By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor
Jason King, the other half of The Leader’s crackerjack sports department, faithfully comes to work each Monday during the summer with updates from the Friday night action at Beebe Speedway.
I don’t know auto racing from Shinola, but I do know that it is a sport with some great nicknames. Trumann driver Kyle Beard for example, is known as “The Silent Assassin.”
Funny, that’s what we call Jason when he comes back from lunch at Taco Bell, but it does make those of us around here wonder why certain athletes have such evil-sounding nicknames.
It may be the physical, aggressive nature of sports and an overlay of testosterone that leads competitors to come up with names promising death and pain.
They called Arkansas’ own Corliss Williamson, now head basketball coach at Central Arkansas, “Big Nasty.” Oakland Raiders defensive back Fred Williamson went by “The Hammer,” and heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey was called “The Manassa Mauler.”
I don’t know about you, but I suddenly feel all warm and cozy inside.
I won’t even get into the wrestling names. Well, yes I will.
Before the Arkansas Travelers fell in love with midget wrestling as a pregame promotion they tried out the full-size variety at Ray Winder Field in 2000. One of the wrestlers was a guy who wore a cook’s whites and spoke with a French accent lifted directly from Monty Python who called himself “The Madd Chef.”
Why two ds? I don’t know. Maybe the Chef was extra mad or an underachiever in cooking school.
During his match he seized the ring microphone to berate the booing crowd.
“I’m warning you people for the last time — shut up!” The Madd Chef said.
Those Frenchmen are quite eloquent. Especially the ones from Saline County.
But of course pro wrestlers, who basically adopt an entire persona, a character, need to have names for their alter egos. Can you imagine Hulk Hogan going by his given name of Terry Bollea?
I personally wish Hogan had stuck with “Thunder Lips,” perhaps the greatest wrestling name of all, from his character in “Rocky III.”
That reminds me of this made-up wrestling quiz we invented at the office when I worked at the statewide daily:
Vlad the Impaler is about to wrestle Bob Johnson. Which one is making his wrestling debut and wearing plain trunks? And for extra credit, who will win?
That reminds me of another quiz:
Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Lt. Jones beam down to a hostile planet. Which one will be killed? And for extra credit, what color shirt will he be wearing?
But I digress. Now that the Travelers go exclusively with midget wrestling, they have a heavily tattooed, heavily pierced bad-guy character nicknamed “Puppet the Psycho Dwarf.”
Makes you feel like going to the petting zoo, doesn’t it?
“Why are there no nice nicknames?” said Jason, a little too plaintively for me. From now on he will be known as Jason “The Whiner” King.
Actually there have been a lot of nice nicknames in sports — “Sweetness,” “Magic,” “Air,” “Potpourri” — but for every “Splendid Splinter” there seems to be a “Human Rain Delay,” the name shared by former big league hitter Mike Hargrove and pitcher Steve
Trachsel because of their excruciatingly long plate and mound appearances.
I don’t think baseball could function without nicknames, and the greatest players get the best ones. “The Bambino,” “The Von Ryan Express,” “The Rocket,” “The Kid,” “the Iron Man,” “The Yankee Clipper,” “The Umbrella Stand.”
Even baseball players you never heard of get nicknames, though usually it’s just a take on someone’s birth name. Travelers Manager Bobby Magallanes is “Mags” and pitching coach Ken Patterson is “K.P.”
Frequently a baseball player gets a nickname because someone adds a Y to his name. In his brief, failed stint with the Travelers, legendary Pine Bluff athlete Basil Shabazz was “Shabby,” which also describes his batting average, and I recently heard Frisco
RoughRiders manager Steve “Boo” Buechele call infielder Matt Lawson “Matty.”
Those wacky baseball guys over at Dickey-Stephens Park even have a couple nicknames for me, but I’m getting tired of “Sir,” and “Hey you.”
I want something original and catchy, something that encapsulates both my winning personality and my stellar career. But you can’t demand a nickname; it has to be earned and it must come to you naturally, in the flow of the moment.
At least that’s what the guys in the press box — “Frenchy,” “Hambone” and “Lt. Dan” —keep telling me.
