Phenomenclature

Nicknames for Phenoms

Adrian Constantine Anson, first known as Baby, then Cap, and finally Pop

What’s in a name? Or a nickname? I have written before about team nicknames and their sometimes serpentine derivations. But today I am thinking about player nicknames — in this case particularly about the ones conferred upon phenoms.

In his essay on the subject for Total Baseball, James K. Skipper, Jr. identified eight categories of sobriquet, seven of which need not concern us at this moment. (However, I cannot help but observe that to date 181 big-leaguers, 13 Negro Leaguers, and 87 minor leaguers have been termed Lefty … while not a one has been called Righty.) Of the category “Age” Skipper wrote:

Kid Nichols, Omaha, 1889

Players who begin their careers at an early age are often called “Kid,” as was the case of Charles Nichols (1890–1906). He received his nickname in 1887 at age seventeen, when he won 21 games for Kansas City in the Western League. Waite Hoyt (1918–1938) signed a major league contract at age fifteen and immediately acquired the nickname of “School Boy.” Jesse Haines (1918–1937), on the other hand, did not acquire the nickname of “Pop” until the latter stage of his career.

An interesting character in this particular nickname line is Adrian Constantine Anson, who came to professional ranks as Baby but exited as Pop. His early nickname may have derived from his arrival in the big leagues as “an infantile phenomenon” at age 19, or as the first white child born in Marshalltown, Iowa; both explanations have been offered. However, the nickname Baby stuck for many years thereafter owing to his histrionic fusses with umpires (early home-run hero Charley Jones was called Baby for the same reason). His next nickname, Cap, came from his long captaincy of the Chicago White Stockings. His last came as he continued to play and manage into his forties; when Anson was let go, his young Chicago “Colts” became the Orphans, because they’d lost their Pop.

Babe Adams

For today, let’s focus on the three characteristics of phenoms: youth, proficiency, and sudden emergence. A rookie big leaguer might have enjoyed so much success at a younger age that he came to The Show as “Kid” (like Nichols) or “Babe” (Ruth). If he was on the small side, he might be called Candy (Cummings). Thirty-two players with MLB experience have been nicknamed Babe, some because they gave promise of being the next Ruth, like Babe Herman, others whose onset predate that of the Bambino — notably Babe Adams, who precociously won three games in the 1909 World Series.

We think of the Babes as young and wild, but as Adams matured his career, which lasted into his forties, was epitomized by control. In four consecutive seasons, 1919–1922, he allowed one walk per nine innings or under, by far the best in the big leagues. When we think of Babe Pinelli, on the other hand, it is only as an umpire in his dotage, but he had come by his nickname as a prospect in the Pacific Coast League.

Ted Williams, always The Kid

Forty-nine MLBers have gone by the name Kid, including the aforementioned Nichols but also Ted Williams, Ken Griffey, Jr; and Willie Mays (“The Say Hey Kid”). Other Hall of Famers with that promising nickname include Gary Carter, Ryne Sandberg, Robin Yount, and Lou Boudreau (the “Boy Manager”). The earliest players to be called Kid were in the 1880s: Kid Gleason, Kid Baldwin, Kid Madden, and Kid Butler.

Youngsters who arrived from the hinterlands in ill-fitting suits with cardboard valises might be called Cyrus or Cy. This was the probable origin of the nickname for Denton True Young, who arrived in the big leagues in 1890 thus outfitted. The alternative tale — that he threw the ball so hard that it broke a fence and thus he was called Cyclone — has always struck me as fanciful, although there were three pitchers called Cyclone before him. Other MLBers called Cy, absent the proper name Cyrus, have included Cy Seymour, Cy Williams, Cy Falkenberg, Wilcy Moore, and Irv (“Young Cy”) Young.

Cy Young, 1891

A hayseed phenom (a bumpkin, rustic, farmer, yokel, backwoodsman) might also be called Rube or, like Enos Slaughter, Country. The former nickname was first attached to the great lefthander George Edward Waddell, the country boy who never grew up; see: https://bit.ly/2RFaKoY. As I wrote in that essay:

Rube Waddell at Rollins College

The term “rube” derived from Reuben, a hinterlands name that provoked mirth among the city swells and traveling gents and those rural types who fancied themselves “in the know.” Waddell began pitching for Butler, Pennsylvania, at age 18, in 1895, later moving on to pitch for the Prospect nine. When he showed up at Franklin in 1896, green as any farmboy ever was but hoping for an audition, one of the Franklin men called out, “Hey, Rube!” — the circus/carny term used as a cry for help, or rallying charge, against outsiders, like those who would cut the canvas to gain free admission. (Often as not, the call “Hey, Rube!” would lead to a heyrube — a fracas or hubbub, what Red Barber and other Southerners came to call a rhubarb.)

Rube Foster

Every notable pitcher who pitched against Waddell and defeated him might pick up his nickname, as did Negro League founder and fellow Hall of Fame pitcher Andrew Bishop Foster. A lefthander from the West or Midwest might come by the name, too, as happened to eventual Cooperstown honoree Richard William Marquard and others. Even Arthur Sleight DeGroff, who had a brief big-league career as an outfielder, was called Rube in his pitching days in the minor leagues, when he held his own against not Rube Waddell but Rube Foster.