Bip Roberts, unsurprisingly, was the first Bip.
February 6, 2016 12:21 PM Subscribe
This is a Google Docs spreadsheet recording, for every given name ever held by a major league baseball player, the first player to bear that name. Via Value over Replacement Grit.
God dammit, even Google Docs has stupid popups.
I have long said that baseball is as much The Sport of Inventing Statistics as it is about mitts and balls, so that makes this awesome!
posted by rhizome at 12:36 PM on February 6, 2016
I have long said that baseball is as much The Sport of Inventing Statistics as it is about mitts and balls, so that makes this awesome!
posted by rhizome at 12:36 PM on February 6, 2016
I also appreciate that Choo Freeman is a different entry from Choo Choo Coleman.
posted by lilac girl at 12:40 PM on February 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by lilac girl at 12:40 PM on February 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
Do a
posted by benito.strauss at 12:43 PM on February 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Data > Sort Sheet by Column 'A', A -> ZMuch more fun, and it goes from 'Al' to 'Zealous'.
posted by benito.strauss at 12:43 PM on February 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is great. Sorting by year is fun, and reveals there are some problems with the data - some Latin American names show up debuting in 1871, I'm guessing they're meant to be 1971 or else that's the default year for a name that doesn't have year information connected to it?
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:48 PM on February 6, 2016
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:48 PM on February 6, 2016
(Er, strike that, I fail at sorting.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:55 PM on February 6, 2016
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:55 PM on February 6, 2016
I need to know how many Candys there were after Candy Cummings in 1872. If that one got knocked out so early it has to have been popular.
posted by rhizome at 1:05 PM on February 6, 2016
posted by rhizome at 1:05 PM on February 6, 2016
I like data munging:
posted by benito.strauss at 1:20 PM on February 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
First Last Given debut Candy Cummings William Arthur 1872-04-22 Candy Nelson John W. 1872-06-11 Candy LaChance George Joseph 1893-08-15 Candy Harris Alonzo 4/13/1967 Candy Sierra Ulises 4/6/1988 Candy Maldonado Candido 9/7/1981(You can go here and get the comma-delimited version. I just unzipped and opened Master.csv in OpenOffice.)
posted by benito.strauss at 1:20 PM on February 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yeah, it would be fun to have the frequencies too... Would be great to see the names that have only appeared once. (Live Oak Taylor?) I bet the nicknames-being-your-official-name thing tails off, though, so you're less likely to have players recorded under their nicknames in later years.
Interesting that some nicknames (that I would have guessed were baseball-specific) like Juice are there at the very beginning.
But also, lordy this is a rabbit hole... just a few of the notable names from the 1870s:
My favorite so far that I didn't know is The Only Nolan
The first Italian-American player: Buttercup Dickerson - original name Lewis Pessano
First Jewish player, Lip Pike - who supposedly once beat a horse in a footrace
The simple evocativeness of Seem Studley - aka The Warhorse!
Foghorn Bradley who went on to umpire hundreds of games, including the first perfect game.
Alamazoo Jennings. who played only one disastrous game in the majors and got his nickname from that dismal performance (it's not explained why exactly)
Sleeper Sullivan, who played for the Lowell Ladies Men.
Leech Maskrey, a devoted watercolorist and writer who later (maybe?) survived a train crash
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:43 PM on February 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
Interesting that some nicknames (that I would have guessed were baseball-specific) like Juice are there at the very beginning.
But also, lordy this is a rabbit hole... just a few of the notable names from the 1870s:
My favorite so far that I didn't know is The Only Nolan
The first Italian-American player: Buttercup Dickerson - original name Lewis Pessano
First Jewish player, Lip Pike - who supposedly once beat a horse in a footrace
The simple evocativeness of Seem Studley - aka The Warhorse!
Foghorn Bradley who went on to umpire hundreds of games, including the first perfect game.
Alamazoo Jennings. who played only one disastrous game in the majors and got his nickname from that dismal performance (it's not explained why exactly)
Sleeper Sullivan, who played for the Lowell Ladies Men.
Leech Maskrey, a devoted watercolorist and writer who later (maybe?) survived a train crash
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:43 PM on February 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
Can we go back to hilarious nicknames for baseball? How did they manage to give that up to Pro Wrestling of all things?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 2:18 PM on February 6, 2016
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 2:18 PM on February 6, 2016
Partial confirmation for my suspicion that Khris Davis, with the Milwaukee Brewers since 2013, and Khris Middleton, with the Milwaukee Bucks since 2013, are the only two players with that name in the history of major American team sports.
posted by aaronetc at 2:20 PM on February 6, 2016
posted by aaronetc at 2:20 PM on February 6, 2016
> My favorite so far that I didn't know is The Only Nolan
It's easy to miss, since there aren't many.
posted by ardgedee at 3:10 PM on February 6, 2016
It's easy to miss, since there aren't many.
posted by ardgedee at 3:10 PM on February 6, 2016
Rhizome wants to know how frequently Candy Cummings came. I want to know how many other players served as inspiration to porn stars.
posted by oheso at 3:29 PM on February 6, 2016
posted by oheso at 3:29 PM on February 6, 2016
Ok following up on "Alamazoo" Jennings, here's a bit more. This piece is largely just transcribing a newspaper article from later in Jennings' life, and it quotes from the original column...still no explicit explanation. I assume it's for Kalamazoo minus the K (i.e. no strikeouts)?
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:34 PM on February 6, 2016
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:34 PM on February 6, 2016
I was bemused that there was not a Wendell in the Major Leagues until 1996 (because Wendell was getting to be a lot LESS popular a name at the time).
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:02 PM on February 6, 2016
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:02 PM on February 6, 2016
Phenomenal Smith!
Oyster Burns stabbed one of his teammates on the field between games of a doubleheader.
Toad Ramsey, inventor of the knuckleball
Cannonball Titcomb - inspiration for the Baseball Name Hall of Fame
Bumpus Jones - a (probably-biracial, although that at-first-openly-acknowledged fact was elided in later bios) pitcher who pitched a no-hitter in his major league debut
posted by LobsterMitten at 4:33 PM on February 6, 2016
Oyster Burns stabbed one of his teammates on the field between games of a doubleheader.
Toad Ramsey, inventor of the knuckleball
Cannonball Titcomb - inspiration for the Baseball Name Hall of Fame
Bumpus Jones - a (probably-biracial, although that at-first-openly-acknowledged fact was elided in later bios) pitcher who pitched a no-hitter in his major league debut
posted by LobsterMitten at 4:33 PM on February 6, 2016
Babe? Hmm, before Babe Ruth, there was...
Babe Doty.
"Elmer L. "Babe" Doty (December 17, 1867 in Lyons, New York} – November 20, 1929 in Toledo, Ohio) was a pitcher in Major League Baseball. He played one game for the Toledo Maumees in 1890, giving up just one run in nine innings."
Literally, he played 1 game in the majors!
posted by symbioid at 5:05 PM on February 6, 2016
Babe Doty.
"Elmer L. "Babe" Doty (December 17, 1867 in Lyons, New York} – November 20, 1929 in Toledo, Ohio) was a pitcher in Major League Baseball. He played one game for the Toledo Maumees in 1890, giving up just one run in nine innings."
Literally, he played 1 game in the majors!
posted by symbioid at 5:05 PM on February 6, 2016
Three Dodgers in both '13 and '14.
But can there really have been NO player named "Jace" until 2014? WHAT NEW MYSTERIES DOES THIS WORLD HOLD!?1?!eleventy-one?1!
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:10 PM on February 6, 2016
But can there really have been NO player named "Jace" until 2014? WHAT NEW MYSTERIES DOES THIS WORLD HOLD!?1?!eleventy-one?1!
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:10 PM on February 6, 2016
LobsterMitten, my thoughts exactly. He went to Kalamazoo but didn't get a K.
posted by clorox at 12:12 AM on February 7, 2016
posted by clorox at 12:12 AM on February 7, 2016
My all time favorite old time baseball player Dude Esterbrook. What a moustache. According to Wikipedia he died jumping from a train that was taking him to a mental hospital.
posted by dudemanlives at 4:13 AM on February 7, 2016
posted by dudemanlives at 4:13 AM on February 7, 2016
> Ok following up on "Alamazoo" Jennings, here's a bit more.
Alamazoo's manager for that one game in 1878 was Death to Flying Things Chapman, whose name is common with Death to Flying Things Ferguson. Aside from mentioning that even at the time it was uncertain whether Chapman or Ferguson received the nickname first, no further information is provided.
posted by ardgedee at 4:40 AM on February 7, 2016
Alamazoo's manager for that one game in 1878 was Death to Flying Things Chapman, whose name is common with Death to Flying Things Ferguson. Aside from mentioning that even at the time it was uncertain whether Chapman or Ferguson received the nickname first, no further information is provided.
posted by ardgedee at 4:40 AM on February 7, 2016
The only thing I know about Bip Roberts was that my friends and I started chanting his name from the cheap outfield seats in Tiger Stadium en route to a bachelor party... We got his attention long enough that he glanced up at us, which resulted in more people joining our chant. We had quite a few people yelling "BIP! BIP! BIP!" which apparently annoyed him enough that we were asked politely by a security guard to knock it off.
That would have been his final season as a pro player. Why did we heckle Bip? No idea. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:19 AM on February 7, 2016
That would have been his final season as a pro player. Why did we heckle Bip? No idea. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:19 AM on February 7, 2016
Literally, he played 1 game in the majors!
You want this list.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:46 AM on February 11, 2016
You want this list.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:46 AM on February 11, 2016
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posted by lilac girl at 12:35 PM on February 6, 2016 [2 favorites]