So I was looking up Coco Crisp to start a new Great Sports Name Hall of Fame Wannabee post, mostly because every time I tell people I have this Hall of Fame they recommend Crisp as a nominee. And thank you for the suggestion, but only birth names are allowed, and therefore Covelli Loyce Crisp is not eligible (not that his name isn't sweet without the nickname).
So anyways, Crisp's Wikipedia mentions that he supplanted Matt Lawton while he was with the Indians. Lawton used to be a favorite player of mine as a lesser, outfield playing version of Fred McGriff (my all time favorite player by the way). That is to say, like McGriff, Lawton was consistently pretty good and appeared in a few All Star Games but saw his playing ability tail off very quickly late in his career. Reading Lawton's Wikipedia page, however, I came up with two interesting tidbits. One explained why Lawton's career may have tailed off, while the other explains the length of this post.
Tidbit one is that Lawton tested positive for steroids late in his career. Since he kind of sucked from then on out, one assumes that steroids and Lawton's All Star Games may have been connected. I died a little bit inside, as that sucks to know.
For two, Lawton used the fake name "Eleven Fifty" when checking into hotels.
This of course made me curious, as I wondered what that meant. Some claim it is a reference to the fact that he wore mostly 11 and 50 as jersey numbers during his career. Others claim it has to do with the slang term "Fifty-Eleven." I really don't know which it is, but then THIS got me interested in finding the aliases of other current or former sports stars. And I found a few (mostly former), with highlights including:
Harris Smith - Plaxico Burress
Ricky Ricardo - Jorge Posada
Harry Pelotas - Luis Sojo
Turd Ferguson - Jaret Wright
Austin Powers - Ruben Sierra
Lt. Frank Drebin - Brian Anderson
Bugs Bunny - Michael Jordan
And my personal favorite, George Jetson - CC Sabathia
Pretty funny stuff, though obviously it's hard to find the aliases of current players because then people would know how to find the players attached to them. But it was still cool to find some of these names, and Lt. Frank Drebin and George Jetson both come from the same article and have good stories attached to them.
Regardless, that's about the end of my trip through the internet. But the trip truly ended when I remembered why I loved Lawton so much. My first MLB game was a Twins-Tigers game as an eleven year old. Thanks to the internet, I now have the box score from that game. Tigers 7, Twins 6, with former Rookie of the Year Bob Hamelin hitting 2 doubles, Brent Brede hitting one of his 5 career homeruns, and Chuck Knoblauch hitting a foul ball caught by a guy one row behind me. Good times, and I have the internet to thank for bringing that memory back.
I Love the Internet: From Covelli Crisp to Harry Pelotas
