Baseball Names - and How They Got That Way! Part XI

The words and phrases are spoken and written day after day, year after year - generally without any wonderment as to how they became part of the language. All have a history, a story. For those of you who liked Part I, Part II, Part III and all the others and wanted more, here is more.
As always, reactions and suggestions always welcome.

CHOO-CHOO COLEMAN A catcher for the New York Mets during their early struggling years, Coleman is a case in point of the fact that not all things can be traced back to their origins. Once during a television interview, Coleman was asked how he got his nickname. He responded, "I don't know." He followed this up some time later with another gem. Casey Stengel, a bit frustrated by the ineptitude of the Mets, decided to return to basics. He held up a baseball during a locker-room meeting and said, "This is a baseball." Coleman interrupted, "Wait, you're going too fast."

CLOWN PRINCE OF BASEBALL Al Schacht performed for only three seasons as a member of the Washington Senators (1919-21), but he still was able to make a mighty reputation on the baseball field. Schacht was a comic and his routines centered on the foibles and eccentricities of the National Pastime. It was said that nobody did it better, and that's why Schacht was dubbed the Clown Prince.

“THE COUNT" - Sparky Lyle, handlebar mustache and lordy ways contributed to his look and nickname.

CRAB, THE The middle man in the famed Tinker to Evers to Chance double-play combination, Johnny Evers was a pugnacious and combative ball player and manager. Admitted to the Hall of Fame in 1946, Evers had an 18-year playing career and managed for three other years. His ingoing personality and bench-jockeying ability gave him his nickname on merit.
Pitcher Jesse Burkett earned the name for his surly disposition and also the peculiar manner of his stride.

"CRIME DOG" Fred McGriff was given this name by ESPN sportscaster Chris Berman, a play on McGruff, a cartoon dog developed for American police to raise children's awareness on crime prevention.

CROW, THE A fairly little man with a screechy voice, Frank Crosetti fit his nickname. He played shortstop for the New York Yankees for 17 years and then had a long stint as a coach with the team.

“CY” His full name was Denton True Young. His nickname was given to him by a young catcher helping to warm him up. The backstop reported that Young pitched as fast as a "cyclone." Reporters shortened the nickname to Cy.
Young was still in great pitching shape until he was 44 years old. He credited his daily chores and farm work for giving him strength.

CY THE SECOND Irving Melrose Young pitched for six years in the major leagues concurrently with Denton True Young—the storied "Cy" Young who won 508 games in his career. Irving Young only won 62, while losing 94, but the fact that he had the same last name and pitched at the same time as the great Cy Young earned Irving his nickname (see CY YOUNG AWARD).

CY THE THIRD In 1908, a year in which Cy Young won 21 games and compiled a 1.26 earned-run average, Harley E. Young made it to the major leagues. He pitched only 752 plus innings, losing three games and winning none. But because his last name and the time he played reminded fans of the great Cy Young, Harley was called Cy the Third.

CY YOUNG AWARD Baseball's award to the top pitcher in each league originated in 1956. The rationale was that pitchers were at a disadvantage in Most Valuable Player balloting. The award gets its name from the Hall of Famer who pitched for 22 years, winning more games than any other performer in baseball history (508). Young also started more games, completed more games, pitched more innings than any other pitcher in history. He is fourth on the all-time list in strikeouts and shutouts. His career accomplishments personified the value of a pitcher to a team and underlined the reason for naming the award for the top pitcher after him.

DAFFINESS BOYS Also known as Dem Brooklyn Bums, the 1926 Brooklyn Dodgers wrought havoc on friend and foe alike. The hotshot of the team was freeswinging, slump-shouldered Babe Herman, dubbed the Incredible Hoiman, who bragged that among his stupendous feats was stealing second base with the bases loaded. Once Herman was one of a troika of Dodger base runners who found themselves all on third base at the same time. A Dodger rookie turned to Brooklyn manager "Uncle" Wilbert Robinson on the bench. "You call that playing baseball?" "Uncle" Robbie responded, "Leave them alone. That's the first time they've been together all year."

DEM BUMS When the Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1957, they left the "bums" behind. A beloved nickname in Flatbush, Gowns, Bensonhurst, and Williamsburg, "Bums" was deemed not quite appropriate for the Dodgers of Los Angeles. The nickname originated during the Depression. There was an excitable Brooklyn fan who used to scratch and claw at the chicken wire screen behind home plate at Ebbets Field. One day he was moved to anger at what he perceived as the inadequacies of the home team. "Ya, bum, ya, yez, bums, yez!" he bellowed. From that moment on, "Bums" meant Brooklyn Dodgers. The term was pictorialized by such cartoonists as Willard Mullin, used in newspaper headlines and stories, and capitalized on by the Dodger organization in its image-making for the Brooklyn team.

DIZZY and DAFFY DEAN Perhaps the most famous of all brother acts in the history of sports was "Me and Paul," the dazzling Dean brothers of the St. Louis Cardinals. Jerome Hannah Dean, also known as Jay Hannah Dean and best known as Dizzy, and his kid brother Paul, also known as Daffy, beguiled National League batters in the 1930's and at times drove their own teammates to despair with their madcap antics.

The brothers were born in a rickety shack on a plot of Arkansas ground that their destitute sharecropper parents worked. Dizzy picked cotton for 50 cents a day, and although he later bragged that he learned how to pitch while attending Oklahoma State Teachers College, he only went as far as the second grade in school. In Dizzy, and to a lesser extent Paul, was the sadness and brashness of the American Depression experience. "Some of the things I seen in this here life," Dizzy recalled, "almost cause my ol' heart to bust right through my sweatshirt."

Dizzy grew to be a 6'2", slope-shouldered right hander, a little bigger than his younger brother. Both of them had arms and hands toughened and shaped by the cotton fields. "I never bothered what those guys could hit and couldn't hit," he said. "All I knowed is that they weren't gonna get a-holt of that ball ol' Diz was throwin'."

In 1934, Dizzy and Daffy won 49 games between them. Dizzy won 30—more than any Cardinal pitcher ever. In a doubleheader against Brooklyn, Diz one-hit the Dodgers in the first game and Paul no-hit them in the second game. "If I'd a knowed Paul was gonna do that," Diz said, "I'd a done the same."

Dizzy was actually the zanier brother. Paul went along with his antics and thus was labeled Daffy. Dizzy once wrapped himself in a blanket and made a fire in front of the Cardinal dugout on a day when the temperature was over 100 degrees. Dizzy once led Daffy and a couple of other Cardinals into a staid hotel and announced to the manager that he was under orders to redecorate the place. Armed with ladders, buckets of paint, and brushes, the baseball players proceeded to splash red paint with wild abandon all over the walls of the hotel lobby. Dizzy also once made more than a mild commotion when he told scouts and newspapermen that there was a third Dean "who was throwin' real good at Tulsa." When the tip was checked out, it turned out that the third Dean brother who was "throwing real good" was throwing bags of peanuts—he was a peanut vendor at the Tulsa ball park.
The Deans had bright but relatively brief careers.

Paul won 19 games in both 1934 and 1935 and then lapsed into a journeyman pitcher role, the victim of arm trouble. In the 1937 All-Star Game, Dizzy had a line shot off the bat of Earl Averill carom off his right foot. They found out later that his toe was broken. Diz pitched again and again during the 1937 season, but he was not what he was; the fluid, cotton picking pitching motion was gone. He finished the year with a 13-10 record, and in 1938 he was sent to the Cubs for two pitchers and $200,000. He won seven, lost one, and had an ERA of 1.81, but that was his last year of pitching effectiveness. They were Dizzy and Daffy, but in their time they beguiled baseball fans and intimidated National League hitters.

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Harvey Frommer is his 33rd consecutive year of writing sports books. The author of 40 of them including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," his acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative history (Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published in 2008 as well as a reprint version of his classic "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball." The prolific Frommer is at work on REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK (2010).
Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.
FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.

The Book Review: “Cooperstown Confidential,” “Fighting Words”

It never fails to amaze me as a reviewer now of thousands of baseball books to my credit how many different takes, slants, insights into the world of games and sports can exist. Case in point are the new books - - “Cooperstown Confidential,” “Fighting Words.”

“Cooperstown Confidential” by Zev Chafets (Bloomsbury, USA, $25.00, 240 pages) is an up close and personal and also a behind the scenes look at the Baseball Hall of Fame and its inhabitants – living and dead. Part encyclopedia, part expose, part consciousness raiser, “Cooperstown Confidential” goes where few have even ventured - - -giving us a look as its subtitle proclaims at “Heroes, Rogues, and then Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

“Fighting Words” by Jerry Beach (Rounder, $24.95, 232 pages) probes and explains the sometimes sour and sordid relationship between the Boston media and the Old Towne Team. Ted Williams referred to the press in Boston as “the knights of the keyboard” and also used saltier phrases to characterize the sometimes over-reaching and unfair scribes around him. “Fighting Words” hits a home run going into depth about the media, the Boston Red Sox, and the always worth talking about relationship between them. Solid research, no punches pulled, crisply written – this one is a winner.

“Live All You Can” by Jay Martin (Columbia University Press, $22.95, 155 pages) is all about that well told story that Alexander Joy Cartwright and not Abner Doubleday was the true inventor of baseball. If you are into an academic treatise and are into the topic this is the book for you. If you are into spending almost 23 bucks for a book that actually runs about 122 pages when one discounts the appendices, notes, bibliography and index – this, too, is the book for you.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: With a quartette of Jewish players on the All Star rosters this season, especially attractive and timely is the 5th edition of “Jewish Major Leaguers: 2009.” The set contains photos and stats of all current players, Jewish Baseball “record-setters” and “firsts” along with updated cards of “Career Leaders” and a complete all-time roster of Jewish players. Should make a great gift for someone you know.

Harvey Frommer is his 33rd consecutive year of writing sports books. The author of 40 of them including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," his acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative history (Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published in 2008 as well as a reprint version of his classic "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball." The prolific Frommer is at work on REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK (2010).

Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.
FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.

Amazing "Acela Club" at Citi Field, New Home of the NY Mets

Acela Club Tiers 1 (cr. Marc Levine)

If there were a Hall of Fame for ball park restaurants, Acela Club at Citi Field located down the left field line would be a lock for admission.

Multi-tiered, with gigantic plate-glass windows overlooking the field featuring uninterrupted and exceptional looks at the action on the field, an outdoor patio with seating overlooking left field, and welcoming climate-controlled, Acela is a 350-seat home run of a restaurant that lets you have your cake and eat it, too with Mets baseball and dining akin to that of Tribeca Grill.

And why not? Acela's executive chef is Michael Sobelman, previously of Tribeca Grill, and the entire operation is managed by Myriad Restaurant Group, in collaboration with Aramark, the food service company.

"The model is our Tribeca Grill, with good, solid American food," said James Beard Foundation 2009 Restaurateur of the Year Drew Nieporent of Myriad, who is also an owner of Nobu and Corton.

Branded rights to the name "Acela Club" come from sponsor Amtrak.

But all the ample, tasty, mouth-watering, gourmet items on the menu come courtesy of Myriad Restaurant Group's upscale and creative management team headed by Nieporent, Tribeca Grill’s Executive Chef Stephen Lewandowski, and Sobelman.

Innovative features at Acela's $41 price fixe lunch menu include four "Market Table Selections" stations which brings to mind an over-the-top wedding where you go from location to location, bringing back all kinds of tempting morsels to your table: Salads & Such, "Antipasti," "Butcher Block" and "Al Forno" And that is just the beginning.

Entrees, served at your table, range from Italian fennel sausage to grilled swordfish to a grilled "Kobe Flat-Iron Steak." And of course the jumbo lump crab cakes. Served with tomato, caper and cauliflower chutney, rumor has it they are incomparable. Rumor is correct.

Crab Cake (cr. Marc Levine)

At dinnertime, a $48 prix fixe menu gives you unlimited access to the Market Table Buffet, enhanced by a selection of soups, and an expanded choice of entrées -- the Rosemary Rubbed Prime Ribs will even tempt one who has sworn off beef.

With wine available by the glass as well as the bottle, the entire Acela operation is suitable for a king, a queen, a baseball fan, and especially a Mets fan -- who deserves nothing but the best. Dining at Acela equals dining at a quality Manhattan restaurant with the bonus of seeing the Mets play and hopefully win.

Anyone with field box and premium seating has access to the Acela Club, which opens two hours and forty five minutes before game time. Reservations are strongly suggested (718-565-4333). Go for it.

From The Trunk "Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, The Farewell Speech"

It was Yankees versus Senators on July 4, 1939, a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. Those in attendance numbered 61,808, and most of them had showed up to honor Lou Gehrig in a ceremony between games.

Players, officials, writers and employees at the park out-did themselves with gifts for the Iron Horse. A parade launched the 40-minute ceremony as the Seventh Regiment Band escorted Babe Ruth, Waite Hoyt, Bob Meusel, Herb Pennock, Joe Dugan, Tony Lazzeri, Mark Koenig, Benny Bengough, Wally Schang, Everett Scott, Wally Pipp, George Pipgras and Bob Shawkey to the center field flagpole. A banner was hoisted saluting the 1927 Yankees. Then the group of former stars, all in street clothes, assembled shoulder to shoulder near the pitcher's mound. Yankees and Senators formed a semicircle around a microphone at home plate. "We want Lou, we want Lou," the chant began. Led out of the dugout by Yankees president Ed Barrow, Gehrig doffed his cap and fought back tears as the crowd roared.

Sid Mercer, the Master of ceremonies, announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, Lou Gehrig has asked me to thank you all for him. He is too moved to speak."

"We want Lou! We want Lou!" the chant was a plea for Gehrig to speak.Coaxed by manager Joe McCarthy, Gehrig wiped his eyes, blew his nose. On unsteady feet, he moved towards the microphone to speak the speech he had written the night before. "Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. "Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure I'm lucky. Who wouldn't have considered it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrows? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky. When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat and vice versa, sends you a gift, that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeeper and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies, that's something. When you have a father and mother work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body, it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed, that's the finest I know. So I close in saying that I might have had a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for." Until season's end "The Pride of the Yankees" was there with and for his team. He spent every day on the bench and traveled with the Yankees on road trips. He sat through all four of the 1939 World Series games. On June 3, 1941 Lou Gehrig died at his home, 5204 Delafield Avenue, in the Fieldston section of the Bronx He would have been 38 years old on June 19.

Confined to his home for the last month of his life, he lost weight steadily during his final weeks. It was reported that he was twenty-five pounds under weight shortly before he died.

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Harvey Frommer is his 33rd consecutive year of writing sports books. The author of 40 of them including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," his acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative history (Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published in 2008 as well as a reprint version of his classic "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball."

The prolific Frommer is at work on REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK (2010).Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.