Where Are You, Foghorn Bradley?

In days past, baseball players wore baggy pants, had to work second jobs in the offseason (like cement mixer, construction worker, giant boulder carrier) to pay the bills, and were blessed with fantastic nicknames such as my all-time favorite, George “Foghorn” Bradley.

Some of the other names of baseball past include: “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, James “Cool Papa” Bell, Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, “Wee” Willie Keeler, Marvin “Slats” Marion, Lenny “Nails” Dykstra, Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky, Rich “El Guapo” Garces (so called because of his 6-foot, 280 lb. frame), Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams, Tom “Shoulders” Acker, Harry “Peanuts” Lowrey, Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown, Walter “Big Train” Johnson, Fred “Scrap Iron” Hatfield, and the superbly-named Burleigh “Ol’ Stubblebeard” Grimes.

With nicknames like these, who needs a real one?  So what has happened these days when the majority of baseball nicknames consist of the various -Rods, distinguishable only by their first initial (A-Rod) or defining characteristic (K-Rod)?

Well, the disappearance of the baseball nickname is somewhat of a myth.  Sure, there will never be another Three Finger Brown, but there are still a variety of good nicknames out there if you only look.

Carlos “El Caballo” Lee, Ryan “The Hebrew Hammer” Braun, Travis “Pronk” Hafner, Pablo “Kung Fu Panda” Sandoval, Lance “Fat Elvis” Berkman, Shane “The Flyin’ Hawaiian” Victorino, Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, Jason “The Jay Hey Kid” Heyward, Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui, David “Big Papi” Ortiz, Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, Tim “The Freak” Lincecum, “Slammin'” Sammy Sosa, Dontrelle “D-Train” Willis, Vladimir “The Impaler” Guerrero, and the star of the Japanese leagues these days, Benny “The Hawaiian Hammer” Agbayani.

The fact is, journalists and teammates will always reach to try to assign nicknames to players.  There’s nothing cooler than having an awesome nickname.  After all, if you could be “D-Train” or “El Duque” or “Foghorn”, why would you ever want to go by Fred, or Stan?

Now, a quick Wikipedia search (a Quikipedia search?) for baseball nicknames called up some fairly odd ones.  Ones that would be hard to shout during a game when the guy does something good or gets the ball in his hands or strolls to the plate.

Aaron “Zombie” Harang?  Franklin “Death to Flying Things” Gutierrez?  Greg “The Wizard of the Waiver Wire” Dobbs?  I can’t imagine sitting in the stands, my mouth half-full of chili-cheese dog, shouting “Go Death To Flying Things!” or, after he perfectly executes the always-roof-raising sacrifice bunt, turning to the guy next to me and saying, “Man, that Death To Flying Things Gutierrez is some player!”

All I’m saying is, the nickname isn’t dead.  We might not have the old-sounding nicknames of times past, like Ol’ Stubblebeard and Scrap Iron, but Godzilla and the Hebrew Hammer aren’t so bad after all.