For today’s article I am going to get away from the controversial opinion piece and give you all a little bit of fluff. Baseball is a sport that has some bizarre names to have played the game and when I was a little boy I always dreamed that some day I would play in the bigs and have as cool a name as “Oil Can”. Anyway, here are my picks for my favourite names of all time, in no particular order. Feel free to share your own.
Oil Can Boyd
Napoleon LaJoie
Stubby Clapp
Storm Davis
Three-Finger Brown
Gaylord Perry
Tug McGraw
Coco Crisp
Milton Bradley
Mookie Wilson
Rollie Fingers
Urban Shocker
Orval Overall
Orel Hersheiser
Heathcliff Slocumb
Oyster Burns
Cool Papa Bell
Humberto Sanchez
Garth Iorg
Catfish Hunter
Pee Wee Reese
Jung Bong
Snuffy Stirnweiss
Candy Maldonado
Boof Bonser
Pie Traynor
Dick Pole
Goose Gossage
Pickles Dillhoefer
Theodore Roosevelt Lilly
Turkery Stearns – not to be confused with Ducky Medwick
Al Kaline
Kenesaw Mountain Landis
Cornelius McGillicuddy
Dizzy Dean
Heinie Manush
Pokey Reese
Sixto Lezcano
Pepper “Wild Horse of the Osage” Martin
Enos Slaughter
Rusty Kuntz
and my boy…. Rance Mulliniks
You can’t make this stuff up…. even if you tried!
My new fav is the with the Indians;
Big League Choo
In regards to Choo…I sat in the 4th row behind the Indians bullpen on Tuesday night, Choo was playing RF. Huge Korean contingent out to cheer him on. All in those RF sections. Interesting in the way they cheer, they cheer in chorus and they have one dude who was somewhat of a cheerleader but not in the high-school-football sense. The non-Koreans had good names for him some higlights are Choobacca, Choo-Choo-Choose-Me and the inevitable You-Smell-Like-Choo. My favourite nickname, I have used it on the site before, “The Golden Greek” Harry “the Horse” Agganis. Love a dude with two nicknames.
I like Choobacca. I guess that Big League Choo has a special place in my heart, as I remember being a young lad, heading up to the Mike Mart in the
every dangerous “heights” and buying packs of the big league chew. I do like the guys two nicknames, and they are some great nicknames at that.
The golden greek and the horse, I’d love to hear the real stories as to how he received those nicknames.
One of my all-time favorite names: Champ Summers. Champ as in Champion. Summers as in the Summer Game.
Lee