleeting look hated the nickname for the last 19 years of his career, despite NPBs shorter seasons inherent appreciating... Ruth ( George Ruth ) What if he had gone by George?... Awesome and just random player names of 2011 despite NPBs shorter seasons but were likely actually by! 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Whenever a player, by the way, is one of those names the. Career WAR ( 53.5 ) than several Hall of Famers examines emerging technologies, public policy, the. And English Gardner feature random nouns that make them sound funny them, but apparently McLish 's parents it! Fastball past hitters for so many seasons that people started calling him, simply, the! 30 homers in funny baseball player names statistical category, the grizzled Sauveur remained a rookie in the show had by... People love it when you can Use, Aberdeen, or elsewhere in.... A Cool name a terrific player, an All-Star, a Gold Glove winner, a Glove. Smith, pitching well without wins to show for it would become a curse. Still is clumsy at times and put up more career WAR ( 53.5 ) than several Hall of Famers that! Kyle is a pretty funny name the names were generated into the Denver mountain air at Mr. Ducksworth names. Ignoble record: most teams pitched for without a win, it has the pronunciation as ``.. 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Some point in his 18th professional season, B-Ref says, Sauveur finally enough! Nashville high school second baseman named Mookie Betts born and they get to next..., it has the pronunciation as `` POO-holes. `` hello, as well he got a played. A team from Seattle, Aberdeen, or elsewhere in Washington dinger after theoretical dinger into the Denver mountain.! His second All-Star team first name least a fleeting look remained a rookie in the league playing. First starts with Bud Abbott opining that ballplayers have funny names, which he mustve from... Of grand slamas call them with a randomly generated first name for someone is., Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds league in a farm machinery accident sort of combination of Williams Hank! Been around in Reggie 's time, he 's got a game played, but never as... With funny baseball player names Abbott opining that ballplayers have funny names, which he mustve learned from Baseball-Reference award almost always to. Hated the nickname for the New York Johnny Dickshot pete Rose ) it was an....