Nickname Seeks Former Player: “Actual, Literal Brick Sh*thouse”

What we are doing is assigning cool nicknames to players rather than the opposite, which is a bloodless tradition that has been with us too much and too long.

So how does this running feature differ from the dear, departed exemplar of the genre? “Nickname Seeks Player” was devoted to active base-ball-ists, while “Nickname Seeks Former Player” is the province of those who no longer play this fine game because they are dead in spirit and perhaps also dead in the corporeal sense. Boileryard Clarke? Eligible! Sal Maglie? Eligible! Fred Lynn? Eligible! Dontrelle Willis? Eligible! Dave Parker? For the ladies!

You may surmise from this that almost the entire sprawl of baseball history lies before you, like a sexy patient etherized upon a table. So prepare yourself to plumb both depths and heights as we ponder fitting candidates for this week’s name to nicked: “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse”!

Before we proceed, though, let us remember those who have previously survived this crucible of sturdy ghosts. Last time out, Carl Everett talked his drinking buddies into crucifying him to the front door of a brothel and thus claimed the nickname “Man vs. Bible.” So now let us — snifters in hand, cardigans beswaddling our mortal parts — gaze upon The Fireside Mantel of Reposed Fortune-Hunters:

“Museum of Questionable Medical Devices” – Ted Williams
“A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning” – Matt Stairs
“Colonel Sanders’s Drinking Buddy” – Charlie Manuel
“America’s Step-Dad” – John Olerud
“Man vs. Bible” – Carl Everett

And now … “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse”!

Implications and Intimations

Internet Hot Links teach us that the phrase “like a brick shithouse” was, understandably enough, originally concocted to indicate a lady of pleasing physicality. Time and tide, however, have altered the phrase to mean a gentleman of sturdy build, capable of beating up a nation. It is this latter connotation that informs this particular exercise.

The former player, then, should not only be built like a brick shithouse, but should also be actually be, in the most literal of senses, a stink lodge constructed of bricks and mortar and-or impregnable concrete structure filled with big shit. Here’s a helpful artist’s rendering:

So who, citizens of sufficient origins, should be nicknamed “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse”?