Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, January 19, 2012
In baseball, the name “Bob” has gone from extremely common to a marginal curiosity and nexus of confusion.
There was one active MLB Bob last year, Bobby Abreu, whose given name is “Bob” but goes by “Bobby”. In 2010 there were two - Abreu, and Bob Howry, whose given name is “Bobby” but goes by “Bob”. In 2009 we also had Bob McCrory.
In the future, will “Bob” be as unheard-of for baseball players as “Dick”? Can Bob Stumpo restore glory to this appellation?
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1. bobm Posted: January 19, 2012 at 07:09 AM (#4040048)But no Bobs.
Looks like Allen/Geren happened twice. They just missed a third time.
Suburban America is out of control.
Except for Sonny, that one can stay.
Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi?
Brett Favre says hi
Tennessee apparently. From Smyrna, which looks to be an exurb of Nashville. Your instincts were definitely in the right place.
Also, the first sentense of Bois little biography at the bottom is hilarious.
Also Neal Heaton and Bob Melvin.
Better that than my dad's given name, though. He hated "Billy Clyde" & always went by Bill or B.C. Can't blame him at all.
(The first cousin's wife -- not the pitcher's mother; they're divorced -- was previously widowed when her husband died on the plane that crashed in Pa. on 9/11. Interesting family.)
That name was not made up - I can't help it if he doesn't know how to pronounce it.
Poor kids, they can't pick their own names. I bet the poor lad hasn't crafted a batch of leather in his life.
Still, he's going to Ole Miss, where the daily views of the magnificent campus and the prettiest girls you'll ever see will take the sting out of his lack of tanning skills.
So I'm assured by a co-worker. (Never been to Oxford myself ... though offhand I can't remember having too many complaints in that department while I was at Arizona State some 30 years ago, either.)
players active in 2011 with MLB experience- Zach Braddock, Zach Britton, Zack Cozart, Zach Duke, Zack Greinke, Zach Jackson, Zach Kroenke, Zach McAllister, Zach Miner, Zach Phillips, Zach Putnam, Zack Segovia, and Zach Stewart.
recently retired players with MLB experience- Zach Day, Zach McClellan, and Zach Sorensen.
active minor leaguers- Zach Aakhus, Zach Baldwin, Zach Booker, Zach Butler, Zack Breault, Zach Cates, Zach Clark, Zac Cline, Zach Collier, Zachary Cone, Zack Cox, Zach Daeges, Zack Dodson, Zach Fowler, Zach Gentile, Zach Getsee, Zach Hammes, Zach Jadofsky, Zach Kapstein, Zach Kometani, Zach Larson, Zach Lee, Zach Lutz, Zachary MacPhee, Zach Mandelblatt, Zach Maxfield, Zach Neal, Zach Osborne, Zack Pace, Zack Parker, Zach Penprase, Zach Petersime, Zach Robertson, Zach Rosscup, Zach Rossetti, Zach Russell, Zach Samuels, Zach Simons, Zack Stanton, Zack Sterner, Zach Thornton, Zack Von Rosenberg, Zach Walters, Zach Ward, Zach Welch, Zack Wheeler, Zach Woods, Zach Zaneski, and Zach Zuercher.
bb-ref search results
At least we have Gibson, Feller, Lemon, Doerr, Clemente and Alomar (I will count Roberto) in the HOF to remember our heritage.
I will second this. I went to Alabama for graduate school, and my favorite football road trip was to Oxford to see all the prettiest co-eds. After teaching at another college in Mississippi, I believe Ole Miss has a monopoly on them in-state.
Someone book Bob on ESPN to complain about this disgrace to the game. You can be the face of the Bob Issue, Bob!
(Well, except for "gef," of course, here & at a few other sites.)
Should I compare the dearth of Bobs to the missile gap or the facetious mine gap in Dr. Strangelove? And would I have to appear with Bob Ley, Bob Uecker and Bob Costas?
It's odd to think that we had a President named Barack before we had a President named Bob....well, considering Dole's campaign in 1996, I can see why.
and there's not much help on the way--bref shows only 3 Bob's currently in the minors (Alcombrack, Blevins, and Borchering)
Alcombrack??!!!
It seems like BB-ref doesn't let you view more than the first page of search results for the minors. I got the name Bob Stumpo from one of the commenters on TFA.
(no Davids, either)
Or Peters.
(Though we've had a Dick.)
(Sorry -- couldn't help it.)
I just go with "nephew." It's not true, but it's simple, and close enough.
Also, "Tanner" is an awesome baseball name.
Definitely not a cruddy one.
I used to think this about Ole Miss until I discovered something called "large cities."
Whose actual birth name was Hiram.
that's good because there are 8 Tanners currently in the minors.
More Tanners than Bobs--what's this world coming to???
That's a good point. The original was the very definition of "ballplayer."
Yes.
I hear about beautiful women in France, or Italy, or Brazil, but I live in San Francisco: all you gotta do is walk around downtown at lunchtime, and the diversity and frequency of pretty women is... wonderful.
That'd be first cousin once removed. I just go with "cousin's son". I think if you don't specify, the first is implied.
Psh. Counting stats are nice, but Hotness Per Female Percentage is a rate stat where Ole Miss blows Chicago away.
Pretty men, too, I gather. NTTAWWT.
I'm from rural Arkansas & now live in the middle of Alabama. The default implication would be that the cousin & I procreated.
Beauchamp St. John
Unton Croke
Sampsen Darrell
Thomas Meautys (cheated there, I just like the last name)
Bevil Grenville
Reginald Mohun
Clipsby Crew
Patricius Curwen Bart
Ignatius Jordan
Harbottle Grimston Sr.
Baptist Hicks
Capell Bedell
Montagu Bertie
Heneage Finch
Framlingham Gawdy
Hamon le Strange
Gervase Clifton
Calcot Chambre
Bulstrode Whitlock
Ambrose Browne
Poynings More
Lancelot Roper
Eubule Thelwall
But hey, don't take our word for it.
LSU's next recruiting class in football. Except, of course, that the first names aren't spelled randomly enough.
There was Grover Cleveland. Can't imagine why someone would prefer "Grover" to "Steve."
Any Chuck and Bob batteries?
Funny that family calls me Voros now as often as anything else. Strange turns life takes...
Me too, rot-13 style!
i personally would go to someplace like MIT or some kind of engineer skool - i mean, pretending i could do any kind of math at all. either that or to some skool with a very high not attractive female percentage. when you are lookin fer love, much better to stand out than just be one of thousands
We're too smart to get involved in politics. Just ask Treder.
-- MWE
I dunno -- I taught at one of those sort of schools for a couple of years. M:F ratio was about 3:1, and the women there seemed pretty unhappy. Too much attention from strange socially awkward males I think.
- what are the most popular names for White boys born 18-25 years ago (besides Zach/Zack)
you notice the fad for all the names starting with the letter J is pretty much gone
we named our twins old fashioned names from the Old Testament - never in the top 100
my gf is having twin girls in a few months and she's naming them brenda and cheryl so they can have unusual and unique names
- were the women socially awkward too?
i wonder why so many males who are good with math are socially awkward...
This...our ECE undergrad enrollment is now below 9% female, and while the plurality of the males are from the US (and, of course, about as white as one can get -- bbc, please, please, please encourage any young AA males you know to focus on math and science!), there are few non-Asian females. By junior year, the non-Asian women are all engaged or "all but ring" (this was our case) on that path. I used to speculate that this was partly a defense mechanism to avoid all the socially awkward males, but it turns out that a rather high percentage graduate, change from graduation robes to wedding dress, then walk down the aisle. (We waited a whole two months! before doing so. Oddly enough, most of the folks we knew who did this are also still married, 18 years later.) A lot of the rest of the women followed this recipe after a Masters degree.
Of course, then we spent time in the northeast where the girls all seemed focused on avoiding any risk of getting married before they were about 35. *Slight* cultural difference!
And, per a friend from Vicksburg, Ole Miss *REDSHIRTS* Miss Americas....
Where is Preserved Fish when we need him?
sorry, but L.A. is so far out in front of anywhere else that its not funny. been here 6 yrs now and the frequency and variety is still astonishing to me ...
- what is ECE?
you mean all females in engineering or all females there?
is it a career thing? i don't get it
i am still wondering about the math/socially awkward thingy. looks like the twins don't have any more math ability than Husband and me, so forget that. not sure about little boy, but he CERTAINLY is not socially awkward...
Well, there is Jaff Decker.
http://insidelacrosse.com/news/2011/12/19/2012-inside-lacrosse-all-name-team-powered-flow-society
and you check out the women's names? KYLE? GABE??? seriously wtf???
and White people think we give our kids funny names????
Not particularly, as far as I could tell. Other than being disproportionately Asian, the female student population there seemed like college students anywhere else. Of course, as a socially awkward male I may not be the best judge of such things...
Likely because they were in their basements studying math all the time instead of being out around others and developing social skills.
wondering why they didn't ask all the other math guys to cmon over to do math stuff in the basement...
seriously
i can see how grrrls who were great at math/engineering were dorx BITGOD because grrrls wasn't supposed to be able to do stuff more difficult that sewing or singing or lifting tea cups or changing diapers/cleaning floors etc, but why are/were males who are engineers/math experts socially awkward?
I guess because math isn't a particularly social activity? I mean I guess you can have friends over and work on some calculus, but I would think it would be mostly silent work. Though science I can see being a bit more social. Everyone works in lab groups and so on.
I think there's also an element of the gender roles you describe effecting girls. Being really good at football or baseball or hockey affords you more opportunity to develop your social skills. Not just because you're on a team, but because if you screw up a social situation you're more likely to get another chance later.
It's probably also an issue of how broad interest is in a subject. If you know a lot about math it's probably the subject you're most comfortable talking about. I'd guess for teenagers the topics with the widest appeal would be music, TV and movies, sports (for guys anyway). My comfort areas for conversation were music (while I was in high school in the late 90s, I was into early 90s rock, so this one was mildly useful within a relatively small group), baseball (in Canada it was a bit of a niche sport, though I did have a few baseball friends) and history (no dice). So I think given my circumstances I turned out a little more socially awkward than one would expect.
It could just be coincidence. The skills necessary to excel at math and science just happen to coincide with characteristics that make socializing difficult.
Which could manifest itself in preferences. When I was a kid my favourite activities were sometimes social - playing basketball or hockey on the street with the other neighbourhood kids,
But often inherently unsocial - digging through atlases to get information for various historical simulation games I was trying to invent. Or drawing the flags of all the nations of the world. Or trying to recreate the Battle of Verdun with lego. Now I suppose there's no reason why these CAN'T be social/group activiities. But when you're a kid you're not really thinking about improving your social skills, the point is just to have fun. And with these kinds of things it was just simpler to do on your own. Too many cooks in the kitchen can ruin a delicately constructed game. Also when you're socially awkward to begin with it can be a relaxing haven to have something you can do all alone.
EDIT: I actually did once hang out with a friend and did calculus with him. He gave me a guitar in return! Best tutoring job ever. (I mean for me. In terms of quality I'm pretty sure I did a terrible job teaching him anything)
Bob Sanders. Also don't forget Bobby Hebert.
If you count Bobbys, Hebert (USFL!) and Hoying appear to be the most recent.
It's a fun name to pronounce. Try and say it. Hebert.
this site gives the most popular baby names for every year going back to 1879
and the loss of Bobs is not a statistical illusion:
popularity of Robert
1930 1st
1940 2nd
1950 2nd
1960 5th
1970 5th
1980 9th
1990 13th
2000 29th
2010 54th
I hear USC is rather whiplash-inducing. And their quarterback is named Matt.
Maybe that's why he's staying. The scenery in Los Angeles >>>> the scenery in Cleveland.
And there is very likely a brain structure linkage between the math/social awkward thing. A whole pile of kids on the autism spectrum love math/engineering. I suspect because it makes sense to them (unlike people, for example). My eldest is "on the spectrum" and very good at math. My youngest though is not and even better at math. I am very good at it, but most of my family can barely calculate percents (seriously I get calls on this asking for help every couple of years).
The brain is a wonderful and complex thing, like most Bobs!
The Rockies' bullpen is awash in Matts. They had 217 game appearances by pitchers named Matt last year, which has to be the record.
You're being bamboozled. To quote the Prophet, "Those silicone parts are made for toys."
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