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Where have you gone Cookie Rojas? A nation nearly devoid of nicknames turns its lonely eyes to you. Coo-Coo Ka-Choo-Choo Coleman!
|  | | Today's nicknames just don't compare with old-time classics, such as Yogi Berra. |
Nicknames are a part of history, a part of legend, a part of sports, and a part of every childhood. For instance, my niece has a doll with a big head which she calls ... Big Head. When my son Daniel was about 3, people would ask him what his name was, and he'd proudly say, "Dan the Man," because that's what everyone called him. But we're about a Pokey Reese or Chipper Jones away from putting nicknames on the endangered species list. Soon nicknames will have to mate in a zoo just to keep them from dying out completely.
And when I say, "nicknames," I'm talking about nicknames that overtake a person's real name. Magic Johnson, Tiger Woods, Babe Ruth, Ickey Woods, Gump Worsley, Yogi Berra, Pop Warner, Doc Gooden. There used to be a lot of these, and you didn't even have to be a particularly good or well-known player.
I was checking out geocities.com's list of every guy who's ever caught a game in major league baseball. It was a blast noting how many guys were listed by their nicknames ... and what great nicknames they had! There were a couple of Peaches, a Pickles, a Pinky, a Gabby, a Bubber, a Birdie, a Bubbles, a Fatty, and a Honey Barnes. It was like a Who's Who of "Little Rascals." Can't you just imagine this exchange:
"Nice play, Honey."
"Thanks, Pickles. Hey, Pinky and Bubber and I are gonna meet up with Fatty and Bubbles over at Gabby's place, you want to come?"
"Sure, you mind if I bring that new guy, Ginger Shinault."
"I guess that's OK, but only if Ginger is a nickname."
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The wrestling coach approached me at lunch one day and asked me to join the team. He needed someone under 101 pounds. Next thing I knew, I was at practice, where the team's heavyweight thought it would be amusing to toss me around like a volleyball with feet. Presto! My new name was "Toy." I was instantly accepted by a group of overly macho, post-pubescent Neanderthals in unitards. And it made me feel great! |
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Nicknames just do a mind and body good. At one of my first jobs after college, this skinny, little high school kid with wire rim glasses nervously applied for an internship. While he stood there quivering, a veteran photographer walked up to him and said, "Let's go, Spider. I'll show you around." From that moment on, the kid was Spider. He was accepted and made to feel comfortable -- maybe for the first time in his life -- all because of a friendly and colorful nickname.
I was also a tiny, little kid in high school -- so small, in fact, that the wrestling coach approached me at lunch one day and asked me to join the team. He needed someone under 101 pounds. Next thing I knew, I was at practice, where the team's heavyweight thought it would be amusing to toss me around like a volleyball with feet. Presto! My new name was "Toy." I was instantly accepted by a group of overly macho, post-pubescent Neanderthals in unitards. And it made me feel great!
When I was in college, my friend Tim thought I looked like some other kid he knew who, according to him, looked a little bit like what he thought would be an artist's rendering of Anwar Sadat. So, for two years, Tim called me Anwar. I called him Benny, because of Jack Benny's reputation for stealing other comedians' material. Tim used to take songs I'd written and pawn them off as his own to try to impress women. It didn't work. Tim blamed the songs. I blamed the fact he never took his hands out of his pockets.
After that, I went a good 15 years without a nickname, and even though I didn't realize it at the time, I always felt like something was missing in my life. Then, when I first got to ESPN, one of the other anchors started calling me Houlihan. Someone else switched it to Hooligan. A gradual metamorphosis began to take place, and now I'm commonly referred to by any number of three-syllable words that begin with the letter H. My favorites are Helium, Hexigon, Holograph and Hoola-Hoop. I think it's the hyphen that makes Hoola-Hoop among the best. Whatever, as a new guy trying to fit in, the nickname made me feel welcome. Even now, if someone comes up with a new poly-syllabic H-word, I know they've put a little effort into it. And it makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over.
Several of the other anchors have nicknames, as well. Neil Everett worked in Hawaii, so he gets called Five-OH. David Lloyd frequently tells viewers, "We'll be back in a skosh," so he gets called Skoshie. Kevin Corke always has carrots or raisins or cookies or candy in front of him, so he's The Nibbler. I also watched him put six sugars in a cup of coffee once. It reminded me of a kid sucking down a Pixie stick -- those sugar filled straws -- so, I'd like to start calling him Pixie, but I don't think he'd like it. I might do it anyway, because I'm a pretty tough guy. Did I mention I used to wrestle?
|  | | A-Rod is an abbreviation, not a nickname. |
Now, the litmus test for a good nickname is whether it is commonly used in conversation. Does it replace a person's real name, and can it be used during a greeting, or a salutation? "Hi, Air." Nope. "How's it going, Neon?" Uh-uh. "Nice to meet you, Answer." Still no. "Dear Big Unit:" ... um, not gonna work.
And please, don't give me this T-Mac, C-Webb, A-Rod, I-Rod, J-Lo horse p-lop! Those aren't nicknames! They're unimaginative abbreviations -- a distant cousin of pig latin and the ubby-dubby language from "ZOOM." Nicknames are supposed to be a unique moniker that tells us something about the person.
Today's nicknames, more often than not, are some kind of phonics lesson. Anybody can have one. But nicknames aren't supposed to be for everyone. A cool nickname is like trust and Martha Stewart -- it has to be earned and then marketed correctly. That guy who's been at your office for three years and is still wearing his name tag on his shirt because he's still wearing the same shirt shouldn't be allowed to instantaneously go from geeky, little Jimmy Borfenzittle to J-Bo -- the cool guy with three girls, one for each arm and one to carry his pocket protector. He doesn't deserve to be J-Bo. If he's going to have a nickname, it should fit his personality -- something like Zitter, or Baby Zitter.
Hockey players continue to be the least imaginative and the biggest violators of proper nicknaming procedures. All they ever seem to do is add an "ee" sound to the end of everybody's name. "Heinz-ie," "Foote-y," or "Bourque-ie."
Rule No. 1 of nicknames really should be that you can't have one that you can't spell. Even the best nickname they've come up with in years loses points with me because it is quite possibly the precursor to that whole T-Mac, C-Webb debacle. CuJo! Great name -- but it's also the first two letters of Curtis Joseph's first and last name. I honestly believe that's where all the trouble began. And I should probably admit that one reason I don't like this simplistic nicknaming trend is because it doesn't work for me. B-Ha! Sounds like something you yell at the end of a square dance.
|  | | Great nicknames replace given names and can be used in a sentence, as in, "Magic, have you seen that J-Lo video?" |
But if we can all agree that we like nicknames, that nicknames bring people together, and that nicknames are easy to create, then let's also agree to start working a little harder at this. We need to use our collective creativity to come up with nicknames worthy of this generation's athletes. Together we can make real life as good as the movies, which have given us Crash Davis, Nuke Laloosh, Clubber Lang, Bagger Vance, Maverick, Iceman and Goose, among others.
Let's give an assist to Chris Berman. He's the nickname king! And fittingly, he's got a good one of his own, Boomer. But the problem is the nicknames he gives us are his to use, and his alone. If I say Albert "Winnie the" Pujols, I'm plagiarizing. Besides, I see the name Pujols and I'm thinking port-o-potty. Say it slowly ... it'll hit you and suddenly make sense.
We can make them easy, calling red-headed people Red and white-haired people White Head.
We can make them mean ... like, by calling Derek Lowe Bubbles, because he blows.
We can leave them open to interpretation. Somebody who takes a lot of licks: Tootsie Pop, as in "Tootsie" Tootsie Lindros. An intimidating pitcher with a 100 mph inside fastball -- Skidmarks. Somebody who gets from first to third in a hurry: Prom Date.
We can make them so obscure, they barely make sense and they'll have to be explained. Call Derek Jeter "Hobbit" because he's won four rings in six years, making him "Lord of the Rings," a book written by J.R.R. Tolkein, who also wrote "The Hobbit."
It's simply a matter of free association. Every time I see David Wells referred to in print, he's described at the "portly left-hander." So, if we simply go with the T-Mac, C-Webb conversion chart, we'd take "portly lefthander" and get P-Lef. That sounds a lot like Pilaf. Boom! A new nickname is born. "How's it going, Pilaf?" "Strike him out, Rice Man!" And the beauty of a nickname like this is that some people will know the origin of it, and others will be left out of the loop. So, not only will the nickname make Wells feel special, knowing where it came from will make you feel special. It works for everyone.
|  | | Elbert Woods partly owes his fame to a baby brother. |
For instance, did you know how Ickey Woods got his nickname? Or did you think his parents named him Ickey? Actually, his mom sort of did. Elbert's little brother had trouble saying Elbert, and it came out Eee-Eee, which his mom thought sounded like a cartoon character named Ickey.
Hockey goalie Gump Worsley's first name was Lorne, but he had the good fortune of looking like an old comic book character named Andy Gump, and now he'll never be forgotten.
Stubby Clapp, called up by the Cardinals last season, is actually a third generation Stubby. His grandfather and father were Stubby. Considering his last name is Clapp, and his real first name is Richard, it's a good thing they didn't go with the more common nickname for Richard. "Now batting ..."
Remember, as we begin this project, nicknames must be given to you almost like a rite of passage. I don't like it when a person creates his or her own nickname like He Hate Me or The Big Aristotle. That's just lame.
And you heard that first from me -- Harpsichord.
Bob Halloran is an anchorman for ESPNEWS.
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AKA HOLOGRAPH |  |
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