Yabba-Dabba Do!

There’s nothing like a summer weekend under the sweltering hot sunshine watching the Royals wage war on the White Sox pitching staff. (Especially when you can watch the games in your lovely air-conditioned home.) The Baseball Jonah has shaken off his White Sox demons, Mike Aviles is hitting .340 (wait…what?), Billy Butler has eight hits in his last three games, and Robinson Tejeda was absolutely dealing today.

Trey Hillman has apparently taken my advice – or yielded to common sense – and moved Guillen to DH, Butler to first base, and Gload to left field. This gives Butler some much-needed reps at first base, gives Guillen some time to heal up, and may have actually improved the defense all at the same time. Lo and behold, in two games at DH Guillen has two homers and two walks. The Royals have 19 hits in back-to-back games for the first time in their history, and if you squint you can almost see .500 again.

Let’s enjoy it while we can. Boston comes to town next, then the Twins, then it’s off to Chicago and New York…52-60 could be 55-69 awfully fast. If the Royals can tread water over the next two weeks, maybe we can start dreaming of a .500 season.

In the meantime, it’s time to revisit the Nickname Project, something I’ve been promising to do for a few months now. I find it incredibly amusing that if I were to end this blog today, its one enduring legacy would be The Mexicutioner. Amusing, but also gratifying. The goal of this blog is to write about the team from a fan’s perspective, objectivity be damned, but because of the healthy attitude that the Kansas City media has towards blogs, this particular fan’s perspective has been amplified by the power of the newspaper and radio. How many star players have their nickname decided, not by themselves or their teammates or the media, but by the fans? That’s what happened here, and I am very grateful for this.

I’m also greedy. The Mexicutioner got the Dutton Seal of Approval™, as did Shake Yabuta, who unfortunately (or fortunately) is unlikely to ever require use of that nickname again. But we’ve still got a few dozen players to go.

So it’s time to unveil the official Rany on the Royals nickname for another member of the team.

Henceforth – with a nod to poster Zach, who I believe was the first person to suggest this nickname – Billy Butler shall be known as Bam Bam.

If you heard my interview with Kevin Kietzman on Thursday you know the reasons why I love this nickname so much. In summary:

- Billy Butler. Bam Bam. A little alliteration never hurts.

- Bam Bam is a baby. Billy Butler has been the youngest player on the team every day that he has spent in the majors. As a rookie, he was younger than all but two other players in the American League; even this season, only three players younger than Butler have appeared in even one game with an AL team. (There’s also the matter of Jose Guillen’s little rant that the Royals have “too many babies” that ties in nicely here.)

- Most importantly, all Bam Bam ever did was hit things with a wooden stick, and despite his youth was phenomenally destructive with one. All Billy Butler does (at least well) is hit things with a wooden stick – and when he makes contact, hide the women and children.

The key to any nickname catching on is that there should be no ambiguity about who you’re referring to. If you told a Royals fan that one of the team’s players was called “Bam Bam”, even a casual fan would know immediately that you were referring to Butler. The nickname is not overly highbrow like The Baseball Jonah or The Epic, and it rolls off the tongue. The marketing tie-ins are obvious. Instead of playing music before every at-bat, they could just play a Flintstones clip of Bam Bam yipping his name over and over again. Then there’s the poster of Butler dressed up like a caveman. You get the point.

(Wikipedia lists the son of Barney and Betty Rubble as “Bamm-Bamm.” I think we’ll stick with the simpler spelling here, if for no reason than to avoid the ire – and the lawyers – of the Hanna-Barbera folks.)

The only possible concern with the nickname is that Butler would not be the first player with that nickname. Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens was a top Yankee prospect two decades ago…back when the Yankees sucked so bad that they thought a guy like Meulens was a savior. (Man, I miss those days.) In parts of seven seasons in the majors, Meulens hit .220 with 15 homers. As a rule of thumb, I think that in order for a player to be given a recycled nickname, he must be a superior player to the man whose name he is taking. Butler already has had more success than Meulens had in his entire career, so no worries there.

We can work on Greinke and the Brain, Mr. Incredible and The Smirk and Stubble and Sybil later. Right now, the Mexicutioner needs a friend. I think he and Bam Bam will get along famously.