What's in a Name

Vinegar Bend dept.

It started in high school, when I used to draw little cartoon pterodactyls in the margins of my notebook.

It continued when I got to college.

Early in my freshman year I acquired the nickname “Birdman.”

Pretty soon I tired of the nickname, but I didn’t know how to shake it.

I asked Ralph, who was a sophomore, and presumably knew about such things.

“Just ignore them when they call you that. Don’t answer.”

During the summer I ran into Suzy from college at a play in Minneapolis.

“Hey Birdman!” she called.

I ignored her.

A couple of years later I got to know her better. She reminded me of this incident.

“Boy, were you ever an asshole,” she said.

One summer I decided I would like to have the nickname “Dusty.”

I told everyone to call me “Dusty.”

So for a summer I was “Dusty.”

It felt really good to be Dusty for a summer.

Having a nickname can be really cool.

Even if I had given the nickname to myself.

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Nicknames aren’t as common as they used to be.

Baseball, in particular, was chock-full of them.

Ty Cobb was “The Georgia Peach.”

The Georgia Peach

Lou Gehrig was “The Iron Horse.”

The Iron Horse

Walter Johnson was “The Big Train.”

The Big Train

Jimmie Foxx was “Ol’ Double X.”

Joe Jackson was “Shoeless Joe.”

Shoeless Joe

Sometimes, if you were as great as, say, Babe Ruth, you had more than one nickname.

“The Sultan of Swat.” “The Bambino.”

Heck, even “Babe” was a nickname.

The Sultan of Swat

We’ve had “The Yankee Clipper” (Joe Dimaggio) and “The Splended Splinter” (Ted Williams).

The Yankee Clipper

The Splendid Splinter

We’ve had “The Bird” (Mark Fidrych) and “The Kitten” (Harvey Haddix) and “The Wild Horse” (Yasiel Puig) and “The Panda” (Pablo Sandoval). Tris Speaker was “The Grey Eagle.” And quarterback Ken Stabler was “The Snake.”

The Bird

The Wild Horse

The Panda

Bobby Feller was “Rapid Robert,” “Bullet Bob,” and best of all, “The Heater from Van Meter.”

The Heater from Van Meter

Which echoes Larry Bird’s “The Hick from French Lick.” Bird was also “Larry Legend.” A two-nickname all-timer.

The Hick from French Lick

Wilt Chamberlain also had two nicknames: “Wilt the Stilt” (which he hated) and “The Big Dipper” (which he liked).

The Big Dipper

(Why Victor Wembanyama isn’t known as “The Eiffel Tower” I’ll never know).

Kobe Bryant was “The Black Mamba,” but he kind of gave it to himself, so it doesn’t really count so much. It’s like my “Dusty.”

The Black Mamba

Shaq gave himself a new nickname every day. “The Big Aristotle.” “The Big Baryshnikov.” “The Big Cactus.” “The Big Shamrock.”

Evel Knievel, was, well, Evel Knievel.

Evel Knievel

There was Dr. J (Julius Erving) and Dr. K (Dwight Gooden).

Doctor K

There was Smoky Joe Wood (pitcher) and Smokin’ Joe Frazier (boxer) and Señor Smoke (Luis Tiant, the pitcher).

Smokin’ Joe Frazier

We’ve had “The Round Mound of Rebound” (Charles Barkley) and “Pudge” Carlton Fisk. Hippo Vaughn. The Big Dumper.

Pudge Fisk

We’ve had “Chocolate Thunder” (Darryl Dawkins) and Vanilla Ice and Darryl Strawberry, which is not a nickname.

We’ve had Stretch (Willie) McCovey.

Stretch McCovey

The Hammer (Hank Aaron).

The Hammer

The Say Hey Kid (Willie Mays).

The Say Hey Kid

Charley Hustle (Pete Rose).

Charlie Hustle

Jimmy Butler and Paige Bueckers, aka Jimmy Buckets and Paige Buckets (no relation).

Jimmy Buckets

“Lightnin’ Hopkins (Sam, bluesman), “Louisiana Lightning” (Ron Guidry, pitcher), “Mississippi” John Hurt (bluesman), and my favorite, Vinegar Bend Mizell, Cardinals pitcher in the ‘50s.

Mississippi John Hurt

A lot of bluesmen have had nicknames but not a lot of other musicians. Beethoven wasn’t “The Stork” and Mozart wasn’t “Mint Chip” and Dylan isn’t “Polar Bear.”

But we do have “The Boss” (Springsteen) and “The Chairman of the Board” (Sinatra), who is also “Ol’ Blue Eyes.”

The Boss

Ol’ Blue Eyes

We’ve seen “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (Notre Dame’s backfield in the 1920’s) and “The Seven Blocks of Granite” (Fordham’s offensive line in the ‘30s).

We forget that Magic Johnson wasn’t born “Magic” and Tiger Woods wasn’t born “Tiger.”

Walter Payton was “Sweetness.”

Tennis doesn’t have a lot of nicknames. Steffi Graf was “Fraulein Forehand.” Ilie Nastase was “Nasty.” Rod Laver was “The Rocket.” Pete Sampras was “Pistol Pete” (a nod to another Pete, “Pistol Pete Maravich”). Miloslav Mečíř was “The Big Cat.”

Fraulein Forehand

Nasty

The Rocket

Pistol Pete Sampras

But mostly, in tennis, if you’re really good, you get just your first name, or some cute version of it.

Martina. Jimbo. Chrissie. Johnny Mac. Carlitos.

Martina

Johnny Mac

Fed? That’s not a nickname.

Rafa? No. “The King of Clay?” That’s a descriptor, not a nickname. OK, maybe it’s a nickname.

“Djoker”? He gave it to himself. Might as well be Dusty.

Reggie Jackson got a whole month to himself. When he capped off the 1977 World Series with a 3-homer game, he became “Mr. October.” Later, Yankee owner George Steinbrenner derisively dubbed Dave Winfield “Mr. May.”

Mr. October

Probably the best nickname you can have is one that is synonymous with your sport.

“Donnie Baseball” (Don Mattingly). How can you do better than that?

Donnie Baseball

“Johnny Football” (Johnny Manziel). I mean, maybe he wasn’t that great, but hey, Tom Brady ain’t “Tommy Football.”

Apparently, an American curler named John Shuster is know as “Mr. Curling.” That’s pretty good, but I had to look it up.

It probably doesn’t get much better, nickname-wise, than Wayne Gretzky, who transcends his sport and is known as “The Great One.”

But even he can’t top Muhammad Ali, who is simply “The Greatest.”

The Greatest

I mean, it ain’t no “Dusty.”

But it’s pretty good.

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Song—”Mister Lister:”