Oh, take me out to
the name game ...
Names make news. They also make memories, especially the names of singers, actors ... and baseball players.

Singers and actors leave behind bodies of work we can listen to or watch. This help keeps their memories alive. We also discover new favorites, especially in old movies. One example for me is character actor Charles Coburn. I watched a lot of movies when I was growing up, so I saw Coburn several times. Frankly, he annoyed me and I'd wonder why the guy was hired for so many films. Well, now I know. Coburn was terrific, especially in his many comedies ("The Lady Eve," "Bachelor Mother," "The More the Merrier," "George Washington Slept Here," etc.).

But that's a whole other story. The point of this piece is that a whole bunch of folks –myself included – remain interested in and sometimes obsessed with certain old-time baseball players for no good reason except they were born with unusual names or picked them up along the way. Many of these people retired or died before we had a chance to see them play. Others we might have seen once upon a time, but they exist only in memory because they left no video or film record, except for bits and pieces in black and white that are grainy and jumpy and seem to have been filmed from a mile away.

Athletes in other sports are remembered, too, though baseball players seem to have made a much greater impression. One reason is because baseball has been around longer than our other sports. For many years baseball truly was the American pastime. Also, baseball puts all of its players in the spotlight – either as hitters or pitchers, there's no escaping the full glare of attention.

THIS PROJECT – my own version of the baseball name game – was triggered by an article in a local newspaper several years ago. What has kept it going is the research. I've always had an interest in American history. The surprise is how much of our history you can learn from reading about baseball. That, too, is another story, one that requires more research than I've done so far.

Today's business is The List. Those who stumbled upon this website in the past five years may have seen my previous efforts to list players who carried my favorite baseball names. Some of these players became subjects of mini-biographies. The whole baseball thing got out of hand, which is why I've shortened both the list and the descriptions of the players.

The new list remains a mixture of men with interesting real names (Pembroke Finlayson and Elmer Klumpp, for example) . . . and those with ordinary surnames who happened to receive colorful nicknames (such as Wagon Tongue Keister and What's the Use Chiles). Some are interesting names that coincidentally belong to baseball players; others are names that are interesting only because of their association with baseball.

BASEBALL SEEMS to attract people with an inordinate interest in history and statistics. I don't think any game is more driven by statistics, and those statistics are the glue that keeps major league baseball intact. The statistics, the history and the memories. And, of course, the names. No sport can match baseball when it comes to names.

Go online and you can find hundreds of all-name baseball teams compiled by nuts like me. There are food teams (Taffy Wright, Cookie Lavagetto, Noodles Hahn, Coot Veal, Ribs Raney, etc.), bird teams (Robin Yount, Hawk Harrelson, Ducky Medwick, Goose Gossage, etc.), rhyming teams (Jason Bay, Ron Cey, Boots Day, Joey Jay, Milt May, etc.), the all-Robinson team (Don, Aaron, Eddie, Jackie, Brooks, Frank, etc.), the You Can Call Me Al Team (Al Simmons, Al Kaline, Al Gionfriddo, Al Lopez, Al Kozar, etc.), the possibilities are almost endless.

One thing that has changed in recent years is the increase in players from Japan, Korea and China. This has introduced us to several players with names that, to Americans, at least, seem colorfully unusual – Shin-Soo Choo, Kosuke Fukudome, Chin-Lung Hu, Tadahito Iguchi, Akinori Iwamura, and Ichiro Suzuki, for example.

Already strong, the Latin American influence likely will continue to grow. In my 2009 Who's Who in Baseball, which lists only major leaguers, there are six players named Gonzales, six named Ramirez, five named Rodriguez and another five named Cabrera. Of course, there also are Vladimir Guerrero from the Dominican Republic, Yorvit Torrealba of Venezuela and Yuniesky Betancourt of Cuba.

WHILE A FEW contemporary players remain, my list this time around mostly features guys who played a long, long time ago. Gone, for example, are Boof Bonser, Coco Crisp and J.J. Putz, modern day players with memorable names, players I may summon again in the future.

Finally, another bow to the master, ESPN's Chris Berman (see below), whose puns made even the most ordinary sports name memorable. This time around, however, most of the Bermanized names from my previous list have been omitted.

To see what I've dubbed The Incredible Shrinking List, click on these three pages: