Urban Shocker All-Stars: The 100 Greatest Baseball Names Ever

By Damon Gulczynski

Damon J. Gulczynksi, Ph.D. has been a baseball fan since 1984, and he has been using people's names since even before that. In "Urban Shocker All-Stars," he shepherds the reader through the definitive list of the 100 greatest baseball names ever. From the dawn of the sport to modern times, Gulczynski's journey zigzags through every name nook and name cranny of baseball name history. At times uproariously funny, at times just kinda chuckle-worthy, "Urban Shocker All-Stars" is never not delightful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Damon Gulczynski
• Release date: Mar 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310052262

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Urban Shocker All-Stars: The 100 Greatest Baseball Names Ever

By Damon Gulczynski

Copyright 2015

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A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, William Shakespeare.

Not if you called ‘em stench blossoms, Bart Simpson.

Or crapweeds, Homer Simpson.

Old-Timey Greats

Baseball is unique among major American sports in that its recorded history stretches back a long time—a really long time. The first year of documented major league baseball is 1871, when a nine-team league called the National Association, spanning from Chicago to Boston to D.C., played a roughly 30-game schedule. The team and individual statistics from this time are undoubtedly inaccurate and incompletely, but they are quite good considering 1871 was only six years after the end of the Civil War.

Because the game was so different in its early days, nineteenth-century baseball gave us some statistical lines that are utterly absurd by today’s standards. For example, in 1884 a pitcher named Pud Galvin threw over 636 innings and won 46 games and did not lead the league in either category because a different pitcher named Old Hoss Radbourn threw nearly 679 innings and won 59 games.

The olden days of baseball also gave us some great names, like, well, like Pud Galvin and Old Hoss Radbourn. What follows is the earliest chapter of the Urban Shocker All-Stars: the five greatest old-timey names in baseball history.

100. Pud Galvin

Pud Galvin was a short, thick man with a dense, neatly-cropped mustache. He looked just like you would expect somebody from the nineteenth century named Pud to look. He was a very good pitcher—one of those guys who put up crazy lifetime numbers because he had a longish career in an era when a single pitcher could seemingly throw every inning of every game. Galvin went 365–310 lifetime and his 6,003 1/3 total innings pitched are second all-time to Cy Young.

Pud played 15 seasons in the majors, peaking in the mid-1880s with the National League’s Buffalo Bison. His 1884 season—although overshadowed by Old Hoss Radbourn’s legendary campaign—is, by WAR, the single greatest pitching season in baseball history. Galvin won 46 games, stuck out 369 batters, held opponents to a 1.99 ERA, and totaled an astounding 20.5 WAR. By comparison, the modern single-season WAR record for a pitcher is Walter Johnson’s 14.6 WAR in 1913. Among guys you or somebody you know might have actually seen play, Dwight Gooden tops the charts with 12.2 WAR in his epic 1985 season.

(Quick aside: I will use the statistic WAR throughout this book without explanation, because it is no longer just a stat-nerd metric and is now commonly referenced in mainstream baseball media. One big problem with citing WAR, however, is that there is not a universally agreed upon calculation for it, so different baseball data aggregators have different WAR values for the same players. I use the WAR from Baseball Reference, unless stated otherwise. If at any point in reading this book, you come across a statistic you do not understand, a Google search will bring you up to speed in under two minutes. I did not geek it up too much, I promise. Okay, back to Pud.)

Supposedly Galvin had small hands, which prevented him from mastering breaking pitches, but he threw a good fastball and had an indefatigable right arm. Interestingly, Galvin’s strength and stamina might have been enhanced by substances we would consider nefarious today. He was a known user of the elixir of Brown-Séquard, a concoction consisting largely of testosterone extracted from the gonads of primates. And it just goes to show, despite the indignation of baseball’s faux puritans over the cheaters of the steroid era tainting the game, performance enhancing drugs have been around since the dawn of the sport as we know it. In the 1990s and 2000s it was steroids and human growth hormone; in the 1960s and 1970s it was methamphetamines (greenies); in the 1880s it was monkey nut.

99. Old Hoss Radbourn

His real name was Charles, but they called him Hoss.

Old Hoss Radbourn did not have the longevity of Pud Galvin, but for a few seasons he rivaled him as the greatest moundsman in the land. His 1884 campaign, in particular, was arguably the most epic statistical pitching season ever: 59–12 W–L, 1.38 ERA, 441 K, 678 2/3 IP, 73 GS, 73 CG. The 59 wins is a single-season record that, unless Apple invents a throwing app that can replace a human pitcher, will likely stand for another 130 years. Interestingly, when I was kid, Radbourn was officially credited with 60 wins on the season (and still is according to some sources). Since then, most baseball historians have concluded that one of those 60 wins was earned by a different pitcher, and they have given Radbourn an additional save instead. It would have been fun to see Old Hoss come out of retirement to regain that lost win, à la Bernie Mac in Mr. 3000, but being that he died in 1897, it was highly unlikely.

Radbourn spent his best years with the Providence Grays, but he also pitched a half-decade for the Boston Beaneaters. After his playing days, he sustained serious facial injuries during a hunting accident, which, along with a severe drinking problem precipitated his untimely death at just 42 years of age.

98. Cannonball Titcomb

Cannon, ball, tit, comb. Four words, two of which are ball and tit. If you, like me, have the sense of humor of an immature middle-schooler, then Mr. Titcomb is hitting .500 out of the gate.

Ledell Cannonball Titcomb was a left-handed pitcher who played five seasons in the big leagues from 1886 to 1890. He was not particularly good overall, but he did have his moments. He once threw a no-hitter, and in 1888 he was the opening day starter for the New York Giants. This is particularly impressive when you consider the Giants won the championship that season with one of the best rotations of the nineteenth century. Primarily the credit for that goes to Hall of Famers Tim Keefe and Mickey Welch, each of whom started over 45 games and posted a sub-2.00 ERA. But Titcomb and a fellow named Ed Crane rounded out the backend of the staff nicely. The Giants beat the St. Louis Browns six games to four in the 1888 championship, but Titcomb lost his only start in the series.

It is not completely clear how Titcomb got the nickname Cannonball. It is possible that back in the day it was a general moniker for a good fastball and thus for a pitcher who could throw a good fastball as well. (Titcomb and Crane were called The Cannonball Duo.) That Titcomb could generate high velocity is impressive, as he was only five foot six. At that height, perhaps instead of Cannonball Titcomb, he should have been called Cannonball … (get ready to groan) … Titmouse! (Hey, you were warned.)

97. Ossee Schrecongost

Although he is sometimes listed as Ossee Schreckongost or just Ossee Schreck, he was born Ossee Schrecongost.

In 1899, catcher Ossee Schrecongost’s rookie season, he was the best player on the worst team in baseball history. He was the best player on said worst team despite playing just 43 games for them and neither starting nor ending the season with them. What happened is this: Prior to the 1899 season, the pair of brothers who owned the St. Louis Perfectos (today the Cardinals), Frank and Stanley Robinson, bought another team in the National League called the Cleveland Spiders. (It was a simpler, shadier time for sports franchise owners; today people cry foul if a husband and wife own different teams in the same fantasy league.) They then proceeded to run their two franchises like a 13-year-old playing Major League Baseball 2K9 with the Force Trade option on. They transferred all the Spiders’ stars—Hall of Famers like Cy Young, Jesse Burkett, and Bobby Wallace—to the Perfectos in an attempt to create one uber-All-Star team and by consequence one uber-garbage team. It was sort of like the plot of the 1988 Arnold Schwarzenegger-Danny DeVito comedy Twins.

And just like Twins, it didn’t work. The Perfectos finished the season in the bottom half of the league, and the Spiders were an abject atrocity, arguably the worst team in the history of major American sports. They won only 13% of their games, finishing a remarkable 20–134. Schrecongost, who was delegated to the Spiders after a bad start with the Perfectos, was one of the only bright spots for Cleveland, hitting .313/.348/.407 (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) in 43 games before once again being snatched up by St. Louis. He was worth 1.0 WAR with the Spiders, which literally made him the team MVP.

After his year with the St. Land Perfiders, Ossee bounced around a bit before landing his most prominent role with the Philadelphia Athletics as catcher and roommate of the notorious Rube Waddell, baseball’s first