Watched the Dolphins play the Jets the other night and the announcers called Joey Harrington, Joey Blue Skies. Apparently he earned the nickname while playing in Detroit for being optimistic which irked the sportswriters there.Anyhow,I thought it was a cool nickname.
Others I like are-
Fred McGriff-The Crime Dog
St Louis Rams-The Greatest Show on Turf
Bill Mlkvy-The Owl Without a Vowel (Played Basketball for Temple U.)
What are your favorites?
Best nickname ever: the now-impossibly un-PC nickname of “Chocolate Thunder” for Darryl Dawkins, the original backboard breaking dunkster who would name each of these dunks. Though there was an echo of this in the nickname of “White Chocolate” given to Jason Williams early in his career, when he was a very flashy passer.
And how could you not like “He Hate Me” as a nickname, especially when the player gave it to himself?
My two favorites are:
The Freshest Man on Earth - Arlie Latham
Death to Flying Things - Bob Ferguson
They don’t make nicknames like that anymore.
cf’75
Jim “Night Train” Lane always had my admiration.
On that same note, the guys over at profootballtalk.com regularly refer to Joe Theisman as Joey Sunshine. Listen to the man call a game sometime – nearly every play results in one of the best, most spectacular efforts he’s ever seen. If a QB throws a duck, then it’s because a D-lineman showed such incredible heart in getting penetration. If a RB fumbles, then it wasn’t the RB’s fault – it was because that lineman made one of the greatest plays of his career in making to the runner and punching it out of his hands.
Use a little counting clicker and see how many times in 3.5 hours you hear the guy use the phrase “spectacular effort”. You’ll probably roll the counter.
ESPN’s list of the Top 10 Football Nicknames:
The reader poll retorted with William “Refrigerator” Perry, Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, Rod “He Hate Me” Smart, Jeveon “The Freak” Kearse, Reggie “The Minister of Defense” White, Broadway Joe Namath, and Diesel John Riggins,
with Honorable mention to:
“Prime Time” Deion Sanders, “Ironhead” Craig Heyward, “The Snake” Kenny Stabler, “Bullet” Bob Hayes, “Galloping Ghost” Red Grange, Andre "Bad Moon"Rison, “The Assassin” Jack Tatum, “Bambi” Lance Allworth, Eric “Sleeping with” Bienenemy, “Night Train” Dick Lane, “Moose” Daryl Johnston,“Tombstone” Rich Jackson, and “The Nigerian Nightmare” Christian Okoye.
You can thank Chris Berman for more than one of those.
Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky
Luke “Old Aches & Pains” Appling
Rick “The Red Baron” Sutcliffe
Being originally from the Chicago area, I caught Cubs games on cable and watched The Red Baron in his prime. A few years later, I went to an Orioles preseaon game on a cold and somewhat wet day in '93 and, expecting Sutcliffe to start, brought along a banner that read “Shoot 'em down, Red Baron!” Didn’t get a chance to use it because Mussina got the start instead.
Some of the best nicknames are derogatory:
Leo “The Lip” Durocher
Dizzy Dean
Doctor Strangeglove (Dick Stuart)
Penitentiary Face (Jeffrey Leonard)
Losing Pitcher Mulcahy (Hugh Mulcahy)
Goofy Gomez (Vernon Gomez, AKA Lefty)
Old Tomato Face (Nick Cullop)
Some good non-derogatory nicknames:
Charlie Hustle (originally derogatory - came from a sarcastic remark by Mickey Mantle - but Pete Rose made people forget the sarcasm. Not my favorite ballplayer, but a great nickname).
Stan “The Man” Musial
Oil Can Boyd
Teddy Ballgame (Ted Williams)
Cool Papa Bell (James Bell from the Negro Leagues)
Sal the Barber Maglie
Iron Man McGinnity (Joe McGinnity)
The Toy Cannon (Jimmy Wynn)
The Wild Hoss of the Osage (Pepper Martin)
Frank Howard, all 6’8" and 275 lb of him, was also “The Washington Monument”.
Wasn’t Charles Barkley called “the round mound of rebound” at some point in his career? I really like Dominique “the human highlight film” Wilkins also.
Barkley stole the nickname from obese country singer Kenny Price, “The Round Mound of Sound”,
The greatest sports nickname I know of belongs to one “Stubby” Clapp. He played for the Memphis AAA team for about five years, and was a huge local favorite. He used to do a backflip as he ran out onto the field every day.
In addition, there have been at least six baseball players nicknamed “Dummy.”
I think “He Hate Me” might be one of the greatest ever.
I’ll tell you one thing. . .nicknaming has been a little problematic lately. A-Rod, K-Rod, etc. Shit style.
You have half the alphabet to work with with LaDanian Tomlinson, and the best you can come up with is LT? A nickname someone else already has?
What about these idiots calling Vince Young, “V.Y.”? Let’s put the kibosh on that before it sticks. How about Vinnie Touchdowns? V-Ten? Vinnie Flash? There’s a lot to work with there.
Jermain “Bad Intentions” Taylor is pretty good.
Mason “The Line” Dixon. 
Andrew “The Foul Pole” Golota is a great one.
At 6’4" 285 pounds, the Giants backup quarterback Jared Lorenzen is rather large. He has three nicknames, some of which were given him by fans of opposing teams:
The Hefty Left
The Pillsbury Throw Boy
J-Load
I like this ESPN list of ten best boxing nicknames in history (two lists, actually, staff and reader). The reader explanations of their choices are pretty good, with some dead on.
Has anyone mentioned Darryl Dawkins? He has about 20, but the simplest and best is:
Chocolate Thunder
My alltime favorite is Doug “The Fidrych” Bird.
The Fabulous Freebirds–Michael “P.S.” Hayes, Terry “Bamm Bamm” Gordy, and Buddy “Jack” Roberts.
“Cowboy” Bill Watts
Steve “Dr. Death” Williams
“The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes
“The Russian Nightmare” Nikita Koloff
“The Russian Bear” Ivan Koloff
Tommy “Wildfire” Rich
Ed “Wahoo” McDaniel
“The Big Cat” Ernie Ladd
Jerry “The King” Lawler
Garry Maddox was known as “The Secretary of Defense” when Reggie White was still in college.
It’s also hard to top Vlad “The Impaler” Konstantinov.
And who can forget Ilie “Nasty” Nastase? Clyde The Glide Drexler?
Unfortunately, many of the best sports nicknames I’ve ever heard were applied to Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies: “The King of Sting,” “The Master of Disaster” and “The Count of Monte Fisto” are just terrific.
