As I mentioned in a recent post, I was catching-up on RyanTatusko’s blog the other night and happened to read his post on nicknames. As a youth baseball coach, it is actually something I think a lot about. Typical with youth baseball, there are a variety of things I think far too long and hard about.
One of the great aspects of baseball – one of the things I love and appreciate about baseball – is the breadth and diversity of nicknames. I’d like all of my players to have good baseball nicknames. Part of me feels like I’m neglecting or somehow excluding them from one of the great aspects of baseball if they don’t have a good baseball nickname. You don’t have to follow major league baseball long to see there are thousands of nicknames and many players have more than one. But I also recognize nicknames can’t be forced but are “earned” – even if through some derivation of one’s last name. I also recognize that some of the nicknames these 6,7 or 8 yr-old boys get now could stick with them for a very long time. Growing up, my nickname was always Dubie (or Doobie) which of course was a derivation of my last DuBravac. When I run into old friends, they still call me by that name.
My middle son’s baseball nickname is “scrappy” because he plays scrappy baseball. While most of the kids on the team are 8 or 9, he is only 6. In playing up, he has always had to play bigger than he is. We’ll go outside to play catch and he’ll ask me to “throw him ones he has to dive for.” Sure enough, after diving for hundreds of tosses in the backyard he has caught two this season on the dive. Scrappy was a nickname that grew out of things fans in the stand were yelling and just stuck. Given the organic origin, I could imagine it could stick with him for years to come.
My oldest son typically goes by Big Nick or Big D. While he isn’t especially big, it just grew out of what I yell from the dugout when he is on the mound. I’m sure over time he’ll acquire additional nicknames as well – ones that grow more organically. While not everyone has a nickname (yet), we do have a handful that have relatively “sticky” nicknames. One player’s first name starts with D. His dad called him Duke on the field at one point and that just stuck for the rest of the coaching staff.. Another boy has an Irish last name so in trying to give him a proper baseball nickname, I started calling him Irish. It felt a bit contrived at first, but he liked the nickname and now it feels weird to call him anything but Irish. Even saying his given name feels strange.
While I’m sure I over stress the importance of given my players a proper baseball nickname, it is clearly an integral part of baseball.
