Nickname At Your Own Risk

Well it must be September, since the weather's cooling off, the pennant races are heating up, and Manny Ramirez just missed a crucial series against the Yankees because of a serious case of jock itch. You've got to love Manny though. Have you seen that guy's shoes? Vegas doesn't have that many sequins. I'd get myself a pair if I didn't think a house would fall on my head as soon as I put them on.

You know what else? Mascots in sports have never made much sense to me.

Who in their right mind goes to a baseball game to see some illegal immigrant in a chicken suit poop out baseballs along the third base line? That's just sick. And I think mascots are a bad idea too.

Name a single pro-baseball mascot you wouldn't mind having in the crosshairs of a deer rifle, just one. No, I'm not talking about cheerleaders, you sick bastard. I'm talking about the giant Muppets with some guy trapped inside making minimum wage.

And these mascots have a much more checkered history than you'd think. Take for instance the story of the Schenectady River Goats' former mascot, Trotsky the Home-Run Bear. I was at one of their games back in the 70's that I'll never forget. Trotsky comes out in the third inning, like he always had, to shoot t-shirts into the crowd using a makeshift air cannon that looks like a shoulder-fired rocket launcher. Basically a big long tube that shoots rolled up t-shirts into the stands like mortar rounds.

Trotsky comes out, and the crowd goes nuts, clamoring for a cheap-ass River Goats t-shirt as they always do. Only this time the bear's walking out kinda slow, and he doesn't do any cartwheels or any of his usual crowd-pleasing antics. Instead, when he gets out to the outfield, he drops one end of the t-shirt gun to the ground, waves a sad little wave to the crowd, sticks the barrel in his oversized mascot bear mouth and pulls the trigger. I swear to God, it was pandemonium. Little kids were screaming all over the stadium as this giant bear is laying spread-eagle on the field, with a smoking t-shirt hanging out of his mouth. It was horrible. They had to cover him with a River Goats souvenir tarp and almost canceled the seventh-inning ice cream race. I guess Trotsky took the River Goats' eight-game losing streak more seriously than anybody had realized.

Baseball nicknames these days don't make any sense to me either. Take Randy Johnson, for example. Hey, if you want to call a seven-foot-tall redneck with an attitude "The Big Eunuch," I guess that's your right, it just never made sense to me. I'd rather be killed for religion or true love or something, but that's just me. You want some genetic freak with cleats turning your head into a wiffle ball, I suppose that's your God-given right as a numbskull.

Same thing with "Hammerin'" Hank Aaron. If you've got the balls to make fun of some guy's drinking problem, I only hope for your sake he's not twice as big as you and frequently armed with a big wooden stick. Jesus.

I'm also fascinated by the famous players who are so devoid of personality that they don't even get nicknames. Like Tony Gwynn, they loved that guy down in San Diego, but what was his nickname? "The Hitting Weeble"? "Black Math"? That has no kind of ring to it. What about Barry "They Don't Pay Me To Have a Personality" Bonds? "The Legend of Boring"? That guy has the personality of my bank manager. He could suck the fun out of a pillow fight. However, my favorite has to be Alex Rodriguez. And don't give me that A-Rod crap. That's not a nickname, that's a car part. This guy's the Tiger Woods of baseball, and they're both the Jehovah's Witnesses of sports.

We need to start giving baseball players nicknames like monster trucks, spice things up a bit. Seeing a thrilling bottom-of-the-ninth showdown between "The Devastator" and "HOMOPHOBIA" could only be good for the sport, I think.

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