Nicknames have been a part of sports and growing up ever since Abe “Top Hat” Lincoln cut down his first cherry tree, and gave it to Willie “Lyin’” Custer to turn into toothpicks.
There aren’t many rules about nicknames except that you can’t give yourself one. I learned that the hard way when I walked into the Platte City Pool Hall one Friday night and exclaimed “You may all now call me ‘Chrissy Bag O Donuts Kamler’” It didn’t take. They called me a cab instead.
My nickname in high school was “Kool-Aid” because my face would occasionally get red and I was a bit rotund like the Kool-Aid man. Probably didn’t help that I would burst through walls when I walked in rooms yelling “OH YEAAAAH.”
Sports history’s bursting with better branding. Take Karl “The Mailman” Malone, who earned his moniker by “delivering” points rain or shine – though postal workers everywhere cringed when he kept dropping bricks later in his career. Then there’s George “The Iceman” Gervin, whose cool demeanor during finger-roll layups made opponents wish they’d packed parkas. My personal favorite? Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes, dubbed “The Big E” – a nickname so lazy it makes “Guy Who Sits Next to Me at Work” sound Shakespearean.
Baseball legends certainly weren’t immune to playground logic. They called Babe Ruth “The Sultan of Swat” because apparently “Guy Who Ate 37 Hot Dogs And Then Hit Dingers” didn’t fit on trading cards. Pee Wee Reese is somewhat self-explanatory. Meanwhile, modern athletes get stuck with corporate-approved handles like “King James” – a nickname so focus sampled it’s like calling a giraffe “Tall McLongneck.” The real art’s in the accidental nicknames, like when Charles Barkley became “The Round Mound of Rebound” after a broadcaster’s caffeine-deprived brain mixed “rebound” with “profound” and “fruit pound cake” all at once.
There’s a new one I heard on the socials this week. A Toronto Blue Jays farm hand Peyton Williams who has a neighbor that happens to own a meat delivery company. So, as all good neighbors do, he went to give his friend’s company a little good press and wore the company’s t-shirt to practice. The name of the company? The Iowa Meat Truck.
And a nickname was born. That night, he was announced in the stadium as The Iowa Meat Truck and he is living up to the nickname so far. Projected to potentially make the MLB roster next year hittin’ dingers and slingin’ wing’ers, and sausage, and ground beef.
I get the opportunity to interview Billy Butler on a broadcast later this week and I’m really waffling whether I want to bring up his famous nickname “Country Breakfast” which I, and many other old Royals Twitter fans, had a part in naming and amplifying. Rumor was he hated the name. And yet, it has followed him into retirement.
Stay tuned to see if next week, I show up into The Landmark Press Room and exclaim, “You may now call me ‘Chrissy Black Eye Kamler.’”
(Follow The Rambling Moron on X as @chriskamler)
