Night Train, Cool Papa and Sweetness: My Favorite Sports Nicknames

This week, I was teasing my favorite center in the sport of women's full-contact football and have conferred upon Sarah Young of the Pittsburgh Passion the nickname "Egregious.” She will henceforth be known as Egregious Young. But it made me think of my favorite sports nicknames of all time. I only included guys (and yes, it's all men) who were big time athletes, not random guys who were mediocre players, but had cool nicknames, like Manny Legace ("Legs" or, even better, "The Ferret'"). These are the guys who simply are their nicknames, the ones that everybody knows, the kind that need no explanation.

THE NICKNAMES THAT BECAME NAMES:

These guys had nicknames that were so perfect that the nickname actually replaced their given names altogether.

Who even knows Cool Papa Bell's given name? Anybody? Anybody? Cool Papa is so descriptive and it says to me, 'I'm so fast that I make it look effortless to turn a double into a triple, I cruise the basepaths with such confidence and ease that I'm a cool papa.' (Oh, and it's James Thomas, by the way.)

Top 10 Sporting Events to Take Us Beyond the Rapture

Well it appears the Rapture is indeed upon us. Maybe you call it the end of the world? Semantics, my friends. Semantics. But it seems to me, that if God is calling all the chickens home to roost, she might be in the mood to grant some wishes? I don't know, but I think God understands balance -- hellfire and damnation should be balanced out with some thoughtful presents. Dig?

So what I'm saying is, if the supreme being wants to give me a gift, he can permit me to witness, first hand, some of the great sporting moments in history. I'm almost ashamed to say that I've actually thought about this over the years, but if there were ten sports events I could attend in person, if money and the shackles of a little thing I like to call time and space were not objects, which is to say, if I could travel through time, what sports events would I want to see, live and in person? This list turns out to be kinda baseball heavy. Who knew?