In baseball, the nickname a player was given reflected the time when they played. Bill James, who has made a perceptive study of them—as he has made a perceptive study of everything concerning baseball—points out that for years, nearly every ballplayer who was Native American was called “Chief,” anyone who was Deaf was dubbed “Dummy.” Then there was Tony Lazzeri of the Yankees, who was called—as a compliment—both “Poosh ’em Up,” and “the Mussolini of the Diamond,” due to his Italian heritage. Oy.
Bestowed by fans, sportswriters, and teammates, old-school baseball nicknames could be adoring, mean-spirited or hilarious, reflecting players’ strengths or weaknesses, their dispositions or their styles, their ethnic backgrounds, or their hometowns, their resemblances, or even how they walked. In New York, with more fans, sportswriters, and teams than anywhere else, nicknames were at their most elaborate, baffling, and hilarious.
Here are ten of my personal favorites:
Boom-Boom: For Walter Beck, a very bad pitcher on some very bad, 1930s Dodgers teams. The first “boom” was for bat hitting ball when he pitched, the second “boom” for ball hitting wall.
The Mahatma: Branch Rickey, co-owner, general manager, and resident genius of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s. Best owner nickname ever, from back in the days when owners had nicknames. Also known as “The Great White Father,” “The Cave of the Winds,” and “El Cheapo.”
In New York…nicknames were at their most elaborate, baffling, and hilarious.
Bazooka: Eddie Basinski, bespectacled infielder for the Dodgers during World War II, and undoubtedly the only concert violinist ever known as “Bazooka.” Manager Leo Durocher refused to believe he could play (the violin, that is), and challenged him to perform before the whole team, promising him a new suit if he did. Eddie played, Leo bought him a suit, and Basinski acquired a new nickname: “Fiddler.”
The Rabbi of Swat: Mose Solomon, the son of an immigrant, Hester Street junk peddler and his wife, who briefly enflamed the New York Giants’ dreams of finding both a great Jewish player and another Babe Ruth (“The Sultan of Swat”).
Twinkletoes: Honorific of George Selkirk, a very good Yankees outfielder in the 1930s and ’40s, so named because he ran on the balls of his feet. “Twinkletoes” never stole more than 13 bases in a season, but snuck off with five World Series rings.
Ducky-Wucky: The last National League hitter to win the Triple Crown, in 1937, Dodger Joe Medwick was stuck with “Ducky-Wucky” by a female admirer. He hated it, as he hated most things and most people. In one kerfuffle, Ducky chased both Dizzy Dean and his brother, Daffy, around the field with a bat, which sounds like nothing so much as the plot of a Warner Brothers cartoon.
Cletus Elwood “Boots” Poffenberger, a.k.a., “The Baron”: It’s “The Baron,” that makes this irresistible, though its origins, like “Boots,” remain obscure. He was also known as “the Duke of Duckout,” for his tendency to just not show up from time to time. Getting Boots to curtail his prodigious carousing, or do pretty much anything else anyone wanted him to do, proved impossible. When one club owner paid a private detective to follow him, Boots opined that he should have just given The Baron himself the money: “You know where I’m going to go: the beer joint closest to the ballpark.” Gone from the majors after a brief stint in Brooklyn in 1939, Boots went on to serve for three years in the Pacific with the Marines in World War II, and somehow lived to be 84.
The Lively Turtle: After serving with both the Union army and navy in the Civil War, George Zettlein was the pitcher who won the epic battle in which the Brooklyn Atlantic club ended the Cincinnati Red Stockings’ 81-game unbeaten streak in 1870. Zettlein was also called “The Charmer,” after a “buffoonish” minstrel-show character. Why he was “The Lively Turtle”…remains lost to history. And herpetology.
The Old Lady in the Red Cap: Surely the single longest, most mystifying nickname in baseball history. It belonged to Charlie Pabor, a Brooklyn native who had a largely undistinguished career for the Atlantics in the National Association, and retired to become a New Haven cop for many years. Why he was called this—why anyone would be called this—is a mystery.
Death to Flying Things: The nickname of not one but two, longtime stars on the Brooklyn Atlantics, third baseman Bob Ferguson and outfielder Jack Chapman. When both were on the field, balls hit in the air didn’t have a chance. Pigeons were also wary.
Honorable mention: “Parisian Bob,” “The Big Six,” “King Kong,” “The Yankee Clipper,” “El Maestro,” “The Iron Horse,” “The Duke of Tralee,” “El Cuchara,” “The Man in the Iron Hat,” “Bojangles,” “Cyclone,” “Cannonball,” “The Rajah,” “The Fordham Flash,” “Hot Potato,” “El Goofo,” “The Hoosier Wanamaker,” “The Hoosier Thunderbolt,” and “The Ol’ Perfesser.”
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The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City by Kevin Baker is available from Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.
