Recently, after we toured a Hall of Names gallery for each of the 25 most common North American surnames, we also took a dive into the It Makes Census pool, which had a 25-man roster composed of one player each from the candidates with those 25 surnames.
Well, first things ... uh, second, as it turns out ... as we now undertake the same process with the 25 most common first/given names. But there is a bit of a twist ...
... as there are a couple of ways to determine what those 25 most common first names actually are. As such, we will have two teams here, one made up of the 25 most common first names according to the 1990 U.S. Census -- or, more or less, guys who could conceiveably have already reached the major leagues; and the second made up of the 25 most common current male infant names (according to a popular neonatal Web site, anyway), or not only guys who couldn't conceiveably have reached the majors yet, but only very recently were conceived at all.
The usual rules are in play -- for instance, though Nellie Fox's "real" given first name was "Jacob," he is not eligible for the team because he didn't actually go by that moniker ... This also applies to players who went by nicknames like Daniel "Rusty" Staub -- no dice, Rusty ... Commonly-accepted diminutives of a name such as "Tony" for "Anthony" and "Josh" for "Joshua" are just fine ... however, we are not considering "close enough" names like, unfortunately, Willie Howard Mays, a pretty good CF who was not named "William" ... Another pretty good CF, Andruw Jones, also gets cut on the spelling rule, as does Hall of Fame 2B Ryne Sandberg and All-Star SS Cristian Guzman ...
And of course, we are only looking at first/given names, not last/family names, though oddly enough (if you count plurals such as Matthews and Daniels), more than 20 of the 25 most common first/given names in this survey have also been the last/family name of a big league ballplayer (see: Nolan Ryan, Tommy John, Pete Alexander -- there's a nice front three to any rotation! -- Gene Michael, Juan Samuel, Von Joshua and many others mentioned in the Two First Names Hall of Names discussion waybackwhen).
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25 MOST COMMON BABY NAMES
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BABY, WHAT A ROSTER ** indicates Hall of Famer * indicates All-Star
Player/Manager Joe Cronin (1236-1055)
LINEUP
BENCH
ROTATION
BULLPEN |
Yes, there are separate entries for both "Christopher" and "Christian" and for "John" and "Jonathan" as all four made the Top 25 list independently of their similar-sounding namesakes ... Joe Cronin beats out Joe Torre as the team's Player/Manager, as he was slightly better than the current Yankee skipper in both areas ... Profoundest apologies to "Joltin" Joe himself, as DiMaggio is the best eligible player not to make the squad ... Another ex-Yankee, "Poosh 'Em Up" Tony Lazzeri is also in the "best eligible not to make it" discussion, but Gwynn Sr. grabs the Anthony slot ... Brandon Webb makes the team almost by default; 15 of the 17 Brandons in major league history were still active in 2005, and none appeared in the big leagues before the year 2000 ...
There have been just two Ethans in big league history, and we are still waiting on our first Dylan (Frank "Pop" Dillon misses on three counts -- spelling, it's his surname, AND he went by a nickname), so the DH slot stays empty for now in anticipation of that first Dylan "blowin' in the wind" ... Two of the guys with the surname "Daniels" are "Charlie" and "Jack" which seems a natural match ... All that said, and attempting not to use any repeats, it's time to move on to ...
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NAME THAT TEAM ** indicates Hall of Famer * indicates All-Star
Player/Manager Dick Howser (507-425, five flags, two titles)
LINEUP
BENCH
ROTATION
BULLPEN |
25 MOST COMMON FIRST/GIVEN NAMES
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And more than a few more notes ... Johnny Bench, the greatest catcher ever, gets the nod over Johnny Mize, who was "only" a Hall of Famer as 1B ... The Roberts are all about pitching, and we don't mean Robin Roberts ... Gibson and Lemon were both great in their own right, but we'll go with "Rapid Robert" himself, Mr. Feller ... Because we already have Bench on hand, there's no reason to spend our "Michael" on Mr. Piazza, and instead of trying to re-assemble the circa-1950 Indians by picking up Mike Garcia behind Feller, let's grab the All-Star lefty Cuellar over another former Oriole in Mussina ... Michael "Mickey" Welch, the Hall of Fame 307-game winner, technically qualifies but it doesn't seem fair to add him to the roster when Mickey Mantle and Mickey Cochrane, among others, are not eligible ...
Sorry, William Roger Clemens and William "Candy" Cummings, neither of you are eligible, but a sturdy little Wagnerian lefty closer will do just fine ... James "Cool Papa" Bell loses his roster spot on the nickname rule, but we're okay with the aforementioned Joltin' Joe in CF ... And George Brett is surely more than a consolation prize for losing out on George "Babe" Ruth, though the juxtaposition of "George" and "Kenneth" on the list above right tempted us to bump DiMaggio yet again for George Kenneth "Junior" Griffey ... Davey Johnson is about as fine a player/coach as a team could hope for; that's four All-Star appearances as a player and four appearances in the post-season as a manager ... And Dick Howser is about as fine a manager, period, as a team could hope for -- the fact that he was an All-Star shortstop, albeit quite briefly, is just a bonus ...
It seems that most of the Charles-es in the Hall of Fame -- Casey Stengel, Red Ruffing, Kid Nichols, Chick Hafey -- fall prey to the nickname rule, but if not for the presence of Mr. Collins at the keystone already, we might've ended up with a really fine 2B in Gehringer (.320/184/1427 in 19 seasons) ... So we're left with borderline Hall of Famer Chuck Klein (a Moises Alou/Ellis Burks/Fred Lynn type according to his BBRef Most Similar list) taking an OF spot ...
George Thomas Seaver loses his spot for the same reason Clemens does, and don't even think about Frank Thomas as the DH ... The Toms in the Hall of Fame are mostly there for non-playing exploits (manager LaSorda, umpire Connolly, owner Yawkey) while 19th century OF Tommy McCarthy's place there is, frankly, a bit of a mystery ... Ex-Yankees like Tommy Henrich and Tom Tresh are tempting utility options, but let's go with a lefty for the rotation -- but should it be 288-game winner Tommy John or 275-game winner (so far) Tom Glavine? The latter may still get enshrined in Cooperstown, so the ex-Brave gets the nod ...
Paul Molitor easily beats out Paul Waner for the All-Paul slot on the roster (If Waner plays guitar, he can take solace in being the team's "Less Paul") ... Though Waner's career batting average (.333) was 27 points better, Molitor had 167 more hits and played every defensive position except catcher, even though he spent more time at DH than anywhere else ... Nobody named "Mark" has ever been inducted into Cooperstown, and the recent McGwire follies mean that streak may stay intact for some time, though current young lefties Buehrle and Mulder could come into play eventually ... Retired All-Stars like Langston and Belanger would be fine additions, but we'll take the bat of Texas' Teixeira based on early production and BBRef "Most Similars" like Willie McCovey, Fred McGriff, Rocky Colavito and, yes, Mark McGwire ...
Which ex-Dodger righty is The Donald for this team? We'll take the greatness of Drysdale over the extended very-goodness of Sutton ... Brian Downing caught 675 games, and played even more as both an OF and DH, but that's enough time behind the plate, in the unlikely case Bench needs some time off, to land him the backup catching slot ... The numbers game catches big-time talents like Santo and Guidry and makes speedy OF LeFlore our Ron-presentative ... He'll sit on the bench next to Kenny Lofton and the primary job for both will likely be pinch-running, if ever needed ...
So with four names -- Anthony (Tony), Kevin, Jason and Matthew (Matt) -- left on the board, we are looking for a starting shortstop, a starting right fielder, and two righties (one short and one long) for the bullpen ... We could do a lot worse than Tony Kubek at short, youngster Jason Bay in right, with Kevin Brown and Matt Clement joining the bullpen ... Both Kubek and Bay won Rookie of the Year awards ...
So, Bauxites, after all that, first things last ... how could either of these teams be better?
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20051029145342198