For times when the SABR-brain gets numbed by statistical data analysis, here's a sweet diversion. A tip of the cap to Joe Ross and Richard M. Renneboog for putting this together.

David Daniel, co-author, “Murder at the Baseball Hall of Fame,”

Creator of the prize-winning Alex Rasmussen mystery series. 

~~~

I have been a baseball fan ever since I started listening on a short-wave radio night after night as “Diamond Jim” Gentile blasted 46 homers with 141 RBIs and batted .302 for the Baltimore Orioles in 1961. In 1973, my 40-year career as a beat writer covering the Red Sox coincided with the first MLB game in history featuring designated hitters Ron “Boomer” Bloomberg of the New York Yankees and Boston’s Orlando “Cha-Cha” Cepeda. How did they get those nicknames? How did any ballplayer get his nickname? Many might be obvious and some I might take a guess, but I didn’t know for certain until I read Joe Ross’s and Richard M. Renneboog’s painstakingly researched, encyclopedic, and intriguing book of baseball nicknames.

Why was John Martin, already nicknamed “Pepper,” also called “The Wild Horse of the Osage?” Why were the Hall of Fame Waner brothers, Paul and Lloyd, nicknamed “Big Poison” and “Little Poison?” How did Jim “Toy Cannon” Wynn and Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd get their nicknames?

These and a thousand more questions are answered here, and you will be surprised to learn many of the obvious nicknames were not as obvious as you thought. If you were under the impression, as was I, that the most colorful nicknames disappeared with the players of the distant past, and that modern players are too corporate and colorless for nicknames, think again.

Baseball may change slowly, but some things never change.

Chaz Scoggins, Author of:

“Game of My Life: Memorable Stories of Boston Red Sox Baseball,”

“Tales from the Impossible Dream Red Sox,”

“Bricks and Bats: Professional Baseball in Lowell, Massachusetts”

 (with Rico Petrocelli),

Official Scorer, Boston Red Sox and three All-Star games.

I have been an avid follower of the game since the age of seven, the year the Red Sox played the “Big Red Machine” in the 1975 World Series.  What a way to begin my lifelong pursuit of baseball!  I will forever be thankful for my Dad letting me stay up to watch those pivotal games.  If he hadn’t, I never would have seen Carlton “Pudge” Fisk willing his home run inside the foul pole in Game 6!

Nicknames have long been synonymous with the game of baseball. From “Three Finger” Brown to the Splendid Splinter and Hammerin’ Hank, to more recently Big Papi and The Wild Horse, followers of America’s national pastime have been treated to some of the most colorful descriptions of our greatest heroes. In “The Nicknames of Major League Baseball,” Joe Ross and Richard Renneboog take readers on a fascinating journey through some of the stranger monikers that have attached themselves to some of baseball’s greatest heroes.

Chris Carpenter, co-author, “Murder at the Baseball Hall of Fame,”

Journalist, The Christian Broadcasting Network.