Nickname Seeks Player: “L’homme Qui Aimait les Femmes”

What we do is assign cool nicknames to players rather than perpetuate the tired, lamewad practice of assigning cool players nicknames. Last time out, R.A. Dickey laid uninspired claim to the nickname “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.” Although the name indubitably should’ve gone to Eric Sogard, Mr. Dickey has, in unmoved, assembly-line fashion, been added to our Hall of Honouur, which 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

And the nickname now hanging in the balance? It’s “L’homme Qui Aimait les Femmes”!

Denotations, Connotations, Implications, Intimations, and Incriminations:

L’homme Qui Aimait les Femmes is a Truffaut film the title of which translates into America Words as “The Man Who Loved Women.” So this ballplayer is not only a presumptive lover of the dames but also a presumptive lover of the dames … in French.

In America, we make love to start families or to celebrate football outcomes. In France, we make love because libertine indulgences remind us, for a fugitive moment or two (or upwards of two hours if one is L’homme Qui Aimait les Femmes) that, while dying, we are not yet dead. In France, the corporeal is followed by the corporeal, which means after a vigorous humping one humps again. In America, we fall asleep on the toilet or go to Buffalo Wild Wings.

L’homme Qui Aimait les Femmes draws tight his topcoat, walks over the cobblestones of Grenoble and catches her reflection in the tobacconist’s window. Her lips are thick and blood-bruised. She has bob-cut hair the hue of a blackbird’s self-disgust. The nape of her neck is the nape of a woman’s neck. Her womb is surely journeyed. “Vous contiennent multitudes,” he says.

“L’amour est désespérée,” she says. “Mais je ne suis pas.”

They make love.

Prototypes from Baseball’s Gauzy Past:

Scott Erickson.

Guiding, Determinative Query:

What current ballplayer, because he is a lover compelled not by love but rather by despairing routines of self-animation that are terribly French, should be nicknamed “L’homme Qui Aimait les Femmes”?

The convention floor, which is a rumpled cocktail dress, is open for nominations …