One of the best things that happens in sports is when a group of players gets a nickname. It’s fun for fans, it’s fun for the media, and it’s fun, oftentimes, for the team’s marketing department. Which makes it one of the rare things that brings all those groups together.
Baseball has had its share of fun group nicknames. The Bash Brothers, the M&M Boys, the Gashouse Gang, the Boys of Summer, Murderer’s Row, the Killer Bs, and the great Minnesota Twins group known as the Little Piranhas.
The Piranhas brought hope and excitement to Twins Territory in 2006. After a bad start to the season, the team, the fans, and even ESPN got excited about the team as they bonded over the nickname. The way things are going for the Twins this year, some of that nickname magic would be more than welcome.
But what is the new nickname going to be?
Well, the first step is it find successful members of a team to base it on. In the case of the Piranhas, it was inspired by Luis Castillo, Jason Bartlett, Nick Punto, and Jason Tyner being good enough that they gave Ozzie Guillén nightmares.
This year, the best, most exciting players on the Twins are Eddie Rosario and Eduardo Escobar. Rosario went 4-4 on Saturday with a double and two homers, to continue leading the team in pretty much every offensive stat. Escobar hit three doubles on Sunday to lead the league in that stat. Those are definitely nickname-worthy accomplishments.
Then, of course, the nickname has to be catchy. Unless taken from a quote, like “Piranhas,” the nickname needs to do at least one of two things.
- Be alliterative or assonant.
- Allude to a broadly understood idiom or piece of pop culture.
There are also bonus points if the nickname refers to all the members of the group. And because this nickname is going to be as strong as possible, it’s going to earn those bonus points.
If this nickname is going to bring the two together, it obviously needs to draw on the fact that their names are very similar. Which also takes care of the assonance pretty easily. But then which idiom or piece of pop culture is it going to reference?
Well, to any kid whose parents had cable at the turn of the millennium, it’s simple: Ed, Edd n Eddy.
The Cartoon Network show of the same name about three struggling 10-year-old capitalists is a bona fide classic. It may not draw in the older media crowd, but that’s not necessarily a concern — it’s highly doubtful that most baseball folks were intimately aware of Dylan Thomas’ poetry when they started calling the Dodgers the Boys of Summer.
There’s only one problem. Eddie Rosario and Eduardo Escobar only fulfill two-thirds of the nickname’s obvious requirements.
Have no fear, Baseball Reference’s biographic information is here, and it informs the world that Robbie Grossman’s middle name is Edward.
At this point, Grossman’s performance hasn’t necessarily earned him a spot in the nickname crew, but the chance to join the exclusive club might be just the encouragement he needs to get that OBP back to its typically great levels.
Once that happens, Ed, Edd n Eddy will be on the fast track to new t-shirts, media appearances, and, most importantly, the playoffs.
But to make sure that happens, this needs to spread all over social media, put on signs at Target Field, and possibly tattooed on someone. Just picture all three of the players’ heads photoshopped onto the cartoon characters’ bodies, and you see just how big of a deal this could be.
So start spreading the word. This isn’t going to happen without everyone pitching in.
Or it doesn’t need to happen and the Twins can just keep playing pretty good baseball and hoping something good happens. But that doesn’t sound as fun.
Charlie Gillmer is a lifelong Twins fan who spends most nights dreaming of learning a knuckleball and pitching them to a World Series victory.
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