Mariners players share reasons for eschewing nickname fun
NEW YORK – Baseball is always rife with debates about anything and everything on the field, so it’s not a surprise the Seattle Mariners might disagree about which of their teammates’ jerseys for Players Weekend had the best nicknames.
“I like Seag’s,” said reliever Marco Gonzales, referring to Kyle Seager by a nickname that wasn't on the third baseman’s jersey. “Seager’s is pretty good.”
Seager, a 2014 All-Star, a Gold Glove winner, and two-time top-20 finisher in the MVP vote, put "Corey’s Brother" on his back, a self-mocking nod to the 2016 National League Rookie of the Year. In a tremendous bit of sibling trolling, Corey Seager’s jersey with the Dodgers for the weekend simply reads "Seager."
“'Corey’s Brother' is not the best,” said first baseman Danny Valencia. “To me, 'Zoombiya' or 'Boomstick' are the two best in our clubhouse, in my personal opinion.”
Those would be the nicknames - and references to Twitter handles - of speedster Jarrod Dyson and slugger Nelson Cruz. Valencia’s Twitter handle is @dannyvalencia19, and despite 19 being an unused number with the Mariners, Valencia wears 26.
“We actually do what our names say,” Dyson chided from a few lockers over. “You know what I’m saying?”
Valencia, with an .864 OPS this season and .872 for his career against lefthanded pitching, could've gone with "Lefty Crusher" or something along those lines had he gone that route. His jersey, though, simply read "Valencia," one of a few players without a special appellation for the weekend.
“I’m kind of regretting it now,” Valencia said. “I think it’s cool. I think it’s pretty creative on a lot of our guys’ parts with some of the nicknames they came up with. It’s nice, it’s unique, and it’s the first time we’ve been able to really be ourselves and have the names that we really want back there. Some of us didn’t really come up with a good one, which, I’m one of those people.”
Valencia doesn’t have a true nickname, so he suggested he could've gone with "Danny V," "DV," or simply "V" for his jersey. Mariners catcher Mike Zunino was pretty sure he would've gone for the single-letter approach with "Z," but he also wound up with his last name on his back, same as usual.
(Photo courtesy: Action Images)
“It was a quick one for when we had to get the nicknames in, and usually there’s a bunch of stuff going on with meetings and stuff as a catcher,” Zunino said. “So I just wasn’t able to get it in there. There’s a few that I could’ve thrown on there. 'Z' would’ve been the most obvious one. That’s the most basic one since I’ve been coming up. Hopefully next year we can do the same thing again.”
Zunino makes the “meetings” excuse sound pretty believable. He may need to offer some tips to his rookie teammate, outfielder Mitch Haniger, another player in the last name club.
“I actually just forgot to submit my nickname,” Haniger said. “So I ended up just going with my last name. I don’t know off the top of my head (what the nickname would’ve been), and I’d have to think about it, so that’s probably why I forgot in the first place.”
At least Haniger had a chance to pick a nickname, even if he didn’t wind up doing it. Relief pitcher Emilio Pagan, like Gonzales, was in the minor leagues when the jersey name choices had to be submitted, which is strange given how quickly names can be stitched onto jerseys and the fact Pagan has been in the majors since the All-Star break.
“I wasn’t up in the beginning of the year when they sent the names in to get OK’d by MLB, so that’s really the only reason,” Pagan said. “I thought about going with just my first name, 'Emiliooooooo,' with six or seven O’s, play on 'A Night At The Roxbury,' because every time I go to a new team, that’s the first thing everybody says. Either that or, my nickname growing up with my family was 'Mino.' One of those two names, but I wasn’t up to send it in. Next time!”