Shovels, Jazz Hands, and The Man Who Couldn't: A Neural Net Does Baseball Nicknames

Photo by Jose Morales on Unsplash.

I know this is a huge departure from what’s usually on this blog, but in honor of the dear departed writers and editors of Deadspin, who bravely defied management’s edict to “stick to sports,” I am not sticking to marketing this time around. Deal with it.

Baseball isn’t what it used to be, and neither are baseball nicknames.

Whether you feel that baseball is better or worse largely depends if you tend to sit in the first few rows of the bleachers and need baseballs.

However, there should be consensus that baseball nicknames have largely gone downhill since the ‘60s or ‘70s. Baseball has slipped in the public consciousness, sportswriters are a vanishing breed, and the ones that are left are less Grantland Rice and more Drew Magary. (Thank god.)

The best new nickname out there is “Gingergaard,” for red-haired, long-limbed young flamethrower Dustin May, of the Los Angeles Dodgers. But the rest? The best of the rest in the nicknames database of Baseball-Reference are:

• Mitchy Two Bags (Mitch Moreland)

• Big Maple (James Paxton)

• Captain Underpants (Hunter Pence)

• Kung Fu Panda (Pedro Sandoval)

• Mayor of Ding Dong City (Travis Shaw)

• The Hebrew Hammer (Ryan Braun)

Even if you throw in the delightfully bitchy “American Idle” (Carl Pavano) of recent past, that’s still not indicative of a Golden Age of Nicknames – not compared to:

• Wonder Hamster (Matt Stairs)

• Stan The Man Unusual and Full Pack (Don Stanhouse)

• Death to Flying Things (Jack Chapman)

• The Freshest Man on Earth (Arlie Latham)

• Dr. Strangeglove and The Boston Strangler and Stonefingers (Dick Stuart)

• The Earl of Snohomish (Earl Torgerson)

• The Arkansas Hummingbird (Lon Warneke)

• The Wild Horse of the Osage (Pepper Martin)

• The Human Rain Delay (Mike Hargrove)

And so many more.

To rectify this sorry situation, and because, Mr. President, we cannot allow a baseball-nickname gap, I took matters into my own hands.

There’s an artificial-intelligence researcher named Janelle Shane who writes a wonderful blog where she programs neural networks with a fairly low level of artificial intelligence to do simple tasks like name paint colors, write recipes, or come up with knitting and crocheting patterns.

Several years ago I sent her the Baseball-Reference nicknames database to see if she would program a neural net to generate baseball nicknames. She never got around to it, which is perfectly understandable. She’s a busy person, and let’s face it: The world’s not waiting breathlessly for new baseball nicknames.

However, after reading her latest post, something prompted me to resurrect the list of nicknames I sent her. New AI tools have been put out there for public consumption in the interregnum, including the all-time time suck Talk to Transformer.

TTT lets you input text, and then it finishes it the way it thinks it ought to be finished. While I couldn’t feed it 3,300 baseball nicknames in one bite without it blowing a neural fuse, I could feed it pieces of the list and see what it would come up with.

Let’s say I wasn’t disappointed. 

I can’t say exactly that the TTT neural net knew what it was being given when presented with a list like this:

• The Nashville Narcissus

• Scootch

• Baby Giraffe

• Wee Willie

• Mongoose

• Judge

• The Pride Of Havana

• the Bull

• Little Joe Chest

• Dummy

• The Hat

• Minooka Mike

• Handsome Hugh

• The Count Of Luxemburg

• Smooth

• Psycho

• Sunday Teddy

• Pop

• Deacon Danny

• Eddie Mattress

• Hakuna Machado

• etc.

That’s a fairly standard assortment of baseball nicknames, and TTT’s responses were many and varied, and not 100% baseball-y.

To be fair, there was a good amount of traditional baseball nicknames, like the net suspected but couldn't confirm what it was being fed:

• Black Jack

• Babe

• Lefty

• Hippo

• Ace

• Big Jim

• Big Al

However, there were also celebrity names, but celebrities of 50 or 60 years ago:

• Doris Day

• Frankie Laine

• Frank Zappa

• Tiny Tim

• Charlie Chaplin

• Davy Crockett

• Bum Phillips

• Patsy Cline

• The Beatles

• The Rascals

• Joe Louis

• Johnny Ace

• Johnny Cash

• Don Knotts

• Bob Gaudio

• Billy Wilder, Jr.

I’m not sure what’s the better nickname – the guy behind Barney Fife, the guy behind Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, or the guy behind Some Like It Hot – though none of the three are likely to intimidate opposing pitchers or hitters.

(Actually, the best nickname is none of the above. It’s Bum Phillips. “Bum Phillips” is an incredible baseball nickname.)

There were a few other musical performers mixed in, like the Commodores, Lionel Richie, Ricky Martin, and Frankie Goes To Hollywood (!). Does Frankie say relax when there’s a full count with two out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth? You should probably ask Frankie that.

There was also a subset of nicknames collected under the heading “The Man”:

• The Man from "Caddyshack"

• The Man from Chicago

• The Man From Iwo Jima

•  The Man From Pecos

• The Man From The Bronx

• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

• The Man With The Huge Black Hat

• The Man With The Red Hat

• The Man With The Yellow Hat

• The Man Who Knocked Over The World

• The Man Who Invented Sex

• The Man Who Kicked A Hat

• The Man Who Killed All The Men

• The Man With No Hands

• The Man in the Midnight Hour

• The Man Who Came In From The Cold

• The Man Who Couldn't

• The Man With the Golden Arm

• The Man With THE BIG BLUE BARE BEAR ON HIS FACE

• The Man-Hood

Nothing like a nickname like “The Man With THE BIG BLUE BARE BEAR ON HIS FACE” to brighten up an otherwise mundane name like George Springer.

Photo by Joshua Peacock on Unsplash.

I played with TTT way too long, and came up with a master list of more than 600 fresh new baseball nicknames. But naturally I couldn’t stop there.

I downloaded a second list from Baseball-Reference – a list of players who made their MLB debut in 2019. I figured if anyone needed nicknames, it would be these guys. And then I more-or-less randomly associated nicknames to players.

As it worked out, each player received three new nicknames. I figured at least one of the three would be good. In most cases, one was at least interesting. In some cases, more than one was much more than interesting.

Here are some of my favorites:

Pete Alonso: How could you argue with any of these:

• Baby Gorilla

• The Blue Meanie

• Bucky Ball

Pete “Baby Gorilla” Alonso could mash in any era, while “The Blue Meanie” is more of a 1910s thing. Either way, I’m on board.

Michel Baez: “Big Booya,” “Ouch,” and “The Prince Of China”: That might be Baseball Nicknames Through The Ages, right there.

Anthony Bemboom: “Duck, Duck, Goose,” “Pee Wee Herman,” and “The White King Of Rome”: Really don’t know what to say here other than sorry, Anthony.

Ronald Bolanos: “Black Jack,” “Pimp, the Platypus,” “Big Mama”: If you’re listening, Topps, and you make a card of Ronald “Pimp, the Platypus” Bolanos, I would sleep with it under my pillow the rest of my days. Thank you.

Johnny Davis: “Buster Olney,” “Scary Joe,” “The Maniac Of A Thousand Faces On TV”: Sure, by the time you say, “Now batting – Johnny Davis, The Maniac Of A Thousand Faces On TV,” he will have struck out and the inning would be 15 seconds into the Chevy truck ad, but I really don’t care. And I am 100 percent behind a baseball player nicknamed “Buster Olney.”

Justin Dunn: “Chilly,” “Shovels,” “The Mascot”: I don’t care what position he plays. A baseball player nicknamed “Shovels” is a ding-dong baseball player.

Montana DuRapau: “The Blackberry Rat,” “Sideshow Bob,” “Lucky 7”: “The Blackberry Rat” is an amazing baseball nickname … though it’s really hard to improve on Montana DuRapau in its unvarnished state.

Tommy Edman: “Stompin' Tom,” “Silly Putty,” “B-Boy Bob Ross”: How do you choose, Tommy? I know I couldn’t. I’d have to go with all three.

Gavin Lux: “Groucho,” “Tundra King,” “Baby Jax”: Love ‘em all.

Chris Paddack: “Jail,” “The New Deal,” “The Gung-Ho Jackass”: The thing is, they all apply … in one way or another.

Mike Yastrzemski: “Yaks,” Babushka,” and “Sugar Puppy.” Perfection.

There are so many more and so little space, but here are a few more of my favorites:

• Nick “Barkface” Anderson

• Luis “Bazooka Man” Arraez

• Yenny “Nurse Jackie” Diaz

• Tom “Slo-Mo-Mo” Eshelman

• Mauricio “Baby Elvis” Dubon

• Ty “The F-Bomb” France, “The Little Prince of Malibu”

• Kyle “Stinkfish” Garlick

• Vladimir “Big Grapes” Guerrero Jr., “The Baddest Man On Earth”

• Zac “Chunky Snapper” Grotz

• Taylor Hearn, “The Wild Man Of The Lighthouse”

• Darwinzon “Dancin’ In The Streets” Hernandez

• Tyler “Dunkin’ Donuts” Heineman (probably the best nickname ever for a backup catcher)

• Mike “The Executioner” King, “The Great American Ball-Buster”

• Travis “the Flying Dork” Lakins

• Yusei Kikuchi, “Mr. Blue Sky”

• Nate “The Greatest Showman” Lowe

• Andrew “Frosty the Snowman” Knizner         

• Joel “I Know What You Did Last Summer” Kuhnel

• Brady Lail, “Fruit Of The Loom (aka The Springfield Wren)”

• Shed “Gimme Shelter” Long

• Bryan Reynolds, “The King of the Ice Cream Truck”

• Lewis “Jazz Hands” Thorpe

• Cole “Laughing Squid” Tucker

• LaMonte Wade, “The Wily Warlord”

• Kyle “Zombie Dog” Zimmer

I could go on and on and on, but I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to invite you to email me at kkiefer@polymathpower.com for the entire spreadsheet of nicknames, so you can play to your heart’s content.

And I’m not even done there. I hope to have an even bigger surprise for you in the next installment of this article.

Until then, this is Kit “The President’s Boyfriend” Kiefer signing off. Hope you enjoyed it!