Watching the Sox play the Rangers this week made me laugh. No, not because David Ortiz and Julio Lugo will be paid a total of $366,000 for this three-game series alone (even though that is somewhat laughable), but because Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s jersey is plain buffoonery. It got me thinking about more absurdly-long names in major sports. Often, in the NHL, some Canadian players have hyphenated last names (e.g. Letourneau-Leblond), and teams will opt to put only the second name on the back of a jersey (just Leblond) to avoid a Saltamlamacchia-type situation. In the NFL, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie is lucky enough to have his jersey embellished with enough thread to wrap around the globe, since the Cardinals allowed him to have his full last name on his uni. Don’t even ask about the NBA. Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo, better known as Dikembe Mutombo, wouldn’t even ask the Rockets to sew anything near that jumbo-sized name on his jersey. But instead of chopping off part of an athlete’s family name like a butcher at a slaughterhouse, the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB should take a lesson from a league that, despite disbanding after its inaugural season in 2001, knew what to do with a player’s last name. The league is the XFL: players could put whatever nickname they wanted on the back of the jersey. (Remember “He Hate Me” Rod Smart? How about “Big Daddy” Jerry Crafts?) Chad Johnson of the Bengals knows how to do it; last year he legally changed his name to Chad Ochocinco so he could wear his nickname on his jersey. How cool would it be to have Paul Pierce don a jersey embroidered with “The Truth”, or Adam Jones wear “Pacman”? If you don’t dig these examples, what about “A-Fraud”?
decent idea.
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