January 7, 2004
It's The Name

The first week of January.  Time to break out a new calendar.  

     Of the calendars crossing my desk this year’s favorite, the one going on the wall, is a Christmas gift from a bicycle friend.  It features beautiful color photographs of the great and near-great racers in the world of cycling. I particularly like to show off the month of October featuring Italian cycling superstar, Mario Cipollini (Mareeo Chip-o-leeney).  Not that Cipollini is a particular favorite, like most Americans I’m a Lance Armstrong partisan.  But you just have to love the way the words  “Mario Cipollini” roll off the tongue and reverberate through the skull.

      Then it dawned on me.  My personal lack of athletic prowess is a direct result of my parent’s poor choice of names for their first born. (Like most Americans no matter what the situation, “It’s not my fault”)  No wonder I’m short, slow, can’t ripple water throwing from the dock and was such a poor hitter the third base coach gave me the take sign on a 0-2 count in T-ball.  Why the total lack of eye-hand co-ordination?  Obviously, it’s because I wasn’t blessed with a cool name.  Unlike almost anyone lugging the puck for the Montreal Canadiens.

    Growing up in the mid-west hundreds of miles from the nearest rink made me a hockey illiterate.  Still I rooted hard for the Montreal Canadiens.  Montreal may have been 2,000 miles and another country away but cheering was easy for a team featuring Yvan Cournoyer (E-vaughn Corn-why-eh), Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion, Jacques Plante, Maurice “The Rocket” Richard plus his little brother Henri “The Pocket Rocket”.  And these Richards weren’t Rich followed by an erd like we Richards in farm country but their name was pronounced Ree-shar.  How cool was that, especially when playing for the Bleu, Blanc and Rouge.

     I’m telling you straight out, even though my last year of Legion Ball found me 0 for August and August was my best month, had I a cool name like Dante Bichette the “big-leagues” would have been a cinch.  Forget that my pitching repertoire was one change-up after another.  If my parents had skipped over Dick as a first name and gone for Ugaeth Urbina I too would have possessed a 98-mile an hour heater, a 4 million dollar salary and a World Series ring like the current Marlin reliever.

     Maynard, you say, all this is just a whiny, feeble excuse.  It’s not your name.  There have been many famous Dick’s in sports.  And you’re right.  Coming immediately to mind are the current Giants left fielder or anyone wearing the silver and black of the Oakland Raiders.

     Three of my four grandchildren are in great shape “namewise” as Joe Thiesman (like in Heisman) would say.  In 2025 look for switch-hitting shortstop Blake Benedetti to lead the Rockies into the World Series (I should live so long).  You say he should be a Cub.  Not with his first name.  He’ll be the first real Blake Street Bomber.  His younger brother Brett is a lock to be the USC fullback of the future leading the student body right end sweep for the Trojans.  Why won’t he be the SC quarterback?  It’s the name.  Trojan quarterbacks have Waspish monikers on the back of their jerseys like Carson Palmer and Rodney Peete.  Brett Benedetti ‘s name alone makes him a fullback or linebacker.

     Granddaughter Emerson Damiano, turning one year old next week, is my odds on favorite to bring gold home to the United States as a slalom specialist in the 2022 Winter Olympics.  Great skiers have great names, Alberto Tomba, “The Herminator”, Picabo Street and in two decades, Emerson Damiano.