An Authoritative Ranking of Baseball Nicknames

There’s not much need for introductory throat-clearing: Baseball has an impossibly rich history when it comes to player nicknames, and what follows are the 10 very, especially, most greatest of all …

10. “Old Tomato Face”

The dark secret of the nickname iconography is that at least half of the time those cherished a.k.a.’s are transparent insults. Perhaps Gabby Hartnett didn’t care to be called “Old Tomato Face,” but in the interest of aesthetics and the amusement of future generations he soldiered on.

9. “The Rabbi of Swat”

Not to be confused with the more famous and accomplished “Catholic Layperson of Swat,” Mose Solomon would tally one extra-base hit in his two-game career. But the “swat” part comes from his legendary minor-league career. In more enlightened times, Solomon would probably have been given more of a chance, but considering the Sporting News once referred to him as “The $100,000 Jew,” Solomon’s times, alas and alack, were not so enlightened.

8. “Vinegar Bend”

There’s not much of a tale behind Wilmer Mizell’s nickname — it was merely a nod to the Alabama town from which he hailed. The only interesting thing is that he’s most commonly known as Vinegar Bend Mizell and not his, you know, actual given name. As far as the quaint “hometown plus surname” construction goes, it’s a shame that modernity deprived us of summer days spent with “Los Angeles Strawberry.”

7. “The Nervous Greek”

Okay, he’s Greek. Nothing wrong with that. But what’s Lou Skizas nervous about? That Joe Charboneau would one day be his eighth-most similar batter?

6. “Wagon Tongue”

Bill Keister’s father, Orlo, was an early overland Western settler who had overactive salivary glands — an affliction that, in the crude parlance of the time, was known as “Trench Lips.” Lore has it that Orlo once saved his Conestoga train from certain incineration by extinguishing a high-plains brush fire with nothing more than his abundant spittle. The younger Keister, because of his father’s oddly noble history, was known as “Trench Lips O’ Junior” until he reached the age of manhood, at which point he declared he would known as “Wagon Tongue,” which he imagined to be a far more distinguished and resonant title, and one that still paid the proper homage to his father. Keister’s demands for change went unchallenged until late July 1900, when a vengeful political opponent of King Umberto I of Italy …

Okay, actually none of that is true. I have no idea why Bill Keister’s nickname was Wagon Tongue. It wasn’t even the greatest nickname to be found on the Ned Hanlon-led Orioles of the late 19th century (more on them in a moment). But it was something, wasn’t it?

5. “High Pockets Kelly”

You’d expect someone with this name to be tying a chaste maiden to some railroad tracks and pausing only to twirl the ends of his lush mustache and hastily detail for the audience how his sordid plans can’t possibly come to grief. Instead, George Kelly is perhaps the worst Hall of Famer who ever did kick the muck off his spikes. Behold the power of a nickname.

4. “Wild Horse of the Osage”

In the wrong light, this one can sound like something plucked from the Zane Grey canon. Instead, it’s the name that belongs to this chiseled visage …

That’s Pepper Martin. That’s also the face of a man who can tell you where to find good corn liquor.

3. “Rawmeat Bill”

How did Bill Rodgers earn such a viscerally intimidating moniker? Some footage from his rookie season of 1915 illuminates …

2. “Boileryard Clarke”

And you can’t even make up a name better than this one. I’ll demonstrate … “Shifty McGloin”? “Dry Gulch Heneghan”? “Oaken Barrel Ramses-Hollingshead”? Nope, still not as objectively awesome as Boileryard Clarke. And what the hell is a “boileryard”? I mean, I know what a boiler room is. So is a boileryard a yard filled with boilers? Is it a prison yard? Did Boileryard Clarke spend some time in the clink and get his name because he stayed in shape by doing power cleans with boilers in the prison yard? That’s the only reasonable assumption. (This, as hinted at above, is the greatest nickname to come out of the Ned Hanlon-led Orioles of the late 19th century.)

1. “Death to Flying Things”

In this clumsy, complicated, often disappointing world, there are works of art that sustain us. Rilke. Van Gogh. Leonard Cohen. And whoever came up with the nickname, “Death to Flying Things.” If Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships, then Bob Ferguson’s nom de defense capsized them. Or not. It’s still the greatest nickname in the history of history.