Semp- the player’s name was, indeed, Johnny Mcnally, but in his day, college athletes regularly made money by playing in semi-pro leagues under phony names.
(Jim Thorpe got caught playing semi-pro baseball, which is why he lost his Olympic medals- ironically, if he’d adopted a phony name, as so many of his peers did, no one need have known about his “crime.”)
Johnny Mcnally and college teammate Ralph Hanson signed up with a semi-pro football team. They’d just seen a movie called “Blood and Sand,” so they enrolled as “Johnny Blood” and “Ralph Sand.”
Mcnally became a star under the assumed name, so it stuck.
I think no one has mentioned my two favorites:
Frank “The Big Hurt” Thomas and Randy “Big Unit” Johnson. The latter one is just good on so many levels.
Indeed, they were the Thunderchickens. In fact, when Stanford made the ahead-of-its-time decision to change its nickname from the Indians in the early 1970s, many students thought Thunderchickens would be a good choice.
Bronko Nagurski
Jerry West “Mr Clutch”
Wilt Chamberlain “the Stilt”
OJ Simpson “the Juice”
Vinnie Johnson “the Microwave”
Ron Cey “The Penguin”
Craig Stadler “The Walrus”
Orel Hershiser “Bulldog”
Oscar Robertson “the Big O”
Kevin Garnett “The Big Ticket”
Dominik Hasek “The Dominator”
Bill Lee “Spaceman”
Charles Barkley " The Round Mound of Rebound"
Jamaal Wilkes “Silk”
Earl Monroe “the Pearl”
Qadry Ismail “the Missle”
Randy Moss “the Freak”
Dominique Wilkins “The Human Highlight Film”
Bill Walton “The Big Redhead”
Larry Bird “the hick from French Lick”
Roberto Duran “Manos de piedra” (hands of stone)[sup]“No mas” could also be used, but thats just not right[/sup]
Magic’s Lakers “Showtime”
Isiah’s (Zeke) Pistons “Bad Boys”
The Ramblin Wreck of Georgia Tech UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs
Hartlepool Town FC - “The Monkey Hangers”. From an incident in the Napoleonic wars when a shipwrecked monkey was hanged as a French spy. The club mascot, a monkey, was recently elected mayor of the town.
Tom Henke was the first of many relief pitchers to be called “The Terminator,” a perfect nickname for a relief ace.
Mike Hargrove was “The Human Rain Delay” for his stalling while at bat.
I agree with Bill James; “Sudden” Sam McDowell is maybe the most appropriate nickname ever given to a baseball player.
For team nicknames, I just like “Dodgers.” By virtue of being older, baseball has carried a tradition of having a lot of team names that aren’t the usual aggressive animals/silly names like “Sparxx.” “Dodgers” is a historical anomaly, isn’t used in any other sport I can think of, and just sounds cool. Other cool team nicknames that seem unique to baseball; Phillies, Blue Jays, Padres, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Twins, Expos, Mets.
The Dodgers got their name because Ebbetts Field in Brooklyn had trolley tracks running in front of it. People had to dodge the trolleys to get to the park, so the team became known as the “Trolley Dodgers,” later shortened to simply “Dodgers.” The name was retained when the team moved to Los Angeles, although it no longer had the significance it had in Brooklyn.
Similarly, “Lakers” was a very appropriate nickname when the basketball team played in Minnesota, but does not make nearly as much sense in Los Angeles.
As for some cool nicknames:
Rick Leach, Michigan quarterback in the late 70s, was the “Guts and Glue of the Maize and Blue.”
His successor, “Wingin’ Wangin’” Johnny Wangler, threw many a touchdown pass to Anthony “the Darter” Carter.
The above were all coined by the late, beloved (if you are a Wolverine fan) Michigan football radio announcer, Bob Ufer.
