On Yankee Nicknames: Gardy in Left, Jake in Center, Los in Right

[Les Krupel]

On Yankee Nicknames: Gardy in Left, Jake in Center, Los in Right

Joe Girardi Bestows Each Yankee With a Special Nickname; Most Are Basic (Jeet), Others Take Some Explaining (Raccoon)

By 

DANIEL BARBARISI

April 14, 2014 8:04 p.m. ET

Yankee manager Joe Girardi, left, eventually gives all of his players nicknames. Above, he's high-fiving outfielder Carlos Beltran, known as Los. Reuters

Most of Joe Girardi's nicknames follow a simple formula.

The Yankee manager loves to give his players nicknames, and most hew to a fairly standard blueprint: Drop the last few letters, then add an "-ie" or "y" sound. Hence, Brett Gardner becomes "Gardy;" Alfonso Soriano is "Sori." Sometimes, there are slight variations, where the entire name is preserved. For instance, David Phelps is "Phelpsie; last season, Jayson Nix was "Nixie."

But every once in a while, nickname lightning strikes and Girardi finds an unconventional one that is too good to pass up. For those, Girardi will eschew his normal scheme and embrace the new name wholeheartedly.

Such was the case when Tony Pena, the Yankee bench coach, noticed the prominence of rookie Dean Anna's nose. He said it made Anna look like a raccoon. Girardi adopted it, and now Anna must accept that, on the Yankees, he's raccoon. And he gets it.

"Because of the nose," Anna said. "I got a little bigger nose. I love it. It's great."

If a player ends up in Yankee pinstripes, before long Girardi will casually drop a nickname on him. With Cervi and Jeet and Hiro and Mac all in circulation, it's rare to hear the Yankee manager refer to one of his players by their given first or last name. Most of the names are based in some feature of the players' first or last name. Others take a little more effort. But most everyone gets one eventually.

"Do I put a lot of thought into the nicknames? Yeah," Girardi said. "Sometimes you come up with one, where you see something that stands out. Sometimes they're just easy. They just come out," Girardi said.

With a lineage stretching from Cy to the Babe to Dizzy to A-Rod, nicknames are commonplace throughout baseball. Many other managers, including Girardi's predecessor Joe Torre, use the ie/y construct in referring to some of their players, as do coaches in other sports.

But according to the players themselves, Girardi employs them to an extreme. All the current Yankees except relievers Cesar Cabral and Matt Thornton have a Yankee nickname, according to conversations with players and coaches, and as newer Yankees, it's likely those two will get theirs eventually.

"[Atlanta's] Bobby Cox was the only other manager who did it like this," said infielder Kelly Johnson, who has played for five teams and has variously gone by Kells, Kell, and KJ.

When new players arrive, fans engage in guessing games on Twitter, tossing possibilities back and forth as to what Girardi might call him. When pitcher Masahiro Tanaka signed, for instance, speculation swirled around his potential nickname. Some suggested "Tank," which a few players have used; others thought Girardi might follow his normal formula and go with "Massy."

Girardi said it's still in the testing stages. "Some guys call him Tanaks, some guys call him T. At some point we'll come up with something that fits," he said.

The players themselves don't exactly get a say in their fate. Former Yankee reliever Clay Rapada has earned his fair share of nicknames over his decade in pro baseball. He's always been partial to "Rap," which was the nickname used by most of the Yankee bullpen. But when Rapada played for the Yankees in 2012 and spring of 2013, Rap wasn't distinctive enough for Girardi.

Inspiration struck, Girardi bestowed a name, and suddenly, Rapada was "The Rapper."

When he was approached about the unusual nickname, Rapada hung his head in mock shame.

"Nobody anywhere has ever called me that," Rapada said.

Then there are players born with a ready-made Girardi nickname already in place, complete with an ie/y sound, like reliever Shawn Kelley. For him, sometimes Girardi uses Kelley. Other times, Kelley said, Girardi has called him "Shawnie," again a first.

"Yeah, it's kind of little-kid-ish. That took me a little by surprise," Kelley said.

It shouldn't have, according to Albert Mehrabian, professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA, and author of "The Name Game: The Decision that Lasts a Lifetime." The use of ie/y-based nicknames casts Girardi as a parental figure, a caring patriarch who wants to connect with his team.

"The manager is in a way casting himself in a paternal role with warmth/affection toward his players," Mehrabian wrote.

Often, Mehrabian said, a nickname can be used to suggest an individual is more popular and fun, and less stringently ethical or successful. But pro athletes are highly successful individuals, so the use of nicknames here may run deeper than that, perhaps showing that Girardi, a former player himself, understands the relaxed environment that must be built to allow players to succeed.

"Considering these athletes are skillful, strong and possibly physically intimidating, use of the particular nicknames ending in ie/y would suggest the manager is intuitively suggesting they are perhaps more vulnerable, playful and childlike than their levels of professional achievement would suggest," Mehrabian wrote.

The manager could, in this context, be saying he knows a different side of them than the face they must show to the public.

"He might be suggesting that in some ways they are more youthful (maybe even childlike) and vulnerable than the way in which they might appear to the fans," Mehrabian suggested.

Girardi doesn't go for any deep analysis as to why he doles out nicknames—it just happens, he said. To him, it's not necessarily even an indication that he's particularly fond of a player.

"I don't necessarily think so—because you like all your guys," Girardi said. "Sometimes it's just that something is triggered in your mind. You see something, and you say, 'Oh, he's the raccoon.' That's what happens."

If the nicknames are one way for Girardi to connect with his players, that may explain why Girardi's nicknames are mostly originals; in cases where a player already has his own nickname, Girardi usually comes up with his own—for instance, "A-Rod" is so commonly used for Alex Rodriguez that using it confers no special status. So to Girardi, Rodriguez is never A-Rod. He is simply "Al."

And it doesn't matter if a player has a distinctive name to begin with. Players with more complex names, like Dellin Betances or Vidal Nuno, are often handed simplified alternatives (Betances is "D," Nuno is "V").

Girardi himself spent 15 years in the major leagues, and three more in the minors. He has had managers aplenty, including baseball lifers like Don Zimmer, Don Baylor and Torre.

Did they call him a certain nickname that sparked this love of naming his own players? Was he Joey, perhaps? Rardy? G?

"No, nothing," he said. "They just called me Joe."

Yankee Nicknames

IF Dean Anna: Raccoon

OF Carlos Beltran: Los

RP Dellin Betances: D

RP Cesar Cabral: None

C Francisco CervellI: Cervi

OF Jacoby Ellsbury: Jake, Ells

IF Derek Jeter: Jeet

IF Kelly Johnson: Kells, KJ

OF Brett Gardner: Gardy

P Shane Greene: Greeny

SP Hiroki Kuroda: Hiro

RP Shawn Kelley: Shawnie

C Brian McCann: Mac

SP Ivan Nova: Nove

RP Vidal Nuno: V

RP David Phelps: Phelpsie

SP Michael Pineda: Big Mike

RP Matt Thornton: None

IF Brian Roberts: B-Rob

RP David Robertson: Robbie

IF Alex Rodriguez: Al

IF Brendan Ryan : Ryno

SP CC Sabathia: C

IF Yangervis Solarte: Soli

OF Alfonso Soriano: Sori

OF Ichiro Suzuki: Ichi, Ich

SP Masahiro Tanaka: Tank, T

IF Mark Teixeira: Tex

RP Adam Warren: Rocket