i was intrigued enough to buy a card from the 2024 topps x chris berman set sight unseen. regardless of what chris berman became in his later broadcasting years, he was fun to watch on sportscenter during my youth and into my teenage years in the 1980's. he was known for his nicknames, and my favorite was bert "be home" blyleven. it was creative and smart and not so obvious. so, i ordered the card and it showed up at the end of january.
bert has a strong stirrups game! here's the back
really nondescript as we should all expect from topps these days, but to be fair there is not too much to say about nicknames. for the record, my next two favorites were john "tonight let it be" lowenstein, and mike "enough" aldrete. you younger readers may have to read up on the basis of the lowenstein nickname. unfortunately neither of those guys were included in the set.
nicknames on cards aren't anything new, really. here's a 2003 upper deck play ball card of ted williams
that includes his "splendid splinter" moniker. on the original 1941 play ball cards, ted was presented in quotes as a nickname derived from theodore, just like on these 1941 reprints from the 2003 set
do we still consider joe and/or hank nicknames? hank from henry is not as straightforward as joe from joseph.
here's juan gonzalez' mini parallel from that 2003 set
that presents his nickname derived from his home run hitting prowess. i appreciate that upper deck makes it clear that his nickname was, in fact, "juan gone" and not just "gone".
in other name related collecting topics, sometime last summer, i picked up a few 1988 topps big foil insert cards from 2022 topps archives. i set them aside and finally got around to dealing with them over the winter. two of the cards i added were ken griffey jr and rickey henderson. the backs made me scratch my head a bit.
i know that he doesn't have two "ken"s in his name, and the fact that he is a junior means his name mirrors that of his dad. here's ken griffey sr's 1988 topps big card back
as for rickey, i can't say i knew he had two middle names, but according to baseball reference the "nelson henley" is correct. here's the back of his 1988 topps big card
that only used one of the names, and it is the one i was familiar with.
also worth noting is the addition of nicknames. the original cards from 1988 did not include nicknames, but did have some names in parantheses. these would have been the mothers' maiden names of some latin players, such as fernando valenzuela
another player who was included in both sets was nolan ryan. topps got his name right in 1988
but not in 2022
not only is topps reinventing the wheel, they aren't checking to see if the wheel rotates before shipping it out!
here are a couple more cards that i want to share. first, don sutton's 2021 topps archives 1989 topps big foil insert
here's the back
while sutton's nickname of "black and decker" is given, i am showing this card because it is in a 1989 design and shows sutton's complete career stats on the back. even though it's not year by year stats, it still qualifies as a final tribute in my book.
finally, i found this pair of bailey ober cards in a 2024 topps heritage high numbers blaster.
that's his base card on the left, and the green border exclusive parallel on the right. sure, both cards have green borders but the parallel is a different sort of green. makes total topps sense. the applicability of these cards to this post is revealed on the backs:
on the left, we have the parallel (mistakenly identified as a white border above the number) and on the right, the base. for the parallel, topps decided to add ober's full name. not sure why they didn't have it on the base as that is the standard for 1975 topps cards as well as the vast majority of 2024 topps heritage cards i have looked at.
looking at the back of the parallel, it would appear that his parents found his name so nice, they named him twice! well, that's not the case, as his name is john bailey ober.
any other name games out there to share?
Not really.
ReplyDeleteI've talked about Same Name guys in my blog posts though. Basketball player Tony Bennett, baseball player John Dillinger, etc.
Nicknames can be fun, but I haven't really focused on them.
I think it's cool when card companies add player's nicknames to cards. But gotta say, I wasn't a fan of when they would put their nicknames on the card fronts without their birth name (ex. Rock Raines and Doc Gooden).
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