Scroll Down to Read Today’s Essay
Subscribe to Baseball History Comes Alive for automatic updates. As a Free Bonus, you’ll get instant access to my Special Report: Gary’s Handy Dandy World Series Reference Guide!
All-Quirky All-Star Team Photo Gallery
Click on any image below to see photos in full size and to start Photo Gallery:
“Ah…You can’t beat fun at the old ballpark,” famously said beloved broadcaster, Harry Caray. For that matter you can’t beat fun here on our Baseball History Comes Alive website, either! Today our contributor Mike Tymn returns with a foray into the always interesting genre of baseball nicknames. Michael puts together his all-quirky All-Star team (and I love the word “quirky!”). But he has very specific – might even call them “quirky” – qualifications for his team:
“Quirky names: Names that actually replaced their given names in newspaper reports, public-address system announcements, and even on the Hall of Fame plaques.”
In the featured photo, we see two great greatest quirky nicknames: “Gabby” Hartnett and “Babe” Ruth. I think you get the idea. Feel free to help Michael out with some more honorable mentions for his team. It has to be someone with a “quirky” name that has replaced his given name, so much so that you hardly even remember what the given name is! -GL
The All-Quirky All-Star Team!
While serving as sports editor of my high school newspaper in 1953, I attempted to nickname our star fullback, referring to him as Levi “Hydramatic” Mason in one of my articles. The hydramatic transmission was fairly new then and the name was supposed to suggest that Mason had one speed – no shifting of gears as he plowed through the defensive line. I don’t think the nickname stuck with him, wherever he went from high school.
Eight years later, while I was serving in the Marine Corps on Okinawa, I won the 440, 880, mile, two-mile, and steeplechase in the Marine Corps championship of 1961. A sports writer for the English-language newspapers there interviewed me and referred to me in his article as “Tiny” Tymn, after the comic strip character Tiny Tim (my last name being a cut-down Ukrainian name, Tymczyszyn, that rhymes with hymn). As I was 5-11 and a few inches above average height, I didn’t like the “handle” and trashed the reporter’s article after reading it. No way I was going to send it on to my parents and friends with such a nickname. I didn’t have the pluck, or whatever it might be called, of Pee Wee Reese, the Dodgers’ great shortstop and one of my boyhood idols. Tiny was better than Pee Wee, but my inflated ego couldn’t handle it.
Although my given name was Michael, I was called “Mickey” as a young boy. I didn’t become Michael until the nuns at my grade school called me that. The only role models I had with the same name were Mickey Mouse and Mickey Rooney, a rodent and a shrimp of a guy. Therefore, I welcomed the change to Michael and Mike, but I had second thoughts about that when Mickey Mantle joined the Yankees. I knew of Mickey Cochrane and Mickey Vernon, but Mantle really gave the name a lot more muscle. I even mentioned Mantle in a paper I wrote for an English class. I have a clear recollection of my professor, a middle-aged English woman, referring to Mantle as “Mickey Man-Tel” in her critique of my paper. I took that to be the correct pronunciation in the mother tongue.
All that, recently discussed over coffee with a friend, prompted me to come up with an all-time all-star team of baseball players with quirky names – names that actually replaced their given names in newspaper reports, public-address system announcements, and even on the Hall of Fame plaques. Labels like “The Splendid Splinter,” “The Big Hurt,” “The Big Unit,” “Big Papi” and “Joltin’ Joe” don’t count. Nor do secondary handles like Enos “Country” Slaughter or “Harmon “Killer” Killebrew. My all-time favorite baseball name, Shotgun Shuba, is also excluded from consideration.
My friend over coffee was given the name Francis at birth, but he goes by his middle name, William, or just Bill. He explained to me that his classmates didn’t know the difference between Francis and Frances, thus often ribbing him. I told him that I’d much prefer Francis to “Cookie,” as in Cookie Lavagetto, or “Pinky,” as in Pinky Higgins, and I reminded him of Fran Tarkington, the great quarterback of yesteryear, but Bill replied with a smirk while also mentioning that the present pope is named Francis. I asked him why not just “Frank” for a nickname, but he said he preferred his middle name as the alternative.
I aimed for a starting line-up of Hall of Famers or future Hall of Famers. Beginning with the catcher for my all-time team with quirky names was easy, Yogi Berra and Gabby Hartnett. Clearly, few remember Berra as Lorenzo Pietro Berra or the Americanization of that birth name to Lawrence Peter Berra, or of Hartnett as Charles Leo Hartnett. Apparently, Hartnett, also called “Old Tomato Face,” was anything but talkative. His reticent nature is said to have prompted his nickname. Berra, who gets the start on my team, was apparently given his nickname by a friend who thought he looked like a yogi from India meditating when he was in the catcher’s position.
First and second base are not so easy. With politics and character set aside, Cap Anson, also called Pop Anson, is remembered in today’s woke world as a racist, but he is the only first baseman with a nickname not resembling his first name (Adrian). On playing ability alone, he deserves to be on the all-time team. At second base, I have Walter James Vincent Maranville, better remembered as Rabbit Maranville, because of his speed and defensive quickness. He played shortstop for much of his career but was switched to second base during the second half of that 23-year career.
At 5-10, Reese, my shortstop, was an inch or so above average height during his day and several inches taller than Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto on the other side of the river, but his height had nothing to do with his being called Pee Wee. It is somehow related to being a marbles champion during his youth.
Third base is loaded with talent, including the aforementioned Cookie Lavagetto and Pinky Higgins, but Chipper Jones, another Hall of Famer, was an eight-time all-star, as well as “a chip off the old block,” and a clear-cut winner at that position. Lavagetto and Higgins make the team as reserve infielders.
My starting outfield has three Hall of Famers with Babe Ruth, Duke Snider, and Cool Papa Bell. Backing them up are other Hall of Famers – Goose Goslin, Pepper Martin, Minnie Minoso, Turkey Stearnes, and Lefty O’Doul. Unfortunately, unlike Mickey Cochrane and Mickey Vernon, “Mickey” was Mantle’s given name, so he doesn’t qualify for the team, even if he was “the Commerce Comet.”
My starting pitchers are Dizzy Dean, Dazzy Vance, Satchel Paige, Catfish Hunter, Whitey Ford, and Goose Gossage. In the bullpen are Preacher Roe, Schoolboy Rowe, Vinegar Bend Mizell, and Oil Can Boyd. Schoolboy Rowe also serves as a pinch-hitter.
Thus, the starting nine for the first game are Yogi, Cap, Rabbit, Pee Wee, Chipper, Babe, Duke, Cool Papa and Dizzy. Casey Stengel is the manager.
Our discussion over coffee can’t get much more serious than that.
Michael Tymn
Subscribe to our website, “Baseball History Comes Alive!” with over 1400 fully categorized baseball essays and photo galleries, now surpassing the one million hits mark with 1.034M hits and over 850 subscribers:
