Nickname Seeks Player: “Big Data”

What we are doing is blatantly ripping off Dayn Perry, occasional contributor to NotGraphs; regular contributor to CBSSports.com, the home for all baseball; and constant contributor to the moral deterioration of The Republic; by assigning cool nicknames to players rather than perpetuate the tired lamewad practice of assigning cool players nicknames. Since Dayn has seen fit to abandon us in our hour of need, we will usurp his nickname creation and application authority and render it back unto the people, so that they can ruin it through the democratic process, like they ruin everything else.

Last time out, perpetual disappointment David Temple tried, and seemingly failed, to determine who should earn the nickname “White Sangria.” As no consensus was either sought nor reached, this remains the Hall of Honour, which Dayn (because he’s an asshole who puts on airs) believes is “so stately, so regal, so much itself a celebration of the Norman Conquest, that an extra British-English unstressed ‘u’ is required for proper spelling…”

“Bad Miracle” – Wily Mo Peña
“Captain Black Tobacco” – John Danks
“$45 Couch” – Yuniesky Betancourt
“Liván Hernández” – Liván Hernández
“Frog in the Pot” – Carlos Zambrano
“Aqua Velva Man” – Chase Utley
“Victorian Sex Rebel” – John Axford
“Good, Round Friend” – Prince Fielder
“I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass” – Kyle Farnsworth
“Interrobang” – Adrián Beltré
“Turbaconducken” – Ty Wigginton
“Hot Lettuce” – Jeff Mathis
“Gargoyle O’Boyle” – Joba Chamberlain
“Science or Bravery?” – Zack Greinke
“Dionysus with Rabies” – Nyjer Morgan
“The Call Is Coming From Inside the House” – Jon Rauch
“Stainless Steel Meat Hammer” – Dan Uggla
“Soft Corinthian Leather” – Omar Vizquel
“Gomez’s Hamburger” – Mark Hamburger
“Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” – R.A. Dickey
“L’homme Qui Aimait les Femmes” – Derek Jeter
“Señor Buttcheeks” – Nick Swisher
“Opening Day” – Jamie Moyer
“50 Free Quality Sales Leads” – The Miami Marlins

“Iago’s Balls” – AJ Pierzynski

Now then, what fine name shall we be bestowing on some lucky, but likely unawares, ball player? Why, none other than “Big Data.”

Denotations, Connotations, Implications, Intimations, and Incriminations

Every TED Talk I’ve ever heard tells me that Big Data will fundamentally change the world around me, how I will relate to it, and how it will relate to me. Big Data is something I am a part of, whether I wish to be or not, thanks to how my behavior both online and off is being tracked by any number of companies who probably think I’m having much more fun and enjoy my life much more than I actually am. And my behavior feeds into this huge amalgam of data that allows their purveyor to identify trends in a way that, according to Tim Hartford, is “making old statistical sampling techniques obsolete.”

Your mission, dear friends, is to find the player who fundamentally changes the way you interact with the universe, and how that universe interacts with you, and from whom you cannot ever hope to extricate yourself.

Prototypes from Baseball’s Gauzy Past:

Ross Barnes. King Kelly. Damon Rutherford.

Guiding, Determinative Query:

What current ballplayer, because of his ubiquity and transformative ability, should be nicknamed “Big Data”?

The convention floor, which you should not eat off of, is open for nominations …