THE OTHER NIGHT A couple of the New York press lords who try to control what I do in this space were plying me with country ham and making suggestions: “Lissen. My cousin Billy throwed in fourteen the other night against East Fork Junior. You reckon you could …”
I was holding out for the column I had in mind—a closely reasoned proposal for cutting down on hockey violence by converting all the ice in America into cubes—when one of the press lords said, “How about a column on names?”
“N … names?” I said weakly.
To suggest to a sportswriter that he write about names is like suggesting to a fat man that he eat pie. If he is a fat man without character, he will say, “Aw, I better not …” If he is a sportswriter without character, he will say, “Ah, I don’t know, I was up all night with the ghosts of Granny Rice and W. O. McGeehan choosing an all-time all-woman baseball team—Babe Ruth, Pete Rose, Larry Sherry, Tex Shirley, Bill Lee, Carlos May, Dick Sharon, Clay Carroll, Carlos Paula, Harry Ernest Pattee, Sam Leslie, Lyle LeRoy Judy …”
If he is a sportswriter with character, however, he will take a swallow of coffee, give his head a shake, and begin:
“Frenchy Bordagaray, Roscoe Word, Earsell Mackbee, Chuck Cherundolo, Orval Overall, Marcelino Lopez, Coy Bacon, Native Dancer, Ebba St. Claire, Eppa Rixey, Ebbie Goodfellow, Sibby Sisti, Garo Yepremian, Cornelius Warmerdam, Coco Laboy, Fair Hooker, Evonne Goolagong, Napoleon Lajoie, Larvell Blanks, Boots Poffenberger, Jethro Pugh, Gump Worsley, Beattie Feathers, Cloyce Box, Hackenschmidt and Gotch, Lavern Dilweg, Pudge Heffelfinger, Honey Mellody, Council Rudolph, Jubilee Dunbar, Cesar Geronimo, Syl Apps, Fidel LaBarba, Van Lingle Mungo, Dit Clapper, Jesus Alou, Young Stribling, The Only Nolan, Coleman Zeno, Small Montana, Clair Bee, D’Artagnan Martin, Wilmar Levels, Clyde Lovellette, Verl Lillywhite, Roxy Snipes, Burleigh Grimes, Urban ‘Red’ Faher, Urban Shocker, Urbane Pickering, Enos ‘Country’ Slaughter, Schoolboy Rowe, Preacher Roe, Perrine G. Rockafellow, ChaCha Muldowney, Harthorne Nathaniel Wingo, Steve Smear and Vida Blue.”
Then, “… and Coot Veal and Bubba Bean.”
Then, “… and did I say Orval Overall?”
Then he will go on to propose a few names that would be great sports names: Obadiah “Bad” Minton, Cesar Spang, O. L. “Oh Well” McFee, Memphis Briggs, Quick Ralph Click, Oliver “All of a” Sutton, Oliver “All Over” Musgrove, Arnold “Baby” Ionian, Chub Norsgaard, Laud Passwater, Eston Gozando (which Xaviera Hollander says is Portuguese for “I am coming”), Earl Riplet, Jr., Stash Hoist and Armstrong McKimbrow. And new nicknames for actual players: Larry “Good Old” Bowa, Roger “Pearly” Wehrli, Don “Bird Thou Never” Wert.
Then he will just wander off into The Baseball Encyclopedia, where he will discover, on virtually every page, one or more great names he had forgotten or had never heard of: Guy R. Sturdy, George “Yats” Wuestling, Irving Melrose “Young Cy” Young, Tony Suck, Inky Strange, John “Happy” Iott, Debs Garms (of Bangs, Texas), LeRoy Earl “Tarzan” Parmelee, Ossie Bluege, Flint Rhem (of Rhems, South Carolina), Elmer “Slim” Love (of Love, Missouri), Clarence William Pickup (played one game, 1918 Phillies, lifetime batting average, 1,000), Homer Estell Ezzell, Clarence Waldo “Climax” Blethen, James Harry Colliflower, Hap Collard, Clayton Maffitt Touchstone and Emil “Hill Billy” Bildilli.
Yes, sports are richer in names than any other aspect of culture except possibly literature, and in literature somebody made them up. Many sports names seem inevitable, fated. Imagine the future Mrs. Trucks saying to Mr. Trucks, “I don’t know if we better get married, ’cause my family don’t hold with baseball.”
“What in the world does that have to do with it?”
“Well, we got to have a boy. And name him Virgil. For my daddy. That’s the main thing I want out of marriage and life, is have a boy named Virgil for my daddy. And anybody with a name like Virgil Trucks, why, there wouldn’t be anything for it but that he’d go to be a ballplayer.”
“I guess you got something there. Probly hurl for the Tigers.”
I wouldn’t be any good as a coach because I would automatically play anybody named John Buick Sprawls or Butterfly Link over anybody named something flat like Joe Morgan or Bert Jones. I wouldn’t be any good as an athlete because I would see somebody coming through the line and think, “I can’t tackle him! He’s named Roosevelt Leaks!” Alex Karras has pointed out that it was the K in his name that enabled him to kick ass in the NFL. Considering the cases of Dick Butkus, Ray Nitschke, Larry Csonka, Chuck Bednarik, Jim Katcavage and Karl Kassulke, he has a point.
But I’m not here to give you just a bunch of jack-off onomastics. I got name stories.
Everybody has heard about the confusion over whether “Dick” or “Richie” Allen is correct. But few people are aware of how that controversial first baseman’s brother Hank, who also put in a few years in the big leagues, got his name. Hank himself told me the story:
My first year in the minors, the manager took me aside and said, “What’s your name?”
“Allen.”
“No, your first name.”
“Harold.”
“No, what do they call you?”
“Allen. Or Harold.”
“No, what’s your nickname?”
“Haven’t got one.”
“All ballplayers have nicknames. How about Henry?”
“Naw.”
“How about Hank?”
“Naw.”
And he went on with that for ten minutes! Finally he settled on Hank. He started calling me Hank and nobody else knew me, so they called me Hank. People back home would read in the papers and didn’t even know it was me.
My mom came to the first game and they announced Hank Allen and she jumped up and yelled, “They changed his name!”
At least Harold’s manager got his last name right. When Leo Durocher managed the Houston Astros, he called pitcher Doug Konieczy “Gomez.” Then Preston Gomez took over the club. He called Konieczy “Garcia.”
A sadder case was that of a placekicker once listed on the Pittsburgh Steelers’ training-camp roster as Peter Jarecki. When someone called out, “Hey, Jarecki,” he always responded. Then, after the departure of another kicker (named Kambiz Behbahani), Jarecki got a chance to kick in an exhibition game. The day before that game, Peter approached Steeler publicity director Joe Gordon.
“It’s Rajecki,” he said.
“Huh?” said Gordon.
“My name is really Rajecki.”
It was too late to make the correction in the program and on the press handouts. In his first public appearance in professional competition, Rajecki was known as Jarecki.
The case of Rabbit Wingfield was sadder than that. In 1934, after he’d spent a couple of years in the New York-Pennsylvania League, Rabbit Wingfield was invited by Connie Mack to Fort Myers, Florida, for a tryout with the Philadelphia Athletics. If Wingfield made the team, Mack told him, the Athletics would even pay his expenses.
Wingfield was a utility infielder. So was Rabbit Warstler, who came to the Athletics from the Red Sox that same spring. Once in an exhibition game Wingfield struck out trying doggedly to hit to right field. When he returned to the dugout, Mack said, “Warstler, I want to give you some advice.”
“Mr. Mack,” replied Wingfield, “I’m Wingfield.”
Connie told him not to keep trying to hit behind the runner when the count reached 0 and 2.
Later during the exhibition season, Mack sent word for Wingfield to meet him in a drugstore. “Thanks for coming, Warstler, I want to talk with you,” said Mack.
“Mr. Mack,” said Wingfield, “I’m not Warstler, I’m Wingfield.” Mr. Mack bought him a vanilla milk shake and offered to sign him up. Wingfield accepted.
A month into the season, the Athletics’ second baseman, Dib Williams, was hurt and had to leave a game. Connie Mack surveyed his bench, looked right at Wingfield and said, “Warstler, second base.” The real Warstler ran out and took the position and did a good enough job to stay on the team.
Wingfield was released. His name is not listed in The Baseball Encyclopedia because he never played a regular-season inning in the big leagues.
Some years later, Wingfield was in a hotel lobby when Connie Mack walked in. Wingfield went over, extended his hand and said, “Mr. Mack, my name is not Warstler.”
“No, of course not,” said Connie Mack. “You’re Wingfield.” That is the kind of story that makes it a pleasure to recall what former Athletic pitching great Lefty Grove once said about Connie Mack (whose real name, of course, was Cornelius McGillicuddy): “I don’t know what he was like. I never paid any attention to him.”
Have you ever wondered whether Jo-Jo White of the Boston Celtics could possibly for some strange reason have been named after Joyner Clifford “Jo-Jo” White of Red Oak, Georgia, who toiled for the Tigers, Athletics and Reds in the thirties and forties? In case you had, I called the Celtics’ publicity office. I was told that basketball’s Jo-Jo got his name in high school. His coach was going over a play on the blackboard, and Joseph Henry White was dozing. “Joe,” said the coach, “what do you do on this play? Joe! Joe!”
Ah, names. When Pie Traynor was a radio announcer in Pittsburgh he always referred to Yogi Berra as “Yoga Berry.”
Yoga Berry would be a terrific name for a ballplayer, but not as terrific as Rowland Office. Rowland Office plays the outfield, very well, for the Atlanta Braves. If by any chance Office has a fat brother, the brother might be known as Oval Office. If Rowland has a favorite exclamation that he comes out with frequently, “Nuts!” or something, then that would be the oath of Office. Rowland is too fleet afoot for someone to take over for him when he gets on base, but if that ever did happen, the pinch runner would be running for Office. If someone trying to get into a dressing room to see Rowland Office got angry enough to draw a gun and fire it at the man blocking the door, then that man could be said to have been shot by a frustrated Office seeker. Or if the would-be visitor tried to pass himself off as Rowland’s brother or uncle, he could explain when the judge asked him why he was arrested, “For impersonating an Office, sir.” If a fan got into trouble with the law for trying to act out his strange compulsion to hold Rowland Office in his lap in a rocking chair, and the judge asked the arresting officer, “What’s the problem with this defendant?” the cop could answer laconically, “Office rocker.” Of course if Rowland Office himself went out looking for Stan Musial, it would be a case not of The Man seeking Office, but of Office seeking The Man.
And then too if a club owner tried to trade Cirilio Cruz, of the Cruz brothers, for a veteran on another club who had the right to refuse a trade, and the veteran did refuse, then the owner who wanted to make the deal might call the veteran directly and ask, plaintively, “Won’t you let me take you for a C. Cruz?”
The only other thing I have to say about sports names, for now (a whole subcategory awaits another column), is that my favorite sports name of all time is not that of a famous sports participant. It is that of a lady who once wrote Sports Illustrated to advance the theory that swimming went without any black stars for so long because black people used to avoid frequent immersion in water because it messed up processed hair. Her name was Mrs. Le Sans La Rue Robinson.