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good NYT piece on the death of great nicknames

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Herbert Anchovy, May 12, 2011.

  1. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/sports/great-sports-nicknames-like-magic-are-disappearing.html

    This has been in effect for a while now.

    Though it's kind of like aging hipsters saying that real music stopped being written after the Beatles.
     
  2. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    Those nicknames would be laughingly lame and unworthy, unable to hold the worst nickname's jock, in the modern sports world.
     
  3. doubledown68

    doubledown68 Active Member

    Best one I've heard in recent years involved a Royals minor league reliever who couldn't break 80 on the radar gun... and since everything he threw was in the 70's, he was given the moniker of "Disco" Hayes.
     
  4. CarlSpackler

    CarlSpackler Active Member

    The sporting world is badly in need of an infusion of Boom-Boom Becks, Zip Zabels, Dummy Hoys and Bugs Raymonds.
     
  5. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    We badly need a Cinderella story too.
     
  6. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Any reasonably entertaining nickname gets beaten to death now. When the Giants started calling Sandoval "Kung Fu Panda," it was worth a laugh -- he really did have that big friendly butterball personality and he flailed away at everything. Then the marketing department got hold of it and the moment was just ruined. There's probably a similar story in every city.
     
  7. kickoff-time

    kickoff-time Well-Known Member

    I think this is along the same lines as to why there are fewer and fewer ethnic jokes nowadays. It's part of the PC police that deem anything and everything taboo.

    There used to be great Irish, German, Mexican, religious, Italian, Polish, African American, blonde, etc. jokes. Now you can hardly even use a person's nationality without getting someone upset.

    Simply put, people have lost their sense of humor and in a lot of ways creativity.
     
  8. doubledown68

    doubledown68 Active Member

    Eh.. Ryan Braun is the Hebrew Hammer.
     
  9. Smallpotatoes

    Smallpotatoes Well-Known Member

    I don't give the athletes I cover nicknames and my paper has a no-nickname policy with submitted youth copy. People try to slip them in all the time, perhaps thinking kids will get a kick out of it. We delete them.
    I'm not sure if that's taking the fun out of it or not, but that's the way we do things.
     
  10. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    Terrell Owens' initials are considered his 'nickname' and part of how he has been sold to the dumbest generation.

    An ironclad rule of nicknames ought to be that if you give it to yourself, it doesn't count.
     
  11. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    I blame Chris Berman.
     
  12. kickoff-time

    kickoff-time Well-Known Member

    I think players still have nicknames for other players and some are creative. I don't think writers should be going out of their way to nickname athletes. I'm talking about the nicknames they have from their youth, family or fellow teammates.

    Being young and dumb I could never figure why one football team kept calling their captain Woody. His name was Mike and he had no last name that merited anything close to his nickname. Then I learned he was caught in the locker room standing at attention so to speak. A great nickname that everyone on the team and around school knew but I never did use in copy.

    I also knew a case where a writer in a major metro outted a player by using his nickname in a story. The player had no idea everyone on the team called him that until he saw it in print. Neither did the writer, who got a crapload of grief afterward.

    I agree, if you give yourself a nickname it probably shouldn't count.
     
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