For example, Brandon Inge. If you look at his stats, you’d see a guy who is perennially not impressive as a set of numbers. But the Tigers are undeniably better with him at third base, and the hardcore fans know this. It’s the casual fans who check the numbers but neglect the actual watching of the games. For them, A-Rod is the guy because he performs well in the numbers game — which is a lot like measuring someone’s actual intelligence or value as a brain by giving them the MEAP test every year.

The reason a guy like Inge is in the lineup despite his inability to hit for power, or average, is that he changes the game. You can’t hit the ball to his side of the field. Anything near him is an out. He takes hits away before a better even swings, and he makes pitchers better.

There’s one of those on every MLB team. And real fans (here I will say, people who watch the games, not people who treat the live game as though it is just a statistical model, like fantasy baseball) value that. Which is why real fans, I would think, would like if someone like Inge had a fabulous nickname — a decidedly not Chris Berman nickname — that would be part of that wonderful tradition of passing a bit about each player on thru stories, of which “they used to call him x, because x” was a most integral part.

Gav, I think you’re observation about Pujols is perfect. He needs a nickname that evokes an earthquake.

I agree with you wholeheartedly about Pujols. He’s a magical player, and it’s unforgivable that he can get ignored in American League towns. A-Rod? Screw A-Rod. Hell, screw everyone on the Yankees except Jeter who’s actually played his whole career there, and maybe screw him too. The Yankees are where good players go to die, but Pujols can hurt you every at-bat, even when you walk him. You can feel the pitcher’s fear all the way from the stands.

There are plenty of old nicknames that are downright teasing. Some of the best pitchers of the early baseball era were nicknamed “Rube.” By the twenties, “Rube” actually just became a nickname for a really good pitcher — Rube Marquard was from Cleveland, not a Rube at all.

Let’s think about great nicknames from earlier in our lifetime. Basketball: Air Jordan, Larry Legend, Magic Johnson, Karl “the Mailman” Malone, John “Spider” Salley, Vinnie “the Microwave” Johnson. Baseball… It’s really hard! There’s “Big Unit,” Randy Johnson, and Cal Ripken had a few nicknames (“Silent Cal,” “Iron Man”).

I have two theories. First — the statistical revolution convinced most hard-core baseball fans that what they saw didn’t matter. These people don’t see a guy’s size or swing or how he runs or fields or throws; they see OBP, OPS, shares of wins.

Second — this ceded the sensational plays and behavior to cable sports and tabloid newspapers, who eschewed monikers for retarded acronyms. ESPN has been turning nicknames into jokes since at least Chris Berman, and the New York Post has always tried to find shorter ways to refer to celebrities so it can write headlines in giant type. “A-Rod” is just another version of “Brangelina.”

Finally, some of my favorite nicknames are nicknames for things nobody talks about any more, big industrial or agriculture events that raised the same kind of wonder these legendary baseball players did. Lou Gehrig was “the Iron Horse.” That sounds like some kind of robot, or maybe some kind of armored knight, now. It meant a train. A train was an Iron Horse, and Lou Gehrig was a train. That was a nickname for radio. It was the kind of nickname Ernie Harwell might use.

Besides Vinnie “the Microwave” Johnson — if you remember, it was because he could heat up in a hurry — our technology and our baseball players don’t fill us with the same kind of mechanical awe. They’re just bits of data on a screen.

I think you’re both right. The magic of the game is eroding for the casual viewer, but for watchers like me the legend, the fog, the mystery and wonder — it’s all still there. It’s just not showcased by royal nicknames and an honored reverence for unwritten rules and tradition anymore.

What Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Jake Peavy, Roy Halliday can do is beyond the wildest dreams of The Babe and Mickey Mantle. They need the royal surnames to prove it. A friend said he and his father (a noted baseball author) took to calling Cabrera something like The Venezuelan Smasher or something equally awesome. That’s what we need, because, sweet sassy molassy, these boys are the real deal. Their swings are like chamber music and their power like a wrecking ball, and that’s at least as good as what The Babe was doing.

Ana, I think you’re on to something. The old nicknames are titles. “Joltin’ Joe.” “The Great One.” “The Bambino.” Some of them are almost royal. They’re supposed to be figures that are big enough that everyone can look up to see them. The image of being in everyone’s living room is tied to a unified physical presence–the only way for everyone to be able to see you is to be big enough for everyone to see you.

Out contemporary media atmosphere is different. A-Rod is the kind of nickname you would call someone you know, someone you hang out with. Our contemporary celebrities have to be approachable, knowable. They don’t need titles. They need Twitter handles.

babe-eee…ruuuuth-eeeeee? oh how i love that movie.

I think the genius of a quality nickname is that it DOESN’T come from a marketing department. When it does, you can tell (hence, all the Maggs / Cabs / Shanny / Drapes, etc). I’d need to do some research, but my intuition tells me that sportswriters bestow the names, and that they’re abdicating their duty as of late. (Tho something ELSE tells me perhaps Allen Iverson game himself the nickname, The answer.)

Then again, it’s the sportswriters that normally come up with the nicknames, right? Is it modern sportswriters who are falling down on the job?

:-)